Bubbles, bubbles, bubbles! We’ve covered some bubble-shooting games before, but those were PC-based. If you’re looking for some bubble-popping fun while you’re on the go, and like free games, you’ve come to the right post. Below you’ll find two cute little gems from the Market. Each is a brain-teaser, both are free, but one involves far more tapping than the other.

Bubble Blast 2

The first game I wanted to share, Bubble Blast 2, is all about chain reactions. Tap a red bubble, and it explodes into four different parts, each shooting in a different direction. When a fragment of a bubble shoots into another bubble, that other bubble bursts into four different parts, shooting out its own pieces into the game board. You can probably imagine the chain reaction that ensues. But it’s not actually all that simple:

This is the game board at the beginning of a level (level 16, pretty early in the game). Your goal is to clear the board within the allowed amount of taps. This particular level limits you to two taps. Watch what happens after the first:

When you tap a large red bubble, it bursts into four parts (as explained before). And when the fragments hit red bubbles, these red bubbles burst. But when a fragment hits a blue bubble, it turns it yellow. And when a fragment hits a yellow bubble, it turns it red. So to make a blue bubble pop, you actually need to hit it three times (blue into yellow, into red, and then pop). So for every level, it’s crucial to tap exactly the right place. Can you guess where I tapped?

Now that I’m down to the second tap, this level is very easy – I just need to tap the top-left bubble.

Ahh, the taste of victory. Bubble Blast 2 has a mind-boggling amount of levels: It comes with 70 level packs, each containing 100 levels. So, yes, 7,000 levels in a single game – this should keep you busy for some time. The levels need to be unlocked one by one, so there’s only one new level you can play at any given time (plus, you can play again any level you’ve already solved). Also, once you demonstrate your dedication to the game by clearing the first twenty puzzle levels, you unlock a whole new game mode called Arcade. It looks like this:

Yes, it looks exactly the same, but with one important difference: Notice how many more taps you have. You start off with ten permitted taps per level (a huge amount), but you get even more as you generate chain reactions within the level. That means you need to think far less about every tap, and can just revel in the satisfaction of popping bubbles all over the place and watching the chain reactions. If you fail to elicit the perfect chain reaction, you can just keep on tapping. A less challenging mode, but still lots of fun.

Bebbled

The other game I wanted to show you is even more of a brain-teaser. It’s called Bebbled, and has no chain reactions whatsoever. It’s more of a traditional bubble-popper, and looks like this:

That’s probably more of what you have in mind when you think of a bubble-popping game. I must admit that for me, it’s not as engaging as Bubble Blast. Each level is a “challenge” that has a certain points requirement before you can pass on to the next one. For example, this particular level says:

So it’s not enough to just clear the board. In fact, it’s not about clearing the board at all, but about popping as many adjacent bubbles as possible. The interface is well thought-out: Tapping a bunch of bubbles once lets you preview how many points you’ll score if you choose to clear them, and tapping the same bunch again clears them off the board. If you already know what you want, you can just long-tap and that would clear the bubbles straight away.

Bebbled has another game mode, called XMAS Challenge:

In this mode, the goals aren’t point-related. For example:

And the board itself looks like this:

So you need to be very particular about the order in which you clear the so-called "bebs" (or bubbles).

One more thing you should know is that you can flip your phone to flip the board. Watch what the board looks like once I flip my phone:

This obviously makes a big difference, because it changes what bebs are next to each other. There’s no longer a row of circles at the bottom, for example.

Bottom Line

As I’ve already said, I personally find Bubble Blast 2 more enjoyable, perhaps because it’s easier for me. That doesn’t mean Bebbled isn’t good – it’s just harder. Which one is better? Or maybe you like a totally different bubble-blasting game for Android? Let me know in the comments!

Oh, and if bubble-popping isn’t quite your thing but you still like brain teasers, you might want to check out these others free brain teasers for Android.