The bad thing about the App Store is that due to all the sales, I tend to make impulse buys.  The good news is that sometimes impulse buys actually pay off.  Such is the case with Bubble Bee from Sputnik Games.  The premise is quite simple.  You are a bee, and you must avoid the “baddies”, and if you so choose, pop bubbles.  This is a “do or die” game, so one hit and it’s over.  How high can you score?

Unfortunately, Avoid The Baddies mode isn’t all that entertaining.  This is basically a simulation of the multitude of flash games where you’re a circle or square or whatever and you’re dodging all the other objects in the arena.  On the other hand, Pop The Bubbles mode is quite fun.  You still have all those baddies to avoid, but there are also bubbles to pop.  As you pop the bubbles you grow bigger (though I’m pretty sure your growth stops at some point).  Also, baddies become more frequent and faster.  Have no fear, though, as there are power-ups like stop the baddies or invincibility to help you last longer.  The game uses motion control to guide your bee, and for the most part it works well, though sometimes trying to stop or turn to catch a power-up is a bit problematic.  There is a sensitivity option in the settings, but I found that the default setting works best for me.

Just Buzzin' Around

The graphics are simple but look good.  There’s animation wherever possible, including a little smoke trail that follows your bee.  The only thing I didn’t care for was the background.  It’s kind of a soupy green etherial looking nothing that doesn’t really enhance the game.  There are really only two sound effects in the game, one when you pop a bubble, and another when you collide with a baddie.  The popping bubble sounds just as you’d expect, and I don’t know what the baddies are supposed to be, but the collision noise with them amuses me.  There’s one musical track, which is one track more than a lot of games have, and it’s a nice subttle classical riff that’s well written.

Bubble Bee is probably not for those who want something to play for hours on end, and the simple mechanics might not appeal to a lot of folks.  For me, however, I found the game to be much like Cube Runner in the sense that once I started to play, I could never play just one game.  As of the day this was posted (2.14.2009) the price was still 99 cents, which is more than reasonable for this polished package.

Final Verdict: Recommended
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