An arcade by definition cannot be good or bad. You either play such games, or despise them. Lengths of arcade reviews are directly proportional to the sense they make. It’s usually “Cool”, “Great”, “Highly addictive”, “The best game I’ve ever played” (poor thing), “Better than sex” (poor thing). I do not favor arcades. And I spent three hours playing Bloobs.

Bloobs is a puzzle computer game. At least its developers say so. Bloobs is an arcade. A cannon fires multicolored pieces. Three or more equal pieces put together, they blow-up. We win the game when the entire screen is empty. The less bloobs (shots) are used the more points (higher score) we get, and vice versa. It might seem easy but for the persistently lowering ceiling. As we shoot, the handle of the TNT machine goes down. When the handle reaches the last (7th) mark, the whole playground with bloobs plumps down. The Warning Bar informs us about the forthcoming descent.

An arcade by definition cannot be good or bad. You either play such games, or despise them. Lengths of arcade reviews are directly proportional to the sense they make. It’s usually “Cool”, “Great”, “Highly addictive”, “The best game I’ve ever played” (poor thing), “Better than sex” (poor thing). I do not favor arcades.

Bloobs is not their best representative. Backgrounds are awful, there is a selection but there is no choice: 8 out of 10 backgrounds are of irritating garish colors. Music is good though. Jazz and, particularly, Joplin softened my heart. But here again – the list of options is scarce: piece combination, shape definition, two levels – not much to impress.

I spent three (!!!) hours playing Bloobs and won about five games. Did I enjoy playing? No, certainly not. But it was not absolutely disappointing either. It IS rather addictive waste of time. And I quit the initial impulse to subject Bloobs to severe criticism. Instead I will share some experience of what can make playing Bloobs much more gripping.

First of all, before playing I visited (and advise you to do that) www.bloobs.com and studied the table of Bloobs world records. Since then I belonged to the players’ community, had an idea what to press towards and could compare our achievements. At the EASY level one really gifted guy got 746 507. Mine humble result was 26 919. I obviously have what to work upon.

No doubt, luck is an important factor in the game. I mean how many shots you’ll have to do and what the score will be depend on the initial blobs combination. You have a nice chance to break score in some cases, and strong chance to lose a game if the combination of bloobs is not favorable.

But still, to win you have to develop a strategy: analyze bloobs disposition and decide whether you are going to blow them up, or to cut them off (to blow several bloobs so that the rest underneath falls down giving you a good amount of points), or to simply hang them (sometimes you do not have any better choice). Once I managed to successfully ricochet a bloob and cut of the entire central part. Dear colleagues, was I proud of myself! It looked somewhat like that.

It would be unfair not to mention where I got the ideas how to play the game. Of course, during the three hours of playing I’ve worked out several approaches of my own, but it cannot be compared with the set of tips which Samir the “Fanatik” gives to us. The best Bloob strategies with illustrations and vector diagrams. Great job! They might pass for theses for a Master’s Degree. This guy seems to know everything about bloobs shooting, hanging, ricocheting, etc. And he is the best at the HARD level with the result 452415.

Look at some of the the tips about where to hang. “Hang bloob on bigger group if possible; one dropped bloob will give you more points on dropped group containing more bloobs than on smaller group. Never hang bloob to lie between cannon and your future shooting directions - and that is most often middle of playground. Don't hang bloob lower than the lowest line - your calculation that it is not dangerous could be wrong! This is mistake I most often do.”

I read the instructions with vivid interest and somewhat followed them. Though I have not become a Bloobs fanatic, maybe one day I will start the game, win once or twice and would like to compare my results with that of the Bloobs experts.