Bubble Trouble: Adventures

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

Like its predecessors, Bubble Trouble Adventures is an Arcade-style game released on Nintendo Switch in 2025. In this game, players control a sunglasses-wearing character shooting bouncing bubbles and trying to keep from hitting them. In short, this is an obvious copycat of the Buster Bros. games. However, as I often say, there’s nothing wrong with a copycat as long as it’s a good copycat, so the question here is whether this game is a good copycat.

If you look at my review of the prior games, you’ll see that my answer to this question for this series thus far has consistently been “no”, and that while the series has improved in some ways, it has also gotten worse in other ways. And as with my earlier reviews in the series, this game is overall very similar, so I’ll be reusing the text from my review of the first game here and changing it where appropriate.

The presentation in Bubble Trouble: Adventures is a good improvement over the first two games, but not quite as good as the third. This game’s 2D visuals are decent, but not great, and still seem amateurish in places. There’s actually music this time though, even if it’s repetitive, forgettable music. And once again the sound effects seem like something someone got out of a mobile games asset pack. Ugh.

When it comes to the gameplay… this doesn’t have the obvious control issues of the prior three games, but still has some game design issues. As with the Buster Bros. games, you’re breaking bouncing bubbles into smaller bouncing bubbles, eventually eliminating them. However, at their smallest size, these bubbles bounce extremely low, giving you very little clearance to walk under them. This leaves very little room for error since you’ll have little time to walk under and shoot them before they hit you and you lose a life. There’s also a very stingy timer on each of the game’s levels, forcing you to rush in a way that seems like there’s often little margin for error.

The “Staying Alive” endless mode from the second game, missing from the third game, is back again here, but only as an unlockable. I suppose this is better than it being gone entirely, but it’s still disappointing that content is being gated off here.

Overall, Bubble Trouble: Adventures is still not a very good Buster Bros. copycat. It still has game design issues, presentation issues, and content issues. And once again I will note that you can get a much better take on this same formula for just a few bucks more by getting The Bug Butcher. With other alternatives like this, there’s no good reason to waste your time and money on this terrible game.

tl;dr – Bubble Trouble: Adventures is an Arcade-style game in the style of the Buster Bros. games, with players controlling a character shooting bouncing bubbles while avoiding them. Unfortunately, this is a poor take on this style of game, with poor game design among other issues. You have much better alternatives to this game on Nintendo Switch, and I strongly recommend you look into one of those instead.

Grade: D

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