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Cute concept undermined by rough execution and RNG chaos
My first impression of the game was that it's something similar to Suika games: you drop balls from the top of the screen, the same ones that touch merge into bigger ones, with the end goal being obtaining the final tier ball. Bubble Dogs does things differently, though: instead of matching two balls of the same type, you need to match 3 balls belonging to the same family of dogs: the mother, the father, and the baby. When they are merged, they disappear from the scene, and you earn points.
It's a simple mechanic, and the colorful visuals make the game suitable for younger audiences too.
However, there are a few things that make this whole experience not that enjoyable. For starters, the rules are not clearly explained. You need to fumble around a bit until you understand what you are expected to do. Secondly, the canine families can be very similar to each other; the balls have different colors, but two of them have a similar background and can easily be mistaken for the other. In Classic mode, a list of all dog families is displayed on the top right side of the screen, greyed out as long as you didn't already match that set, and colored otherwise; the problem here is that the greyed-out families are way too small and monochrome for someone to see what they actually are or identify their specific details.
In Power mode, the matches you make count towards charging up a specific powerup. Unfortunately these power-ups are mostly useless. They alter the shape and size of the balls from the respective type, essentially changing the play area that you carefully tried to organize by making groups of the same type so that they can merge.
The game is very unbalanced. At times, there are so many parents and no babies; other times, there's an overflow of baby balls with no parents. The game doesn't adjust to what you currently have or need on the play area and relies on random generation, which is most often not diverse enough.
Achievement-wise, the game is a real chore. The achievement demands are quite absurd, requiring what I would estimate at roughly dozens or even hundreds of hours to complete. In Power mode, I filled my playable area (meaning, the game ends) at 2-3000 points, but the achievements require you to reach 20000 points. In Classic mode, as the points are extremely scarce, I didn't even manage to reach 1000, yet the achievements require you to reach 10000.
✅ Pros:
- Fun twist on Suika mechanics: instead of matching two balls of the same type, you match a family of three (mother, father, and baby)
- Kid-friendly graphics: bright and colorful
❌ Cons:
- Poorly explained rules
- Visual clarity issues
- Unbalanced RNG generation
- Difficult and grindy achievements
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