Bubbly

I can’t tell you how much I love a tiny game in a tiny box! Not only are they just soooo bloomin’ cute, but they’re super space saving too and you can be sure a select few always sneak onto our holidays with us! Well this year (unsurprisingly) a new one came back with us. Helvetiq produce a myriad of tiny games such as Bandido and its counterpart Bandida which are great little cooperative games that also lend themselves well to one player. Other games such as Misty (another holiday purchase from last year) and Kawaii are now firm family favourites of ours. Helvetiq produces easy to learn, bright, colourful and attractive games that are quick to play and Bubbly is no exception. You’ll need to bring your best bluffing skills and stoic game face to ensure you give nothing away in this soapy fight for survival!

Forever Blowing Bubbles!

Bubbly is a partially co-op game in that players take it in turns to be ‘the bubble’ and get their bubble as far along as possible while the other players are ‘the sky’ and co-operatively try and stall the bubbles efforts. After everyone has had a chance to be the bubble, whoever blew their bubble the furthest is victorious and takes the bubbly bragging rights.

The aim is to navigate your bubble through the air avoiding as many airborne obstacles as possible, leaves and butterflies may seem gentle to us but we’re not made of soap and water! Each one you need to dodge makes your bubble float lower, when your bubble floats too low, just like any real bubble that reaches the ground it pops.

The rainbow starting card is placed on the table, this is the top of the sky where the bubble starts. The rest of the cards feature a mix of airborne hazards on one side and the plucky little bubble in question on the reverse. The bubble player is dealt 12 of these cards, and the sky players are dealt either 9 or 12 cards depending on number of people playing, then re-drawing cards when necessary.

In Bubbly one of the sky players starts by placing three of their cards in a column with the top card next to the rainbow. When the bubble plays they must place one of their cards face down on the column by doing one of two things. Either matching the image on the card to move up or remain on the same level or if they cannot match the image (or perhaps choose not too) play any card and love down a level. Then it’s the next sky players turn, who again plays three cards with a view to forcing the bubble lower. As the bubble you may only rise or descend by one level at a time, there are no sudden gusts of wind to throw you up in the air unfortunately. So this means no jumping from the bottom to the top (or top to bottom) is aloud.

Play continues until either the bubble has played all their cards meaning they achieved the maximum score of 12 or the sky players force the bubble off the bottom row to make them pop and the bubbles score is equal to however many cards they successfully played. You then start a new round of Bubbly with a different player as the bubble and continue until all players have been the bubble, then whichever bubble played the most cards/got the furthest wins!

I Don’t Want To Burst Your Bubble

A little bit luck of the draw Bubbly is more about bluffing and hiding your strategy than skill. The images on the cards are spread equally so you can use that to your advantage to figure out what the opposition may have left in their hand by looking at what has already been played.

Not only is this semi-cooperative as the sky players are trying to burst the bubble together, but they can actually discuss tactics too. While they can’t disclose what’s in their own hands to each other they can throw around ideas about what the bubble may have based upon what they see on the table and what they see in their own hand. Although theres nothing more frustrating than your fellow sky players suggesting the best cards for you to play on your turn only to not be holding any of them!

When you’re the bubble you may want to throw off the sky players by dropping a level when you could in fact rise up, in a bid to throw them off. But be careful, if you end up on the bottom row theres always a chance you could be left to burst if you can’t match with the next column played!

Up, Up And Away…

Bubbly’s rules are also well thought out, especially in respect of dealing cards. If less than 4 players in a game the sky players only hold 9 cards each at any one time, drawing more as necessary. I think this stops the sky players from more easily determining what the bubble player may have as there are some cards that initially remain unseen, giving the game a more even split as if there were a 4th player to divide the cards across.

With 55 enticingly cute cards and light-hearted theme Bubbly is a brilliantly quick game with a slightly unusual gameplay. A game for 2 – 4 players, easy to learn, great replayability, with roles changing between players so it doesn’t get stale.

A neat little game, that takes up no room at all, in fact it’s almost as small as a bottle of bubbles and possibly more fun!