Online Bubble Shooter Game

A small group near the ceiling can be a more useful target than a large patch of color lower down. In a bubble-shooting puzzle, removing it may release every bubble hanging from it. The aim is to clear the field before its lowest bubbles reach the danger line.

Matching group

A shot joins touching bubbles of the same color. When that connected group contains at least three bubbles, including the shot, the whole group pops. The connection can bend across rows rather than forming a straight line.

Supported cluster

Bubbles stay attached through a continuous chain of touching neighbors leading to the ceiling. This chain can contain different colors. A cluster drops only when none of its connections to the ceiling remain.

Two orange bubbles might provide the only link holding up a mixed-color cluster. Adding a third orange bubble pops that link and drops the cluster without needing matches in its other colors. If a separate chain still connects the cluster to the ceiling, however, it stays attached.

Reaching a useful support may require a bank shot, which rebounds from a wall before hitting the field. The first bubble in the path blocks targets behind it, so a visible color is not necessarily reachable from the launcher. Open gaps and exposed edges matter when choosing an approach.

An unmatched shot stays attached. It may help build a later match, but it also takes up space or blocks another route. Chasing a large drop becomes risky when low bubbles are close to the danger line; a smaller clear that creates room can be the more useful move.

How to Use This Tool:

There is no shot timer. Take as long as needed to inspect the landing before firing.

1. Choose Difficulty and three to six colors under Bubble colors. The default is Normal with four colors. Keep the supplied Run seed or enter nonblank text of up to 96 characters, then select Start game. Spaces at the beginning and end are ignored. A blank seed keeps the start button disabled.
2. Aim by moving the pointer over the field, using ← Aim and Aim →, or pressing Left and Right while the playfield has keyboard focus. Each arrow press adjusts the aim by three degrees; holding a key does not repeat the adjustment. The dotted guide includes wall rebounds, and the outlined circle marks the landing position.
   When no landing outline appears, change the angle before firing. A shot without a legal landing position ends the run.
3. Fire with Fire bubble or press Space while the playfield has keyboard focus. Clicking or tapping the field above the launcher area both aims and fires. NEXT is a bubble preview, not a swap control. Read the match and drop feedback before choosing another shot.

Pause, or P on the focused playfield, holds the field and next bubble. Select Resume to continue. Switching tabs or leaving the browser window also pauses the game. Restart resets the attempt with the same seed and setup, while End run finishes it at the current score.

Interpreting Results:

The landing outline predicts placement, not a successful match. Check the matching neighbors around that position. Bubbles counts bubbles still attached to the field, excluding the current and next bubbles waiting at the launcher.

Score is a points total, not a completion target. Only Field cleared! confirms a win. Danger line reached reports a loss, including a shot with no legal landing. Run ended means the attempt was stopped manually. The final matched count includes fired bubbles that popped; the dropped count records bubbles removed after losing their support.

Best for this setup is this browser's best finished-run score for the selected difficulty and color count under the current rules, across seeds. It includes attempts finished with End run, not just wins, and is not a public leaderboard. Points have no monetary value.

Choose Replay same seed to retry the same starting challenge. New seed keeps the difficulty and color count but changes the seed. A different opening field is not guaranteed. Change setup reopens the options.

Technical Details:

A shot first takes a landing position, then resolves its matching group and any unsupported bubbles before a win or loss is checked. The match size includes the fired bubble.

Rule Core

Only the same-color group containing the newly fired bubble is checked for a match. After a successful match, support is checked through touching neighbors of any color back to the ceiling row. Bubbles without such a connection are removed rather than settling into lower positions.

After these removals and any ceiling descent, an empty field wins. Otherwise, a remaining bubble whose lower edge touches or crosses the danger line ends the run. A shot can therefore remove endangered bubbles before the danger check occurs.

Aiming and landing

Rows alternate between nine and eight positions, with every second row shifted by half a bubble's width. Each position can touch up to six neighbors. Aim is limited to 70 degrees left or right of vertical, including both endpoints.

A wall rebound reverses horizontal travel while the bubble continues upward. The bubble's center turns one radius inside the wall, allowing for its width. At the first bubble hit, the shot settles into the nearest empty neighboring position. A shot that reaches the ceiling instead uses the nearest empty ceiling-row position. The aim guide follows these same travel and landing rules.

Difficulty and ceiling pressure

Difficulty sets the starting field size and the number of consecutive non-matching shots that trigger a descent.

Reaching the listed miss limit lowers the ceiling and the entire field by one row spacing, then restores the full miss allowance. No new row of bubbles is added. A successful matching shot also restores the allowance, but it never raises a ceiling that has already descended. The pressure message counts misses remaining before the next descent, not total shots left in the run.

Formula Core

A successful shot earns 10 points for each matched bubble and 20 points for each dropped bubble, then multiplies that subtotal by the combo reached on that shot.

P is the number of points added to Score, m is the matched count including the fired bubble, d is the dropped count, and c is Combo. The first matching shot in a streak uses a combo of one. Each further consecutive matching shot increases it by one, regardless of how many bubbles drop.

For example, three matched bubbles and one dropped bubble add 50 points at combo ×1. If the next shot matches four and drops two, combo ×2 adds another 160 points, bringing the score from those two shots to 210. A non-matching shot between them would break that streak.

Scores use whole points without rounding. There is no separate bonus for a wall rebound or clearing the field, and difficulty does not multiply the point values.

Seeds and the next bubble

Initial rows are generated in same-color pairs, with one extra bubble in each nine-position row. The seed and setup determine that starting arrangement. Later bubbles are chosen only from colors still present in the field. If the previewed next color disappears completely after a clear, it is replaced before becoming the current bubble.

A different shot can change the surviving colors and therefore the later shot queue. To reproduce a complete run, use the same seed, difficulty, color count, and ordered shot angles, not merely the same seed. Time spent aiming or paused does not change the outcome. For comparisons between attempts, keep the seed and setup fixed rather than assuming different fields offer equal scoring opportunities.

FAQ: