Survios’ take on the color matching classic, Puzzle Bobble, launches on PSVR next month.
Puzzle Bobble 3D: Vacation Odyssey arrives on the platform on October 5. The game has optional PSVR support that lets you experience the entire thing inside PSVR with Move controllers. It’s coming to PS4 and PS5 but, as with other games, you’ll need to play the PS4 version to access VR support, even if you’re on PS5. It’s a little weird, we know, but Sony currently doesn’t let PS5 titles support the original PSVR.
Still, maybe we could see a post-launch update with support for the PS5 VR headset whenever it finally releases?
For all intents and purposes, Puzzle Bobble 3D is the exact same game as Puzzle Bobble VR for Oculus Quest, which launched back in May of this year. That game translated the series’ 2D gameplay, in which players shoot colored bobbles at patterns to match and delete corresponding orbs, into 3D. That patterns are now 3D assets and you use a cannon in one arm to aim and fire your bobbles. We said the game was a solid take on a classic, if ultimately a little unnecessary for VR.
“Survios puts some fun spins on the classic, even if you’ll miss the precision of the original gamepad controls,” we said, giving the game a ‘Good’ rating. “But, unless you’re a series fanatic, the five minutes here-and-there gameplay sessions this genre is best suited to don’t really work in VR.”
Will you be picking up Puzzle Bobble 3D on PSVR? Let us know in the comments below.
Puzzle Bobble VR offers a fun take on a classic, even if headset support defeats the point of the genre’s time-killing antics. More Puzzle Bobble VR review!
Always afford the benefit of the doubt. That’s what Tetris Effect taught me. Because as silly as ‘Tetris… in VR’ sounds on paper, its developers found clever ways to transcend the classic and deliver something meaningful.
Puzzle Bobble VR, meanwhile, is indeed Puzzle Bobble… in VR.
No, that’s not a bad thing – it’s quite likable, even. But it’s also not exactly the most exciting or necessary of VR translations. Developer Survios has done a dutiful job reimagining the classic color-matching gameplay — fire bobbles into groups of other bobbles to burst the corresponding colors — for the medium. But, if I had to choose, I’d go back to the more accessible original format in a heartbeat.
Puzzle Bobble Review – The Facts
What is it?: The color-matching classic gets a VR version with a 100+ level campaign and multiplayer mode. Platforms: Quest Release Date: May 20th Price: $24.99
In fairness, there are some great ideas fleshed out across a full game here; there are 100 levels in Puzzle Bobble’s story campaign and it’ll take even a skilled player over five hours to fight through them. Rather than aiming from side to side in 2D, you’re now armed with a bobble cannon that works like a slingshot, getting you to first load a bobble in, then pull back on a wire to aim and send it flying. The most complex new layer is that, when your bobble hits a cluster, it will send it spinning and give you new angles to shoot at. With careful planning, this can work to your advantage, but it’s also often likely to obscure the next shot you were hoping to make.
New concepts and abilities also mix things up – eventually, clusters start moving and rotating, and new ways to win levels provide a hint of variety. Abilities have fun ideas, like eating a pepper to light a bomb with fire breath and then clearing a whole group of bobbles with a single shot. That said they’re costly and you earn cash at an absolute crawl via level progression and, uh, shooting pelicans. The game doesn’t exactly encourage their use as, if you fail a mission after using one, it’ll still be gone for good and you’ll need to play more to earn them back.
There’s just enough here to keep Puzzle Bobble VR engaging, then. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I enjoyed blasting through the campaign and there’s a nice flow of levels you’ll breeze past mixed in with trickier challenges that will require multiple attempts. It looks great, too, with vibrant worlds and a fantastic soundtrack.
Not everything works, though. While aiming in VR does give you more control, it also makes the experience much more finicky; I lost count of the number of times I aimed up a great shot, let go of the trigger, and then the slightest movement of my hand altered the trajectory right at the last second. The flashing indicators can also make it really hard to tell exactly which bobbles your shot will connect with, and I spent a lot of time trying to tilt my hands and arms to the precise degree needed to make trickier shots.
Puzzle Bobble VR Review – Comfort
Nausea-wise Puzzle Bobble VR is one of the most comfortable experiences you can have in VR. The game is entirely stationary, with no simulated form of movement. If you’re looking for content that keeps you feeling great throughout, this is a very safe bet. that said, your arms will likely tire from being held up all the time.
But, more importantly, I could never really shake the thought that I’d either rather be playing something else in VR or revisiting the classic Puzzle Bobble games, where the tried and true dependency of gamepad aiming makes for a more precise, calculated and addictive experience. For many people, Puzzle Bobble was always a great background game, something to pass the time on a train or a lunch hour at work, stealing five minutes here and there. Bringing it into VR misses that point; it’s a time-killer in a medium designed for more committed experiences. The two don’t exactly go hand-in-hand. It’s also tiring on the arms to play for long stretches which, again, goes against its more casual roots.
There’s fun to be had in the 1-v-1 dueling mode though. You have to eliminate bobbles as quickly as possible, causing problems for your opponent as they raise towards a vortex. It echoes the multiplayer modes of the original games quite nicely, for what it’s worth.
Puzzle Bobble VR Review: Final Impressions
For the most part, Puzzle Bobble VR works well and has more than enough levels to tackle. Survios puts some fun spins on the classic, even if you’ll miss the precision of the original gamepad controls. But, unless you’re a series fanatic, the five minutes here-and-there gameplay sessions this genre is best suited to don’t really work in VR. Color-matching games are never really designed to have your full attention so much as they are to distract you – that’s what’s so great about them. Puzzle Bobble VR wants your full attention and, while it’s fun, there are plenty of other VR games much more worthy of that.
For more on how we arrived at this score, read our review guidelines. What did you make of our Puzzle Bobble VR review? Let us know in the comments below!
Puzzle Bobble VR: Vacation Odyssey from Survios and Taito brings the iconic bubble popping series to VR for the first time next month on May 20. It’ll release for both Oculus Quest and Quest 2.
Puzzle Bobble VR
This new entry in the long-running puzzle game series celebrates the 35th anniversary of the franchise with an all-new entry that takes place entirely from a first-person perspective. Puzzle Bobble VR will feature 100 levels for you to aim, match, and burst bubbles. We’ve seen other big puzzle games make the leap to VR with great results, like Angry Birds VR or Fruit Ninja VR, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed for similar success this time around.
Puzzle Bobble VR will feature a Story Mode with the 100 aforementioned levels that each contain 3-star ratings at the end, an Infinite Mode to try and get the highest score possible against never-ending waves, and an Online Duel Mode to pit your skills against an opponent in a 1v1 battle.
“We are excited to bring Puzzle Bobble to virtual reality through our partnership with Survios in Puzzle Bobble VR: Vacation Odyssey,” said Tetsu Yamada, President of TAITO Corp. “VR allows us to deliver a new approach to bubble-popping, allowing long-time fans and new players to experience Puzzle Bobble like never before and just in time for Bubble Bobble’s 35th anniversary.”
It’s amazing to think that Puzzle Bobble (a.k.a. Bust-a-Move) is now 35 years old, providing decades of addictive puzzling across almost every videogame platform imaginable. Soon it’ll be the turn of virtual reality (VR), with Taito and Survios announcing that Puzzle Bobble VR: Vacation Odyssey will be making its way to Oculus Quest next month.
Since the initial reveal of the VR edition last summer, no other details have been released until now, where you can see the gameplay in action for the first time. Puzzle Bobble VR: Vacation Odyssey mixes the original bubble popping gameplay with immersive VR interaction, so rather than having a normal gun to aim and shoot, you’re provided with a weapon more akin to a high tech catapult, popping in colourful balls to then fling at the floating collection of bubbles.
Puzzle Bobble VR: Vacation Odyssey will provide players with 100 levels of bubble popping madness, with the aim to score a perfect three-stars on each level. As levels are completed players will earn coins to spend on unique power-ups with their own particular VR interactions.
The videogame will be split across three gameplay modes to offer players a nice mixture:
Story Mode: Make your way through 100 progressively challenging levels and achieve three-star mastery
Infinite Mode: Shoot and match to achieve a high score as a never-ending wave of bubbles take over the screen
Online Duel Mode: Challenge online opponents and send jammer bubbles to a rival’s board in this fast-paced 1v1 mode
Survios and Taito will be launching Puzzle Bobble VR: Vacation Odyssey on 20th May for Oculus Quest. Check out the launch trailer below and for further updates keep reading VRFocus.
Puzzle Bobble VR: Vacation Odyssey is a 3D version of the bubble-matching arcade puzzle game Puzzle Bobble (1994), and it’s finally slated to leave Quest exclusivity when it launches on PSVR, PS4, and PS5 later this year.
Update (June 3rd, 2021): TAITO and Survios today announced (with a slightly altered name) Puzzle Bobble 3D: Vacation Odyssey is heading out of Quest exclusivity, where it will land on PSVR sometime later this year. This also includes flatscreen versions for PS4 and PS5, hence the ‘3D’ in the name. You can read our full review to find out why we gave it a middling score of [6/10].
The studios haven’t mentioned a specific launch date, but considering the game has already been optimized for Quest and Quest 2, it’s likely we’ll see it sometime soon. The original article announcing the original Quest launch date follows below:
Original Article (April 16th, 2021): Puzzle Bobble VR is being developed by Survios, the studio behind Creed: Rise to Glory (2018) and Raw Data (2017), and published by the series’ original creator TAITO.
The first-person game is said to include 100 levels in story mode, letting you physically take aim with hand-held slingshots, match colors, and burst 3D bubble clusters to progress through the island environments. Outside of trying to get a perfect three-star score, Survios says you can also unlock power-ups with “clever VR interactions” by earning coins.
There’s also set to be an ‘Infinite Mode’ which lets you battle against a never-ending wave of bubbles, and ‘Online Duel Mode’ which lets you go head-to-head in 1v1 multiplayer.
The game’s soundtrack is being created by Taito ‘house band’ Zuntata, which the studio says will include “well-known Puzzle Bobble classics plus new songs composed specifically for Vacation Odyssey.”
Puzzle Bobble VR: Vacation Odyssey is launching exclusively on Oculus Quest on May 20th. You can wishlist it on the Oculus Store here.
Survios, the studio behind Creed: Rise to Glory (2018) and Raw Data (2017), announced its currently developing a VR version of the ’90s tile-matching arcade puzzle game Puzzle Bobble (1994).
Also known as Bust-a-Move in some regions, the game is being developed in partnership with Taito, the Japan-based creators of the original franchise.
“You’ll be able to enjoy the familiar, lovable world of Puzzle Bobble in 3D,” Taito’s Yuichi Toyoma says in a video announcement.
There’s no gameplay video yet, however a concept image shows that the VR adaptation of Puzzle Bobble will involve a hand-held slingshot, challenging users to match-up a colored 3D cluster of bubbles.
Taito also intends on putting all new tracks created by the studio’s in-house sound team, Zuntata.
There’s no release date yet, although we’ll have our slingshots ready when Survios and Taito release word.
Much like Tetris, Taito’s Puzzle Bobble is a classic which has graced many a videogame platform over the years due to its simple yet addictive gameplay style. Today, Taito Corporation has announced that virtual reality (VR) specialist Survios is currently developing a Puzzle Bobble version for Oculus Quest.
Few details have so far been revealed other than the project’s existence and the single image (seen above). You’ll be able to use a catapult to fire those coloured orbs at a floating selection, trying to score as many points as possible by building combos.
In a YouTube presentation Taito’s Yuichi Toyama said: “This new title will star Bub, [the] main character of Bubble Bobble, in a new VR version of the puzzle game, Puzzle Bobble (a.k.a. Bust-a-Move). We’re currently developing this with Survios. You’ll be able to enjoy the familiar, lovable world of Puzzle Bobble in 3D. This title is scheduled to feature new tracks from Taito’s sound team, Zuntata.”
When the videogame will be released as well as gameplay modes have yet to be announced.
Currently, the major title everyone’s awaiting form Survios is The Walking Dead Onslaught which the studio is developing in collaboration with AMC. Originally due for release at the end of 2019, the project was pushed back to an unspecified point in 2020. This month saw a video from Norman Reedus appear, the actor revealing he had just finished his voice recordings. A new gameplay reveal is expected this summer.