Bubble Craze Pokie
Arcade-style pokies, where abstract symbols are laid out in unconventional formats, have become quite popular, and few are as successful as Bubble Craze from IGT. Rather than landing matching symbols across reels, players are looking to land coloured bubbles in blocks of 4 or 5 or moreto win a prize, while there’s lots of extra wins and a bonus round coming from a couple of special symbols.
Playable on PC’s, Macs and mobile devices, Bubble Craze is easy to play and makes a nice change from the usual type of pokie. It’s sure to be welcomed by anyone who has enjoyed Bubble Witch, or Candy Crush or the Jewels games, as it’s similar in concept to these.
Playing Bubble Craze
There’s no reels in this game, even though to activate it players will need to click a ‘Spin’ button. It’s probably called that because no-one could think of anything better to name it, and anyway, everyone understands what it means, so IGT have sensibly chosen not to confuse anyone.
The dark screen sees the game title above the main area and some out of focus bubbles floating around in the background. At the bottom of the screen, there are some control buttons which are used to determine how much to stake on each spin, ranging from 0.50 to 50.00 and wins are calculated as multiples of the coin value, with a coin being the total stake, divided by 50.
Once players click the Spin button a grid of bubbles will rise up from below the game, stopping in a honeycomb style with 3 bubbles on the top, 4 on the next row down, then 5 in the middle row, narrowing back to 4 and then 3 on the bottom for a total of 19 bubbles.
Wins occur whenever 4 or more of the same colour bubble stop next to each other, and it doesn’t matter if they are in a straight line, a block or twist around all over the place.
Each bubble is worth different amounts, but as there are 8 different colours and any number from 4 to 19 can make a winning combination, it’s going to be pretty tricky to remember all the possible payouts, so we’ll just look at the lowest and highest value ones.
Brown bubbles are worth just 10 coins when a block or line of 4 appear, but getting the entire 19 positions covered in the brown symbol will be worth a substantial win of 1000 coins. The most valuable is the silver bubble, and when this lands in the right places, wins of between 75 and 10,000 coins will be paid out.
Up to 4 different combinations can be found in a single spin and once any winnings have been added up, players click the button again which causes the bubbles to pop and a new set to float up.
Bubble Craze
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Bonus Features
Watching bubbles line up for wins, with nothing else going on, could be a bit boring after a while, so there’s a couple of bonus bubbles to make things a bit more interesting.
Transform bubbles come in any colour and can be identified as the ones with arrows pointing out in each direction. This is a clue to their special qualities, as they will turn any adjacent bubbles into the same colour, which pretty much guarantees a prize will be won.
Players will also see Multiplier bubbles turn up quite frequently, and these will boost any combinations that they are part of by 2x or 5x, although should more than 1 multiplier be part of the combination, only the highest win will be paid out.
Lastly, we have a free spins round triggered by any 3 or more Bonus bubbles turning up at once. These can be any colour, and can be identified by the ‘atom’ symbol on them. Although just 5 free spins will be awarded, each is guaranteed to be a winner, with extra Transform and Multiplier bubbles thrown into the mix.
The Verdict
Arcade style pokies may look simple, and in many ways they are, but that’s the appeal of them, as players don’t need to do much other than place their bets and click a button to see what winning combinations they can land.
Although it’s possible to get 19 of the same symbol type to land at once, it’s going to be a pretty rare event, and in practice, blocks of 4 or 5 bubbles is the norm. However, it’s also common to get several wins in a single spin, so anyone looking for a good return on their stake should pop over to an online casino that features the IGT range.