Orb Tower

This is a fun, relaxing experience.

[table] [tr] [th]WHEN[/th] [td] The Dark King has come and his orbs must be burst [/td] [/tr] [tr] [th]WHERE[/th] [td] The Orb Tower, filled with the Dark King’s orbs [/td] [/tr] [tr] [th]WHO ARE YOU[/th] [td] Mages with a variety of means to burst some bubbles [/td] [/tr] [tr] [th]WHAT DO YOU DO[/th] [td] Precisely position your projectiles to pop groupings of the spherical suckers of life. Use your spells to turn the tides against the evil orbs, but beware misses must be dealt with as well when they don’t hit home. [/td] [/tr] [tr] [th]WHY IT'S WORTH PLAYING[/th] [td] Simple mechanics met with enough variety and challenge to keep it all surprisingly interesting. Timing, tools, and tactics tie together nicely. A clever and concise lesson in design and scope. Well worth a couple bucks. [/td] [/tr] [/table]

This is a fun game where your skill and learning plays a big part. I do miss being able to drop bubbles by popping supporting bubbles, but even without that exciting feature I'm still having a blast.

it's orbing time

Good game

This game is... Ok. I don't think I'd recommend it to anybody, though, and it's mainly because it lacks variety and it just isn't adequately balanced. Each run, you're going to be playing through a series of Puzzle-Bobble-style levels, trying to clear all the bubbles with a limited number of shots. Any bubbles you fail to clear are subtracted from your total health. Lose all your health before you beat the final boss, and you fail the run. Some bubbles drop coins that you can use to buy power-ups (randomly selected from a very modest pool) between levels. It's very important to not miss; if you fail to clear any bubbles with a shot, it's worse than a wash, because it'll usually add another bubble to the board that you have to waste another two shots to clear. That's already uncomfortable, but also remember that since the color of each shot is randomly chosen, you could easily be dealt an orb that simply cannot be matched anywhere with the current board configuration (for example, you get a blue orb when all the blue orbs are packed tightly behind orbs of other colors) and be forced to waste it in the aforementioned manner. The game is just stealing health from you at that point. There's also a boss called the Jester that is just awful. His ability spreads the bubbles on the board apart from each other after every few shots, making it near impossible to clear them (remember that only groups of 3 or more touching bubbles can be cleared). I'm not sure how you're supposed to finish a Jester level without taking a sizable chunk of damage from leftover bubbles. This isn't to say that the game is particularly *hard*; it's generally been pretty easy so far (although I have not yet tried the higher difficulties) but that's only because you can get power ups that tank or recover unavoidable damage. As long as you're reasonably competent at this flavor of Puzzle Bobble, wait for the good shop items, and don't get too unlucky with orb colors, you're probably going to win. There aren't any opportunities to play cleverly or exploit the mechanics because the mechanics are so limited. It's an adequate proof-of-concept but I think it falls short as a complete game.