Color Bubbles

Historically, plagiarism has been at the core of some of the greatest creations. Many of the best games ever made have come about when a development team took an existing concept and modified it, sometimes barely enough to distinguish the new product from its muse. Most often, the end result is a muddled hybrid that fails to improve on the original, but every so often the outcome is a brilliant blend of old and new, taking the original idea to a new level of gameplay.

However tempting it is to slam Color Bubbles for that glaring, Americanised lack of a 'u', there's no denying that this is such a title. Borrowing heavily from Tetris, Color Bubbles replaces the irregular falling blocks of the classic puzzler with coloured blobs and crystals, varying sufficiently from its inspiration to qualify as a game in its own right. And crucially, it does this without removing any of the addictive quality that made the original such a massive hit.

The challenge is to form blocks of bubbles of a single colour, then burst these blocks using a crystal of the same hue. This is achieved by moving and rotating the falling pairs of bubbles as they fall, strategically stacking them together until the appropriate crystal arrives to remove them from play.

Bonus points are rewarded for chain-bursting multiple sets of bubbles, usually by leaving for example a green crystal atop a stack of red bubbles, then using a red crystal to burst the stack, freeing the green crystal to fall towards a previously placed stack of green bubbles.

In addition to the bubbles and crystals, there are a variety of other blocks, each with their own helpful or hindering qualities. For example, stones and metal bricks will occasionally appear as part of a falling pair. These obstacles can only be removed with the aid of two more special blocks: the bomb and the laser. Bombs destroy all blocks in the surrounding eight squares where they land, whereas lasers have the ability to destroy an entire row of bubbles and bricks in a single pulse of energy.

Complicating things further is the way the game adds extra colours the longer you play. Initially, you only have to deal with red, blue and green bubbles. After a short amount of time though, more colours join the fray, often messing up your carefully laid plans and chains.

You'll hear as well as feel the panic: Color Bubbles features an impressive soundtrack, which varies according to how much peril you're in. As your stack of bubbles gets closer to the top of the screen, the low-key theme is replaced by a much louder and faster-paced piece of music that perfectly stresses the danger and urgency of your plight.

Similarly, a strange looking alien is pictured to the right of the playing area. Depending on your actions, the alien's facial expressions change to reflect how well you're doing. These small touches add a rare degree of character to Color Bubbles, and the attention to small details is testament to the effort put into making the game.

Partnering the standard game is the Time Attack mode. This involves exactly what it says on the tin: score as many points as you can within three minutes. Both modes have individual high-score tables, which are further split between different difficulty levels. It adds a great deal of replay value to the game, as you'll always have room to improve your scores somewhere.

Also on offer is a nifty Puzzle option, which varies greatly from the other two modes. Here, you must use a preset sequence of falling blocks to clear an existing stack of bubbles. The challenge is in placing the limited number of falling objects in the correct place, leaving nothing on the screen with your final move. Puzzle mode proves to be a great deal of fun, though unfortunately, it only features 15 levels.

The shortage of Puzzle mode stages is perhaps Color Bubbles' only real weakness, which is in turn a reflection of its excellence. After all, these puzzles are essentially an extra feature, seemingly almost casually thrown in as an afterthought, yet they turn out to be good enough to leave you craving more once you've solved them all. Another 15 puzzles and this would have been a near-perfect mobile game.

Perhaps Claw Design will make a sequel with more emphasis on the puzzles. Until then, this remains the kind of classy interpretation of a masterful puzzle game philosophy that other examples of the genre will be falling over themselves to achieve.