Bubble Grubble – Review – Tap and tilt to feed some hungry birds

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By: Goldnest Property Corporation

Version #: 1.1

Date Released: 2012-07-05

Developer: Bubble Grubble

Price: Free

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A more appropriate name for the newly released universal iOS game Bubble Grubble is Hungry Birds. But had the developer of the game adopted that name, it would easily come off as simply capitalizing on the popularity of Angry Birds. Besides, at least a couple of other games have already grabbed that name or a variation thereof. Furthermore, while Bubble Grubble does have a family of feathered creatures for its protagonists, both its gameplay and graphics are considerably different from those of Rovio’s hit franchise.

In Bubble Grubble, you’re tasked to help a mother bird feed her chicks by catching bugs for them. The mother bird is perched on a tree while her three offspring are waiting on another. In order to provide them with food, or grub as it were, you must be able to capture each of the bugs that trundle out on the ground below. To that end, you’re given bubbles to capture them with.

Trapping the bugs, which curiously look like the monsters chasing Pac-Man, requires some good old tapping. But once they’re bubbled in, you need to tilt your device so as to bring them to the hungry chicks’ beaks.

It’s certainly not as easy as it sounds, though, especially when obstacles come into play. There are monsters that love nothing more than bursting the mother bird’s bubbles, both figuratively and literally, regardless of whether they contain bugs or not. And then there are the chunks of wood, pieces, of glass, and blocks of concrete that conceal the bugs. But, thankfully, you can get rid of them with stones and bombs, the latter of which can also be used to blow up passing crows for bonus points.

The key to getting a high score in Bubble Grubble is to feed all three chicks in as short a time as possible. Note that the game is time-bound, so make sure to do so before the time is up. Much of the game’s challenge actually lies in overcoming its underlying time pressure as well as in mastering its mix of tap and tilt controls.

Available now for free on the App Store, Bubble Grubble has two game modes: easy and hard. Each mode contains five free-to-play levels. In the likely event that you end up wanting more after playing the free levels, you can unlock the rest of the game’s 80 unique levels via a one-time $0.99 in-app purchase. Watch the trailer here for a quick look at this surprisingly challenging casual physics-based game that, although it features object-hurling birds, is far from being an Angry Birds clone.