Popucom is a bubble shooter, but not how you might know it, Popucom has the unique twist of being in 3D and CO-OP. You might have played a 2D version like this back in the day, but in Popucom, they leveled up the concept and made it that much better.
The second I saw this game, I knew it was going to be amazing, and that initial thought wasn’t wrong, because it’s even better than I expected it to be. If you loved those 2D bubble shooters you might have played back in the day, you will fall in love with Popucom. It’s Bright colors and cutsey art style, mixed with this 3D bubble mechanics, make the game a pleasant experience from beginning to end, but there is 1 thing that might hold it back a tiny bit, and that is its forced CO-OP. The game is not playable solo, but playing it with a friend, makes it so much fun.
The story of Popucom is pretty simple, in the tutorial levels you find someone who has a blueprint of a rocket drill, and in the rest of the game, you are rescueing these tiny robots (which are super cute btw), that can build the rocket drill for you, this is not really a timed thing, you just need to get about 90 of the robots, which you can get 3 for with the completion of the level, but there are also 3 extra hidden ones in the majority of the levels, making it a fun task to search for some places these robots could be hidden in.
There is this big planet-sized alien monster shooting enemies down on the planet to try and take it over, so the rocket drill is needed to blow it up from the inside. The story isn’t really that big itself and mostly takes the back seat over the gameplay, which is fine, mainly due to how amazing the gameplay actually is. When you finally get to that final boss battle, it’s just a blast to finally take him down. The boss battle itself is also just a lot of fun and combines many of the mechanics.
I talked a bit about the robot collectible before, but there is also a 2nd one, stickers, which don’t really do much other than give you an achievement, and you can view them in a sticker book, but it was still really fun to try and find the majority of them during our playthrough. You can also get a 3rd kind of collectables, but they aren’t really collectables, because you get them for just completing levels, and those are arcade levels, which add handful of fun minigames for you and ur buddy to play.
The game has so many different mechanics to play around with, you of course have the main bubble shooting mechanic, but you actually have 2 colors you constantly have to swap with, sometimes even mid jump or in the middle of another thing just to complete a platforming section. Sometimes your color turns a platform, and sometimes it lets you launch yourself through rings. Each and every puzzle is just a lot of fun, and that is not even talking about the 4 different types of tools you have. the 1st one for me was the shield, you could use it to block lazers, and sometimes as a platform for ur buddy to stand on because only you can stand on the specific block due to its color, its a fun tool, but i personally underused it a lot, and looking back, i could have used it a lot more to block the shots of enemies as well, but i only just realized that while writing this review.
The 2nd tool was a cat-controlled ship that could drag cubes, lift secret coin spots, pull up switches, and move a bridge together with ur buddy. This was mainly a puzzle mechanic or something to get extra coins with, but it did require some co-op coordination at times, which could be frustrating, because both people need to know what the end result is… and sometimes trying to explain it is hard. The 3rd tool was an exploding ball we could roll around in, which was probably one of our most-used tools, mainly due to how strong it could be at times. While battling enemies, it could take out a lot of the random spots with only 1 ball, and for puzzles, it added so much more depth than I thought it would be able to do. Sometimes we used it to get under places for a secret collectible, and other times we had to use it to scale walls or do a mirror puzzle. It was an extremely versatile tool that was a perfect addition to the game.
Our 4th and final tool was this big hand that was able to grab teleport blocks and open compartments, probably another underused tool, but when we did have to use it, it was a thought-provoking puzzle most of the time, making us move and teleport to places sometimes in pretty quick succession. We could also use it to swing to places if there was a grab handle, but this was mostly used as a traversing piece to move on to the next area of the level.
Most of the bosses were fun to do, some of the levels had their own little boss, but there were also a few levels fully dedicated to taking down a massive boss, these were especially fun. The 1st one was this big dragon that you had to pop, and there was another one that had some type of Connect 4 minigame on his chest that you would need to do to slowly get his health down after you stunned him. Every boss feels unique, even the ones that are at the end of a bigger level, but they didn’t feel as big as the level dedicated ones, and they were also a lot easier to take down, most of the time as well.
Lets talk about the artstyle a bit, this was also another big upside for me, the characters were all pretty cute and it draws a big inspiration for games that ive seen pop off in asian territories like South Korea, but besides the playable characters, there isnt really any other humanoid person in the game. You could also get gems to unlock new shoes, a helmet/hair, and clothes. it had a lot of customization, and there really was something for everyone in there as well. With 100 buyable pieces, it really is a big pool to make your character your own.
Every level was just so bright and colorful, it was never really an annoyance to look at things because everything just had this perfected art to it, from the minor details to the random birds or water creatures that sometimes just were around.
Personally, I recommend anyone to play this with a friend, especially if you loved the bubble popping flash games as a kid, then this game will add a layer of nostalgia to it, but even without this game is a blast to play. It was recently released, and it’s available now on Steam.
Mike’s First Hands-On Experience
Dex got to play this game at Gamescom, unlike me. So for me, the game was still completely fresh and new, even though I had already seen some footage. At first, I thought the concept sounded a bit boring, until I started playing it myself. What an amazing game this is! A real surprise for me. The puzzles are perfectly balanced in terms of difficulty (even on the “extreme” setting). The boss battles, however, could be more challenging. Even on the hardest difficulty, I didn’t find them particularly tough. They were manageable, hard at times, but never truly demanding.
Still, I had a fantastic time with this game. The graphics are stunning, especially in combination with the colors and textures. The music is also really well chosen, it fits perfectly with the different moods. During boss battles, it’s more up-tempo and intense, while during regular level completion, the soundtrack supports the atmosphere beautifully. What an outstanding game!
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