Bubble Popper Game

By Enes Deniz, 4 January, 2026

Forum
iOS and iPadOS Gaming
There was this game called Dusk, which was removed from the App Store a while ago. It had several minigames put together in one app, and one of them was a game in which you would pop little bubbles appearing around the screen within a certain duration. This is my take on that. You can use the touchscreen, trackpad or keyboard. You press Enter to pop a bubble if you play using the keyboard. Below are the rules for each difficulty:

Easy

  • Number of bubbles: 5
  • Game time: 60 seconds
  • Bubble size: 120 px
  • Bubble spawn interval: 2000 ms
  • Bonus time: Yes; each popped bubble adds +1 second
  • Combo: Popping 3 bubbles within 3 seconds adds +5 seconds and triggers combo beep
  • Penalty for missing bubbles: No
  • Playing field size: 70% of screen
  • Player starting position: Center of the field
  • Cursor/hover feedback: Hover and pop vibration

Medium

  • Number of bubbles: 3
  • Game time: 45 seconds
  • Bubble size: 80 px
  • Bubble spawn interval: 3000 ms
  • Bonus time: Yes; each popped bubble adds +1 second
  • Combo: Popping 3 bubbles within 3 seconds adds +5 seconds and triggers combo beep
  • Penalty for missing bubbles: No
  • Playing field size: 100% of screen
  • Player starting position: Center of the field
  • Cursor/hover feedback: Hover and pop vibration

Hard

  • Number of bubbles: 1
  • Game time: 30 seconds
  • Bubble size: 50 px
  • Bubble spawn interval: 5000 ms
  • Bonus time: No
  • Penalty for missing bubbles: Yes; pressing Enter/tapping where no bubble exists subtracts 1 point, remaining bubbles at end subtract 1 point each
  • Playing field size: 100% of screen
  • Player starting position: Random location
  • Cursor/hover feedback: Hover, pop, and invalid press vibration
  • Combo: Not applicable

My High Scores

  • Easy: 189
  • Medium: 7
  • Hard: 2
And here's the link to the game. Since this is just an HTML script that works in your browser, either downloading or opening it should work. Note that this is just a temporary link that will expire in 7 days, primarily to download the file to my phone and test it myself. You can share your feedback or even updated/modified versions in the meantime.
* Note: I haven't tested the game on a mobile device with haptic feedback capability, and just wanna go to bed now.

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Comments

By onetrickpony on Monday, January 5, 2026 - 05:57

Works well on the Mac with Chrome. I wasn't able to open it on my iPhone.

By mr grieves on Monday, January 5, 2026 - 13:50

OK, stupid question time, but how do I play this with the keyboard?

I opened it up in Safari on the Mac and started an easy game. But then what? I pressed enter a lot, then tried a few other keys. Sometimes it beeped at me, sometimes it did a low noise. I got 4 the first time and 6 the next but I've no idea what was going on or what I was doing.

I also tried it in Chrome but it didn't work at all - like the tab was blank or something - no noise, nothing to interact with. Maybe a security thing preventing me opening a local file.

By Enes Deniz on Monday, January 5, 2026 - 21:29

Here's a permanent link with new features and in-game instructions. The game should now be more stable across desktop and mobile platforms. You can even add it to your home screen! Make sure that you either disable VoiceOver or enable Direct Touch if you would like to play the game on a touchscreen device. I know haptics don't work as expected on iOS, and I don't have an Android device to test haptic feedback.

By Enes Deniz on Friday, January 9, 2026 - 15:20

I've made some changes that balance the gameplay for the various difficulty level so you can't keep going forever on easy or pop no more than 4 bubbles on hard. The new rules are all included in the in-game instructions.
  • You now get an extra 30 seconds if you pop 5 bubbles within the standard time limit in hard mode.
  • Edge/boundary feedback is now more reliable.
  • A new "Speech" checkbox lets you toggle spoken feedback
  • Some other fixes and changes not listed here
And here are my high scores:
  • Easy: 69 (Note that in the previous release, it was so easy to get much higher scores like 3200 and still have more time than the standard 1 minute, but that is no longer the case.)
  • Medium: 32
  • Hard: 14
So I encourage everyone to challenge me.

By Brian on Friday, January 9, 2026 - 16:56

Hi,

You have a pretty cool concept here. I love the way you have the beginning controls set up, very easy to navigate, and the instructions are pretty straightforward. However, I do have a question. So far I have only played once, on easy, but I had to turn VoiceOver off once the game actually started. My question is do I need to enable direct touch for this on my iPhone, or just Disable VoiceOver like I did in my previous attempt? Or can this be played throughout with VoiceOver enabled?

TIA

By Enes Deniz on Friday, January 9, 2026 - 20:38

The game does not show up among Direct Touch apps, possibly because it is not a native app.