NES Replica of Puzzle Bobble 4
I completed this game's mechanics in July 2024.
*This game's levels are currently incomplete.
Gameplay Notes
Match 3 or more bubbles to cause them to pop. De-attached bubbles will fall off the board, potentially creating chain reactions. Clear all bubbles to win.
When building this game, I wasn't too thrilled with the original thin board size, so I expanded it horizontally to fit two more bubbles. From this change, the long rows now fit 10 bubbles, and the small rows fit 9.
Instead of having an image graphic on the sides, I decided to use 'paintings' that light up when their illustrated mechanics are triggered. My games rarely have any written text, so these act as the 'tutorial'.
The overall visual and sound design of this game is based on Puzzle Bobble [SNES], whereas the game mechanics take from Puzzle Bobble 4 [PS1].
What is this game?
"Puzzle" is an arcade-style tile-matching game. It's based on Puzzle Bobble 4.
Additional Notes
At first, I designed the rainbow bubbles to pick the 'best' available colour to turn into when multiple surrounding bubbles popped at once, as opposed to having them pick 'fairly' from them. With the test level shown in the thumbnail above, the chain reaction originally cleared the entire board upon activation immediately, via prioritizing the red bubbles over the rest.
The PlayStation 1 was the first game console I owned, and Puzzle Bobble 4 / Bust-A-Move 4 was the third video game I ever played. The first two were Rayman and Tomb Raider II, and the following two were Croc: Legend of the Gobbos and Spyro The Dragon.