Mobile Gaming Review: Bubble Witch 3

Mobile Gaming: Bubble Witch 3

Genre: Puzzle
Developer: King
Platform: Android, iOS

A review by Amelia Wellman

Bubble Witch 3 is the brand new game in the popular Bubble Witch series. Stella the Witch is back and she needs your help to defeat the evil Wilbur in this exciting adventure! He may look cute, but he’s full of magical mischief! Travel the realm bursting as many bubbles as you can in this bubble shooting puzzle game!

Bubble Witch 3 is a colour matching puzzle game. Coloured bubbles need to be shot at their matching coloured bubbles to pop them and either clear the board, clear a path, or free owls trapped in bubbles. Match three bubbles to pop them, aiming high to create combos of popping bubbles which will in turn create booster bubbles.

If you’ve played a Bubble Witch game before, or anything in the Bust-a-Move series, you know how this mobile game plays. It’s satisfying to burst the bubbles and fairly easy for about the first twenty levels. Then like most mobile games, there’s a spike in difficulty that’s been specially designed to get you to drop actual money in the game to keep playing. Patience is key with Bubble Witch 3.

Bubble Witch 3, despite being another highly produced cash grab, is very cute. It’s animated and fun, everything is smooth and professional looking. It’s from King though, so that’s to be expected. They don’t make games with a tonne of new or innovative content, but they do make sure everything is polished and appealing.

Outside of the core puzzle game play you can also go to your home. Due to something that happens in the brief storyline, your little witchy house is destroyed and you earn stardust to rebuild and upgrade your property. It’s a cute little distraction. I’m not sure if it has any purpose besides acting as a frustration cool down area, but it’s cute.

Bubble Witch 3 is free to download and play, with no pop-up or banner ads, but some optional in-game items will require payment. The in-game micro-transactions are gold bars which will run you from $1.39 for 10 up to $69.99 for 550. If you fail a level, you’ll lose one heart. If you lose the five you can hold at a time, nine gold bars are used to buy one more.

So it’s another game where if you fail a level enough times, you have to buy your way back in. The kind of game that the developer King specializes in. Beware with kids!

The Verdict
I’m torn on this. It was fun but also frustrating, and depending on who you are, that fun to frustration level may unbalance itself. I’ll say Check it out through to skip it. Bubble Witch 3 doesn’t have a lot of meat on its bones, and like a chicken wing, you’ll be happy with it for a time but left a little unsatisfied if you’ve got nothing else on your plate. With most of these types of games, the spike in difficulty can easily frustrate and lead to impulse purchases of the in-game currency, so again, beware around kids or if you yourself are easily frustrated. If you’re patient though, Bubble Witch 3 can be a fun time. It’s cute, it’s colourful, and it might be worth checking out for a commute or two.

Bubble Witch 3 is available for Android and iOS.