Bubble-themed games have become a popular subgenre of video gaming, combining fun, strategy, and sometimes luck.

These mobile and desktop games have come a long way since they emerged as an easy arcade diversion. Let’s look closely at five of the best-known and favourite bubble-themed games of all time.

Puzzle Bobble

Puzzle Bobble, also known as Bust-A-Move in North America, was released in 1994 by Taito as the first bubble shooter game ever created. Its characters and galaxies are taken from the popular Bubble Bobble game—a classic arcade game from the 1980s. The Puzzle Bobble game aim is to fire the coloured bubbles in your cannon into the bubbles floating above. You have to match three or more of the same colour to pop their bubbles and remove them from the game. You could get extra points if you popped four or more bubbles in a row. Puzzle Bobble was so successful that these simple bubble-shooting mechanics have become popular worldwide and seen in more variations than anyone thought possible.

Double Bubble Slot

The new Double Bubble slot game from Gamesys is distinctive because it does not consist of matching sequences of bubbles. Double Bubble slots combine classic fruit machine aesthetics with the bubbly charm that fans of the genre love. One of the key attractions of Double Bubble is its Bubble Line feature, where symbols that appear inside bubbles are placed on a special line that can multiply winnings if they form a winning combination.

Snood

Snood was a PC game released in 1996 that should remind you of Puzzle Bobble in concept. With quirky characters and a slightly different gameplay mechanic where the fired “snoods” would stick to each other rather than just to the top of the screen, Snood added a new layer of strategy to the genre. The game gained a cult following, especially among college students, due to the ease with which it could be played on almost any PC.

Bubble Shooter

People have had more entertainment options as the internet became more accessible. At the onset of the 21st century, web-based games began to increase in popularity, and Bubble Shooter became a synonym for procrastination. This browser game was highly accessible, requiring no downloads or installations. However, it retained the basic principles of earlier computer games. Its minimalistic design and high-score system made it ‘THE game’ to compete against each other with friends or colleagues.

Bubble Safari

People who became addicted to social networks and browser games discovered new and huge grounds for mass distraction. Zynga created its browser application, Bubble Safari, and published it on Facebook in 2012. It was another pop-the-bubble game, but the players had to help a monkey named Bubbles in its attempt to rescue his friends. Bubble Safari was one of the first games to utilize the social network for challenges, allowing players to send lives, extra moves, and power-ups to their friends to help them squash the bubbles.

Which of these games is your favourite? Tell us more about it in a comment.