Bubble People

[h1] 7.5/10 [/h1] Pressing bubble wrap is a popular method of stress relief, enjoyed by people of all ages and widely popular. The game Bubble People combines this interactive elimination method with a unique hand-drawn art style, offering players an unprecedented gaming experience in the form of a free game. The story mode of the game portrays the struggles and conflicts of a loner through abstract and obscure symbolic language. The concise yet distinct storyline has left many resonating players deeply moved. Additionally, the endless mode of the game provides an excellent means of stress relief. However, the game does have its shortcomings. The concise hand-drawn art style, while a feature, can also be seen as a drawback. The short and obscure storyline not only presents some difficulty in understanding but also fails to captivate players who cannot empathize with it. The game itself is very short with limited gameplay expansion, and the lack of visually distinct elements often makes it difficult for players to identify interactive objects. Overall, Bubble People is a game with a unique and distinct style. While it is free, if you do not appreciate its presentation and gameplay design, there is no need to give it a try. However, players who can resonate with the game may embark on an unforgettable journey.

This game is [b]bubblewrap[/b] and very weirdly satisfying. At first glance I thought this was a hidden object game and initially it sort of was. Having to hold down whilst clicking seemed like an unusual choice but then I accidentally dragged over multiple ‘bubbles’ and everything made sense. Pausing will tell you exactly what type of objects to find, hovering over objects you need to pop will be outlined in red. Not a lot is given away, conversations and instructions are done through symbols so I’m probably reading too much into the story but it genuinely came across as being about someone experiencing sensory overload and/or (social) anxiety, at the very least they want some peace and quiet. Uncomfortably relatable but I never had a problem with birds, however the world would be a better place with fewer cars and people not sharing their private conversations on public transport.

[b]This is Entirely a Spoiler[/b] [i]Bubble People[/i] is a harrowing tale of horror for the 21st century about the most prevalent social plague of today. While on the surface, the game is little more than a cute hidden object game in which you pop various objects, underneath that seemingly-benign verneer lies a dark cautionary yarn that holds up the mirror with forceful conviction and demands you acknowledge it. Despite being free of any recognizable language (the characters speak in rebus-like pictograms), the game weaves the fabric of its narrative expertly, pulling the unsuspecting player deeper into the abyss. It begins with a single entity, shaped like a person, but one that does not belong. In a world that is depicted only in black and white, this entity is the single source of color, a furious red to contrast against everything else. At least at first, that is what it seems. For we soon come to understand that it is not so much the world that is in black and white, but rather the entity's perspective that 'colors' it so. The crux of [i]Bubble People[/i] is that the entity is unhappy. There are things that populate its world or its universe that make it upset and inexplicably, the entity can exert its will upon these things by deleting them entirely. It does so with your help as your mouse cursor acts as the conduit through which the entity's power is channelled. By pointing and clicking at the things that upset the entity, they pop out of existence like bubbles, and you continue to do this in each of the environments presented in order to keep the entity pleased. At first, its targets are somewhat innocuous - things that make noise, lights that irritate its senses, stuff like that. Once the room is cleared of these annoyances, the master is pleased and can finally rest easy, yet it is not satisfied and must venture out into the world and it's here where things start taking a drastic turn toward darkness. The entity's power over time moves toward omnipotence, escalating from objects to living creatures. The targets start off with birds and frogs, but soon move to specific people - people talking on cell phones, holding up traffic, etc. However, those with a keen eye will observe that as the targets become more severe, the world explodes in color; only now, the color is left strewn about like blood as it is quite literally squeezed out of the things and the people that the entity dislikes. Only through the destruction of what the entity perceives to be duo-tone can we observe how vibrant the world actually is, but the bulk of the color is absorbed unceremoniously into the entity's almighty hand and what remains is viscera. It is an uncontrollable downward spiral, but the entity is selfish and does not care so long as it can rest comfortably. Yet for a brief moment, there is hope. Another entity of color - a calming blue - appears, whom the red entity meets early on. It is clear there is respect between them, perhaps even love. Remember that color is in Red's perspective so to see another vibrant color without squeezing it dead is especially profound. But Red's activity is alarming and Blue tries to reason with it. The discussions, again, are pictograms, but the gist is clear. Red's approach is simply not the right way; there is nothing except heartbreak at the end of this path despite Red's insistence that this is the only way to be happy. Unable to sway Red's thinking, they argue, they split, and the red entity goes into a fury. No longer is there any specificity, no longer any criteria on which to judge the world - [i]everything[/i] must go and there will be no satisfaction until it's all gone. This culminates in tragedy, of course, as the red entity is finally left with little else to remove from the world except Blue. In the story's inevitable climax, there is no thought, no hesitation, no remorse, and for the player, no way forward except to proceed. Blue is gone. There's nothing left. No color, no objects, just the red entity, alone in the universe by itself, and it finally understands the impact of its actions. But it's too late. The one thing that it saw in color is gone by its own hand and the happiness it so desperately sought throughout the game is poignantly unachievable because the world needed, of all things, Blue to have meaning. With this, the red entity has little else to do except delete itself and end existence entirely. Yet again, there is hope. Though at this point players are kicked out to the main menu and the tale is seemingly over, starting again shows a new level to play; a new beginning to discover. In a bizarre twist, the red entity's powers are reversed and the journey is now about restoring the world and all of the things that made it unhappy. It has learned that to truly be in a world worth living in, it must coexist and share the environment with things that it may dislike in order to find the one thing that [i]did[/i] make it happy - Blue. Companionship, someone to relate to, someone or some[i]thing[/i] of significance. However, recall that the tale is cautionary; at the end of it all, despite restoring everything in the universe, Blue does [i]not[/i] return. The impact of the red entity's actions throughout the game could be fixed in a way, but they were not irreversible, and all that's left is the colorless world that, had the entity exercised just a [i]little[/i] tolerance, might be filled with blue. Dave Chappelle did nothing wrong.