Bubble Shooter a candy-coloured bubble shooter that plays itself until you take aim
Glossy candy bubbles hang from a striped awning that drops a row every few shots. Match three of a colour to pop them. It plays itself, and your cursor can take over at any moment: aim, then click to fire. Twenty levels, then it starts again.
Free to install. Bubble Shooter unlocks with Pro, $5.99 a month or $39.99 a year. Cancel anytime.
What you see on every new tab
Bubble Shooter puts a full-width bubble board on the New Tab page under a soft pastel sky with drifting clouds. A candy-striped awning with a scalloped hem runs just below the search bar, and rows of shiny bubbles in red, yellow, green, blue, purple and orange hang from it. At the bottom centre sits the launcher, a white dome with a striped arrow, with the next bubble in a dish beside it. A white pill beside the search bar shows the score and the level. Left alone, the game plays itself: before each shot the autopilot tries two hundred angles, works out where each would stick, and goes for big groups, long drops and gold stars. Now and then it settles for a lesser shot, and its hand shakes a little, so it does not win every level.
Popping: shots bank off the white side rails. When three or more of one colour touch, they pop for 10 points each, and anything left hanging falls off the board for 20 each. Big shots earn a word over the spot: Sweet! at nine bubbles, Delicious! at fourteen. The launcher is only ever loaded with colours still on the board.
The awning: every few shots it drops one row with a small bounce, pushing the whole board down: every 10 shots on Level 1 and every 7 or 8 by Level 10. The bubbles shiver for two shots before it moves. A dashed line above the launcher turns pink and pulses when the lowest bubble gets close.
Power-ups: a single shot that pops and drops 12 or more bubbles puts a power-up in the dish, glowing, at most one every ten shots. A spinning rainbow bubble takes whichever colour makes the biggest group where it lands. A bomb with a lit fuse bursts two rings of bubbles around it. A striped candy clears its whole row, wall to wall.
Gold stars: two or three star bubbles are tucked into every board. They match nothing, so you free one by popping a group next to it, knocking it loose or blasting it. Each is worth 500 and flies up into the score pill, which flashes gold. Stars still there when the last colour goes are freed for you.
Twenty levels: five skins take turns, each with its own sky and outline: Cotton Candy with flat rows, Mint Sorbet in a zigzag, Peach Sunset in wavy drips, Lavender Dusk in arches and Bubblegum in hanging columns. Level 1 has four colours and five rows; from Level 4 all six colours are in play, and the difficulty stops rising at Level 10. A cleared board shows Level Clear! with +1,000 and confetti, then the next one slides down from the top. Clearing Level 20 takes the game back to Level 1 with the score at zero.
Nothing is a video. The game runs in your browser and is painted on a 2D canvas every frame: the sky, the awning and the glossy bubble pictures are drawn once per level and reused, and each finished frame goes to the screen through WebGL as a single picture. The colours on each board are dealt at random, so the same level never plays out twice.
What it reacts to
Mouse: move the pointer and the arrow swings toward it, the aim dots brighten, and a dashed ring marks the slot your bubble will land in. Hold the pointer still for three seconds, or take it off the page, and the autopilot picks up where you left off.
Click: a click fires at once toward the spot you clicked. If the next bubble is still rolling into the launcher, the click is held for a moment and fires as soon as it is loaded.
Music: nothing. The game does not read music sync.
Night: after dusk on Auto, each pastel sky shifts most of the way to deep indigo and violet, small stars come out, the clouds fade and the awning dims a little, while the bubbles keep their full colour. The Day/Night button can force either look.
Free or Pro?Pro
Ambient New Tab is free to install, with three free themes. Bubble Shooter is a Pro theme. Pro is $5.99 a month or $39.99 a year, cancel anytime, and it unlocks every Pro theme, music sync, and every new theme as we release it. You can preview Bubble Shooter full screen before you buy: open the Themes panel and rest your mouse on it. Changed your mind? 14-day refund, no questions.
Open a new tab and click the Themes pill in the bottom-right corner.
Pick Bubble Shooter. Done.
Bubble Shooter on a 1280×800 New Tab page.
Questions
What happens when the bubbles reach the bottom?
If a shot leaves any bubble over the dashed line, an Oops! Try again banner comes up and every bubble pops from the bottom row upward. Then the same level starts over with a fresh layout. Your score is kept, and there is no game-over screen.
Is Bubble Shooter free?
It is a Pro theme. Pro is $5.99 a month or $39.99 a year. It unlocks every Pro theme, music sync, and every new theme as it is released. Cancel anytime.
Does it remember how far I got?
Yes, the level. Each new tab opens on the level the last one reached, kept in your browser. The score starts from zero in every new tab. Resizing the window so the board gains or loses a column also restarts the current level.
Does it work on my phone?
No. It's a desktop browser extension for Chrome and Edge on Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS. If you're reading this on a phone, send yourself the link.
