What parents need to know
Puzzle Bobble Everybubble! is a new installment in TAITO’s thirty-year series, Puzzle Bobble. The series is also known as Bust-A-Move in the West.
It was a big hit in arcades 30 years ago, but unfortunately the series has fallen into disuse since.
The premise of the Puzzle Bobble series has always been ridiculously simple: you orient an arrow from left to right, and you press a button so that a colored bubble is thrown in the direction of the arrow.
The goal of the game is to send the bubbles in order to match them with those of the same color. When 3 or more bubbles of the same color are combined, they explode and leave space. You win when the board is cleaned of all bubbles, or the opponent’s board is filled with bubbles before yours.
In this episode Everybubble! There are also some subtleties:
– the ability to change bubbles between the current and the next, on the fly, before shooting.
– the ability to store a bubble with a special feature and use it when desired afterwards.
Special bubbles are bubbles that have specific behaviors when they come into contact with others. For example, when you pull on the star bubble, all bubbles of the same color with which you shot disappear from the board.
Others cause explosions, others contain creatures that must be delivered, etc.
There are no less than 16 special bubbles that the game contains. They are the result of 30 years of the series as well, indeed, many of them have appeared before.
But don’t worry, the specifics of each of them are introduced slowly, one by one, into the many early tables of the story mode. In addition, there is a written tutorial, available at all times.
Details
Level of experience required
| Age | 3+ | 7+ | 12+ | 16+ | 18+ |
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Evaluation
none
none
Bare minimum
Encourages cooperation and competition
Progressive difficulty. There is plenty to do for all levels of play.
Nothing
Local game modes
Story
Full of levels with a progressive difficulty of varied objectives but similar in principle
VS
A mode to confront or cooperate with these friends. Playable from 1 to 4 players. When you choose 3 or more players, you compose teams of 2 players against 2. Each team shares the same table.
Puzzle Bobble Vs Space Invaders
Space Invaders is another arcade classic from the publisher TAITO. Here the two games are mixed, and you can play from 1 to 4 players, to eliminate Invaders of the same color by shooting bubbles vertically in a straight line only. You can move your character from left to right in this mode, to cover the arena. It’s entertaining.
Online Game Modes
VS
Allows you to compete quickly online. Only in 1 vs 1.
Our opinion
Puzzle Bobble Everybubble! is really great! The artistic direction is very neat and pleasant.
The game is very simple, effective and playable by everyone at all ages. The menus are concise, efficient, there are no frills or uninteresting game modes.
Everything works. The game is suitable for nostalgic, casual, expert players, families, solo players. Great for starting video games as well.
It’s nice to finally find the series in great shape, the last iterations before these had not convinced.
A small downside, that said, we would have liked a little more nuance when moving the arrow very slowly.
