Bubble-Popping Fun: ‘Puzzle Bobble VR: Vacation Odyssey’ Now Available on the Oculus Quest Platform

Chances are you haven’t been able to spend much time in arcades lately, but you likely still remember Bust-A-Move (also known as Puzzle Bobble) all the same. Taito Corp.’s classic arcade cabinet is a staple of the ’90s, and now the IP is making its way to VR for the first time in celebration of the original Bubble Bobble’s 35th anniversary.

Puzzle Bobble VR: Vacation Odyssey is a first-person adaptation of the franchise that puts the bubble launching cannon in your hands. By pulling back on the launcher like a slingshot, you take aim at floating blobs of bubbles to match up colors and pop them. It’s a simple premise, but with over 100 levels in Story mode, an endless Infinite game mode, and an online head-to-head Duel mode, there is plenty of bubble-popping fun to be had here.

Developer Survios is one of the most experienced VR game studios out there and the company is partnering up with Taito Corp. to bring Puzzle Bobble VR to life. With titles like Raw Data, Creed: Rise to Glory, and The Walking Dead: Onslaught, the studio has demonstrated its proficiency with delivering fast, fun, and visceral adventures. Puzzle Bobble VR, on the other hand, is a chance for them to dial back the intensity and deliver something that’s fun and engaging for gamers of all ages.

Puzzle Bobble VR launched today on the Oculus Quest Platform. To celebrate and understand what it was like to bring a series like this to VR for the first time, we sat down with Game Director Matt Bettelman.

Matt Bettelman:Speaking on behalf of the team, we’re incredibly excited to work with TAITO on Puzzle Bobble VR: Vacation Odyssey. It’s a rare opportunity to be entrusted with such a longstanding and highly regarded franchise. I know the team is honored to bring Bub and Bob into virtual reality for the first time, even moreso knowing that this year commemorates Bub’s 35th anniversary.

MB: Puzzle Bobble VR: Vacation Odyssey features three distinct game modes: Story Mode, Infinite Mode, and online Duel Mode.

Story Mode is your traditional single-player campaign that sends players across our different island environments, solving 100 unique and increasingly challenging puzzles. We keep things fresh by varying the win conditions players have to contend with. There’s also a wide variety of level mechanics we tease out across the 100 levels. Every time players settle into a groove and start feeling mastery over our mechanics, we add in one of these new wrinkles, then combine them with other mechanics to keep them on their toes. Both new and seasoned VR gamers will have an easy, enjoyable time at the start of our Story Mode, but find a nice challenge as they make their way through to the end.

In Infinite Mode and our online Duel Mode, we randomly spawn an endless stream of complex sequences of bubbles for the player. These bubbles begin slowly rising towards an ominous purple vortex that looms over the top of the playspace. Pop all the bubbles to keep going—let any bubbles get sucked into the vortex and it’s game over. Infinite Mode is the place for high score chasers to shine. Our online Duel Mode is our homage to the head-to-head mode found in classic Puzzle Bobble (Bust-A-Move). It’s just you and your opponent, side by side, each with your own gameboards.

I should also mention that we’ve empowered players to maintain their sense of progression regardless of which game mode they find to be their favorite. Across all three modes, you earn coins as you play. These coins can then be used to unlock a suite of powerups, each of which are also usable across all three modes. These powerups are all super useful and super fun to interact with in VR as well. I really hope players will look forward to unlocking them.

MB: One of the coolest aspects of our Duel Mode is the jammer bubbles. Just like in Puzzle Bobble’s classic head-to-head mode, both players have the opportunity to interfere with their opponent’s efforts. If you make a big enough match on your gameboard, you’ll spawn jammer bubbles on your opponent’s side. There’s nothing more satisfying than knowing you’re causing your buddy to break out in a cold-sweat. We’ve designed the mode to randomly spawn more and more complex sequences of bubbles as the match progresses. As a result, no two games of Duel mode are ever exactly alike.

Finally, the element of strategy introduced by the game’s power-ups is crucial. How and when players decide to deploy their power-ups will go a long way towards tilting the match between victory and defeat. Do you activate power-ups early and try to overwhelm your opponent with jammer bubbles? Or do you hold onto them until the last moment, saving them for when you desperately need to clear some bubbles before they enter your vortex?

MB: Across all three modes of the game (Story Mode, Infinite Mode, and Duel Mode), players will earn coins simply by playing and progressing. They can then spend those coins to unlock three unique power-ups: Bomb, Paintbrush, and the Spin Orb.

The Bomb allows players to explode a large chunk of the gameboard. The Paintbrush power-up gives players the ability to choose the color of their next bubble. Additionally, this special painted bubble will change the color of whatever bubbles it touches on the gameboard. So you can not only use this power-up to get the exact color you need when you need it, but you can strategically use it to make a much bigger dent in bubble clusters than you normally would with a normal color match-up.

The third power-up is the Spin Orb. This one lets you rotate a puzzle cluster, or clusters, exactly how you want it. It’s extremely useful in a situation when you know you’ve got the right bubble to make a big match, but the cluster of bubbles you want to hit is out of sight. Just grab the Spin Bubble, use your hand to rotate it around like a globe, and set yourself up to make that big match.

If I had to pick, I’d say my favorite is definitely the Spin Orb. There’s something immensely satisfying about throwing my hand across the Spin Orb and watching a cluster rotate end over end. It just feels really good in VR.

MB: Playing in VR gave us the opportunity to physicalize the core game loop and make the experience super intuitive, even for those who are new to playing in VR. Players are outfitted with a cool, steampunk looking Bubble Cannon.

To shoot bubbles, players grab the pullstring on the back of the Bubble Cannon, pull back to aim, and release to fire; It feels just like aiming a slingshot. It’s a simple concept that’s easy for less experienced players to pick up and start having fun immediately, but there’s also a subtle depth of play available for more seasoned VR users.

Aside from how you shoot bubbles, the gameboard is now fully three dimensional for the first time ever in a Puzzle Bobble game. When your bubble collides with the gameboard, it causes the entire cluster to rotate. Over time, players start to learn that the angle of their shot influences the direction the board will rotate. Not only that, but the strength of your shot also determines how fast and how far the board rotates as well. As players learn this, they can start to plan ahead for their next shot, aiming their bubble at just the right angle to cue themselves up for the next big bubble match.

MB: Originally, this project was the result of an internal prototype team’s efforts towards a new casual games initiative we had. At that time, Survios sought to recreate some familiar genres and classic mechanics in VR to see what interesting dynamics might shake out. The original experiment went as far as having a very simple but fully playable prototype of a match 3 puzzle game working in VR but completely in 2D on a virtual flatscreen. It didn’t take long for the team to realize that this type of experience, while familiar for new VR users, wasn’t really taking advantage of everything VR has to offer. That’s when the team took a step back and tried to answer the question, “What would happen if we tried to make a bubble popping game like Puzzle Bobble from the ground up with VR in mind?” The core of Puzzle Bobble VR: Vacation Odyssey is our answer to that question, and we think puzzle game fans are going to be super stoked with the results.

MB: If you haven’t done so already, track down an Oculus Quest. Start playing as many VR games as you can, because I think you’ll discover quickly that playing in VR is a whole different ball game. As a developer who has shipped a number of non-VR titles, it’s easy to start to take for granted a wide range of video game conventions we expect the audience to understand innately. As soon as you put a player in VR for the first time, you can throw all of that out the window. Even seasoned gamers can get overwhelmed in VR quickly, so as a developer you kind of have to learn to adjust your inner clock a little bit.

MB: We’ve always got so many irons in the fire here at Survios. While I can say for certain that we’ve got several juicy, exciting projects coming down the pike, there’s nothing specific I can divulge at this time. Stay tuned though.

MB: Honestly, I’m just thrilled to share this game with the world. You can visit our website at PuzzleBobbleVR.com or follow us on social media at @Survios. I hope you enjoy it!

Puzzle Bobble VR: Vacation Odyssey is out today on the Quest Platform.