Pop Rescue

Bubble shooters are one of the cleanest puzzle formats ever invented and I had been wanting to write one for years. Pop Rescue uses a hex grid (rather than the offset-square grid some versions use), which means bubbles pack more naturally and bank shots feel more like billiards. The game name is a small leftover from an earlier theme I scrapped — there were going to be little creatures trapped behind the bubbles. Maybe next version.

The single most useful tip is to ignore matches when you can drop chains instead. Popping a group of three colours scores you three bubbles. Snipping the one anchor bubble that's holding a fifteen-bubble cluster scores you all fifteen, plus a multiplier bonus for unanchored drops. Aim at the load-bearing bubbles, not the obvious matches. Bank shots off the walls are how you reach those anchors when they're tucked into the top corners.

What was tricky to build

The hex-grid math is fiddly. Each row is offset by half a bubble width and the neighbour lookup has to handle that — a bubble can have up to six neighbours, but which six depends on whether the row is even or odd. The chain-detection flood-fill is simple once the neighbour function is right, but I rewrote that function three times before it stopped producing edge-case bugs. If you like grid-based puzzles, our Block Blaster works on the same principle with falling tetromino shapes.