Bubble bursting with an alien twist in Bubble Guriko

Bubble Guriko is a fast-paced bubble-burst style game for Windows 10 Mobile where you must clear the field of colored bubbles to save baby aliens. While a bubble burst game at heart, there are enough twists in gameplay to help Bubble Guriko set itself apart from the crowded genre of games.

The free game is one of the latest from the creative group at Game Troopers, who remain a creative giant in the mobile gaming industry. Graphics are bright and colorful, there are over 100 levels of play, game mechanics are easy to handle and you have Xbox achievements to earn.

Overall, Bubble Guriko is a fun game to spend a little time with and an appealing addition to the bubble burst genre.

When you first launch Bubble Guriko, a short series of picture tiles flash on the screen to illustrate the game's backstory. In a nutshell, an evil alien has captured a group of alien babies in bubbles. It is your job to complete the levels of play to free these alien babies from their bubble prisons and save them from the evil Cosmos.

After the storyline plays through, the game transitions to the first level of play that includes a brief tutorial on gameplay. At the top of the game screen is a collection of various colored bubbles. Amongst this group, you find a few of the captured aliens. At the bottom of the screen are the bubbles you shoot into the collection to create matches of three or more of the same colored bubble. When such a match is created, the bubbles burst, points are earned and any bubble detached from the collection fall to the ground (earning more points).

The goal is to clear all the bubbles and free the alien babies. So far Bubble Guriko sounds like your typical bubble burst game, but here is the twist. To shoot a bubble into the collection, you tap on the bubble to reveal all the available target areas. Tap the desired target to launch the bubble in that direction. Additionally, you may be dealing with multiple bubbles to launch, the launch bubbles slowly rise up the screen and the collection of bubbles slowly lower down the screen.

These twists help add to the difficulty of Bubble Guriko, requiring you to quickly find your targets and strategically launch your bubbles. You may have a green and yellow bubble available and sending the yellow bubble into the collection may open up a better shot with the green.

To add to the challenge, you have a limited number of bubbles to shoot into the collection. Your score is based on the number of shots unused and points earned with the shots taken.

There are a handful of boosts that become available as you progress during gameplay such as a catapult that launches your bubble deep into the collection to create a match and a rainbow bubble that matches the color of the bubble it lands against. As these boosters become available, they line up along the bottom of the game screen and replenishes in time after each use.

Gameplay with Bubble Guriko is regulated with lives. The game provides you with five lives and if you fail a level, you lose a life. Lives can be replenished over time (1 every 30 minutes) or you can spend fruit earned during gameplay to replenish them quicker. Fruit is also available through in-app purchase.

Being an Xbox game, Bubble Guriko has over 20 Xbox achievements to earn and gameplay can be synchronized between devices. You also have support for Facebook login to allow you to chat it up with your Facebook friends and share your scores for bragging rights.

Bubble Guriko is a fun bubble burst style game for Windows 10 Mobile. The free game sports the core mechanics of a bubble burst game with enough twists to keep it from coming across as the same old, same old. Gameplay is a little more methodical in having to tap both your launch bubble and target area. Add the movement elements of both the collection of bubbles and launch bubbles, and Bubble Guriko becomes a rather challenging bubble burst game.

I did run into an occasional stability issue that caused the game to crash, but it wasn't frequent enough to drive you nuts. Overall, Bubble Guriko is an entertaining game to pick up when you need a little help passing the time.

Download Bubble Guriko from the Windows Store

George Ponder

George is the Reviews Editor at Windows Central, concentrating on Windows 10 PC and Mobile apps. He's been a supporter of the platform since the days of Windows CE and uses his current Windows 10 Mobile phone daily to keep up with life and enjoy a game during down time.