Bubble Barrage

Bubble Barrage is a free bubble shooter game set on a sunlit coral reef, and you play it right in your browser. A wall of glossy coloured bubbles hangs from a rock ledge under the waves, and a brass cannon on the reef floor fires one bubble at a time. Match three or more bubbles of the same colour and they burst in a chain of shards and air. It is the classic bubble pop game from arcades and phones, rebuilt as a fast two-minute round with a leaderboard, sea turtles drifting past and light dancing through the water, and it starts the moment you press Play.

Every shot is a small puzzle. Drag or move the mouse to aim, and a dotted guide shows the path of your bubble, including its first bounce off the reef wall, so bank shots around blockers are easy to line up. Where the shot will stick, a ghost bubble appears, and gold rings mark every bubble it would pop while small arrows mark everything that would fall. Bubbles left hanging under a popped group lose their grip and drop for big bonus points, so cutting a whole cluster loose is the best move in the game. The cannon also shows your next bubble, and you can swap the two whenever the next colour fits better.

The deeper you go, the more the reef fights back. Pop on three shots in a row and you hit FEVER: points double (triple from six in a row), the wall stops advancing while the streak lasts, and a rainbow pearl that pops every colour it touches drops into the cannon. Every bubble you pop or drop fills the gauge around the cannon, and a full gauge loads a sea mine that blasts everything around where it lands. After thirty seconds the new rows bring ice bubbles, which match nothing until you pop a group beside them; after a minute come stones, which never pop and must be dropped or blasted, and a sixth colour. The rules are the same on every run, so every score on the board was earned on equal terms.

The pressure comes from above. Every few shots the whole wall steps down a row and a fresh row slides out from under the ledge, more often as the clock runs down: every six shots at first, every three in the last half minute. If a bubble crosses the danger line above the cannon the round is over, and the closer the wall gets, the faster the heartbeat. Scoring rewards skill: 10 points for each popped bubble, more for every bubble that drops, 50 for each stone you clear, the FEVER multiplier on top and 2,000 for emptying the whole board. Free play is unlimited, and a Ranked attempt posts one run to the weekly and all-time boards after our servers replay it to check the score. For more short score chases, browse our quick games, competitive games and the rest of our bubble shooter games.

Bubble Barrage works on phones, tablets and computers, so it sits with our mobile games and PC games alike. On a touchscreen, drag to aim and lift your finger to shoot; drag back below the cannon to cancel. With a mouse, the cannon follows your pointer and a click fires. On a keyboard, the arrow keys turn the cannon and Space shoots, which makes it one of our keyboard games too. It belongs with our casual games and aim games, and it is a good pick from our casual games for adults when you want a two-minute puzzle between other things. There is nothing to install: it is one of our free online games with no download.