Lost Bubble: Free Pandora's Box in this bubble-popping adventure
The bubble-popping genre is quickly taking over Facebook, with the likes of Bubble Witch Saga and Bubble Safari leading the way. Hoping to grab a slice of that pie is Peak Games' Lost Bubble, which asks you to complete levels and free Pandora's Box along the way.
If you're at all familiar with the slew of bubble-popping puzzle games already available on Facebook, you'll feel right at home here. The basics of gameplay are the same: you'll have a limited number of bubbles available in each level with which to dispose of a larger group of bubbles at the top of the screen. However, instead of being required to clear a specific number of bubbles from the top row of the screen (as seems to be the setup in so many other games), here you're asked to free Pandora's Box(es) from the screen. Hitting Pandora's Box causes it to open (that's bad) and you'll immediately fail the stage. Therefore, you'll need to remove all of the bubbles above Pandora's Box to cause it to fall safely out of the equation.
As you advance through stages, you'll also be required to earn enough points to earn at least one Key (think "stars" of other games) out of the three available. You'll earn multiplier bonuses for making chains of matches, which can greatly boost your score, but if you make even one mistake in a future shot (say, your ricochet off of the wall doesn't land where you thought it would), your entire multiplier and most available multiplier orbs are removed from the board. Needless to say, the addition of luck to this equation (since you're not in control of which color orb you'll be given next) makes some levels unnecessarily difficult, as you may free Pandora's Box(es), but will be far from the required number of points to move on.
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As with so many other games in this now flourishing genre, you'll have five lives available at any one time, and will need to wait 30 minutes for a single life to recharge if you happen to fail a level. Likewise, the difficulty ramps up considerably at Level 10 (something we've seen before), as this stage can easily wipe out all five of your lives in a matter of minutes. You're encouraged to purchase power-ups using the coins you've collected along the way, or by purchasing them with Facebook Credits, with these power-ups supposedly allowing you a better chance at completing a stage (like one that gives you five extra bubbles to work with). Unfortunately, the truly premium power-ups can easily cost over $10 each, which is a steep price point.
Social features include being able to compare your scores with those of your friends on level-specific leaderboards, and being able to share extra coins when you complete levels or pass your friends on said leaderboards. As of this writing, there doesn't appear to be any sort of free gifting feature within the game, and even the ability to swap orbs using your space bar appears to be a limited time ability (the removing of which would be a disastrous choice).
Overall, Lost Bubble plays like many other bubble-popping games on Facebook, but feels a bit more unfair in the point scoring department, due to the complete wipe out of basically all multiplier bonuses for making just a single mistake. If nothing else, Lost Bubble seems like an adequate addition to the bubble-popping genre, that's fun to play, even if you only do so while waiting for your lives to recharge in the genre's other games.
Click here to play Lost Bubble on Facebook ---->
Have you tried Lost Bubble on Facebook? How do you think it compares to the other bubble-popping games on Facebook? Which is your favorite game in the genre? Sound off in the comments.
