Bubble Bobble Sugar Dungeons

Genre: Platformer / Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

Bubble Bobble Sugar Dungeons, released in 2025 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch, is an Arcade-style platformer in the long-running Bubble Bobble series, which has you taking out enemies in single-screen levels as a bubble-spewing cutesy dragon-like creature.

The presentation in this release attempts to modernize the look of the franchise with cel-shaded 3D visuals for characters with the game’s levels having a dessert theme for its levels. This makes for an extremely bright, colorful, and cheerful presentation, yet it feels somewhat soulless next to the earlier pixel art games in the series, since the characters’ movements seem unnatural and the backgrounds look comparatively flat in a way that’s visually uglier than what we saw in Bubble Bobble 4 Friends a whole 5 years earlier. These visuals are joined by upbeat music and cheerful voiced exclamations for characters, and if this game’s sugary theme wasn’t enough to give you a toothache, all this saccharine cheerfulness certainly will. It’s a bit much.

For the gameplay, Sugar Dungeons tries to modernize the series’ gameplay with procedurally-generated levels and RPG-style upgradeable abilities, and while this is nice, it doesn’t change that the core gameplay here is still as shallow as a puddle. Plus, this game forces in story elements and mission clear announcements that can’t be clicked through, dragging down the game’s pacing immensely.

If you’re a longtime fan of the Bubble Bobble series, you may find Sugar Dungeons to your liking as it does try to take the series in new directions. Unfortunately, between the off-putting presentation, shallow gameplay and poor pacing, I think most players are better off playing something else.

tl;dr – Bubble Bobble Sugar Dungeons is an Arcade-style Platformer that takes the series’ usual bubble-spewing dragons fighting enemies on single screens and adds RPG-style upgrades and procedurally-generated levels, along with a sugary theme. Unfortunately, the gameplay is still shallow, the pacing is terrible, and the presentation is so saccharine that some players will be put off by it. You have countless better options on Nintendo Switch.

Grade: C-

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