Bubble Shooter Games

Bubble Shooter games are aiming puzzles: a pile of colored bubbles sits at the top, a cannon at the bottom, and you shoot to form groups of the same color. There are more than 260 in this section, most of them variations on the same idea.

The rules

You aim with the mouse or your finger and fire the bubble loaded in the cannon. If it touches others of the same color and they form a group of three or more, they pop. If not, it sticks and the pile grows. You win when you clear the screen, and you lose if the bubbles reach the cannon. In many games, after a certain number of missed shots, the ceiling drops a little.

If you see a whole cluster of bubbles suddenly fall, it's because they're no longer connected to the ceiling. That's the key to scoring in most versions.

Versions

Puzzle Bobble is the arcade classic the whole formula comes from. Bubble Shooter, Bubble Shooter Deluxe, Bubble Shooter HD 2, Bubble Shooter Pro 3 and Bubble Shooter Family Pack are versions of the basic game, and Bubble Charms, Bubble Invasion and Smarty Bubbles add a different theme.

Super Pang, Pang 2004 and Pang Flash are something else, even though they're listed here: a classic arcade series where you shoot at balls bouncing around the screen, and every hit splits them into smaller balls.

Tips

Use the walls. Bubbles bounce off the sides, and aiming diagonally lets you reach spots that are blocked from straight on. It's the trick that earns the most points.

Aim at the ones holding up the others, not just the ones on the edge: if you cut the link to the ceiling, the whole group falls at once. And think about the next bubble, which you can almost always see at the cannon, before you fire the current one.

If you've never played, start with Bubble Shooter or Bubble Shooter Deluxe, the most basic versions, and save Bubble Charms or Bubble Invasion for when you want something with its own theme. Puzzle Bobble is the closest to the original arcade game. One habit that helps: begin with the bubbles at the top that support others, not the ones at the bottom, and watch which colors you have left, because if only one color remains on screen it's easy to run out of options.