Pop-a-Tronic represents the latest foray by the team at Big Blue Bubble. Basically summed up as an “arcade puzzler” (at least in the official sense), the game provides a number of interesting options for gamers on the go or those just in need of something simple, fun, and convenient to play.

Pop-a-Tronic offers four gameplay modes: Marathon, Puzzle, Lock-Out, and Self-Destruct. Marathon is the default mode, and is effectively an endurance race that challenges you to get through as many levels as possible, blasting combinations of bubbles until your screen fills up. This is actually the only mode available when you first start the game, but after you achieve five high scores in Marathon mode, the next mode, Puzzle, is unlocked followed by Lock-Out, and finally Self-Destruct.

The unlocking system adds a bit to the game’s long-term playability, but at the same time it’s an unnecessary dangling carrot. You bought the game and should be allowed to play in any mode you want right from the get go.

Basically, the goal of the game is to line up at least three bubbles of the same type (or more, if possible) and “pop” them for points. As you get deeper and deeper into the levels, more types of bubbles begin appearing, and given the limited space on the playing field, this eventually makes for quite a challenge. Thankfully, you can simply right-click on any bubble to pick it up, and then drop it somewhere else, but this isn’t possible if the column you are trying to drop into has already reached the top of the screen. As the levels increase, the rate in which new bubbles drop begins to increase drastically, requiring better planning and quicker thinking to line up the right combinations.

Naturally no game of this type is complete without a few gimmicks to work with, and Pop-a-Tronic is no exception. One crucial asset players should leverage is the “Purifier”. Any time a chain of bubbles is popped, a gauge begins filling up. Get enough chains together in a short period of time, and a “Purifier” bubble will randomly appear in the play area, changing colors every few seconds. Popping it removes all other bubbles of the same color, which can be really useful for getting point increases.

In addition, one of the other novelties the game drops every now and then is a “Charge Bomb.” When this appears, you have a very limited amount of time to find it and begin rapidly clicking on it as much as humanly possible. Each click makes it grow larger, until it eventually goes boom, taking out a sizable chunk of bubbles with it.

On the whole there’s no question that Pop-a-Tronic is an enjoyable game – it provides exactly the kind of experience you expect from something of this genre. For the sake of comparison however, a few things could have been done to improve the experience; not only with the aforementioned unlocking of all of the gameplay modes, but also graphically. For a puzzle game like this, maintaining an attractive graphical presentation is key, and while it looks quite nice for the most part, the particle effects are lacking. The graphics simply lack any “oomph.”