Pirate Pop Plus’s core gameplay is nothing new. The balloon popper game format has existed online for eons with countless different variations and skins spawning from it, reaching back to the days of the earliest flash games. To start charging for a variation of a free online game means you must do something different, something Pirate Pop Plus handily achieves through its rotational and expansive gameplay.
Oddly enough it is the core gameplay that sets Pirate Pop Plus apart from other balloon popper games, rather than just being a skin with some customisable elements, that can vaguely be called progression, there has been an effort to shake up the gameplay itself to provide a fresh experience. The developers took the idea of shaking up the gameplay rather literally with a rotating level that will flip you around and turn your life upside down as these pirates are truly ‘livin la vida loca’.
As you are flipped around the stage you have the chance to pop bubbles from above, becoming the one falling of them for extra points if you position yourself right before the flip. It’s in these flips where the movement of the characters feels most fitting, as when on the ground they feel floaty and slightly uncontrollable as they slide before coming to a complete stop, making it hard to line up the perfect bubble splitting shot. While it is the rotating gravity of the level that keeps the gameplay fresh, it can often get confusing as your control scheme subtly changes to the surface that you are on, having to move in the perspective of the character. At first this would lead to a hectic moment of button mashing, trying to figure out how to move each time the level flipped. However, after playing for a short while the transition became seamless and only adding joy and variation to the gameplay.
To pop the waves of bubbles coming at you, it’s not just your basic chain hook that you have at your disposal as there are additional temporary weapons which are significantly more powerful. To go along with your standard chain hook there are two other variants, the Clamp which will allow your hooks to latch onto the walls of the level to create traps to pop sets quickly. The other, Airsoft, is a devastating machine gun that fires two pellets with each shot, turning you into a bubble popping machine for the time you have it active.
It’s not just weapons that drop from above as there are also a variety of power-ups to aid you in your bubble popping quest. Freeze is a stopwatch what will freeze all bubbles in place for you to pick them off one by one, which when combined with a devastating weapon such as Airsoft can lead to utter bubble devastation. Shield and Heart offer more protection for you, refilling one of your heart containers or giving you a protective shield that you can use to run into bubbles on the ground close to you, or to simply give you the peace of mind that comes with the added protection. The Reverse pickup is the only power down in the group that flips each of your movements. This pickup can easily cause chaos as you are flipped around the stage making it hard to keep track of where your character is on the screen let alone how you are controlling them.
Your quest of popping bubbles is not just to free the villagers, as the story prelude that plays when you open the game says, but rather to get the highest score on the leaderboard. While this can be accomplished by some skilful play, masterful bubble popping and collecting all the fruit score bonuses that drop, the real key to getting the high score lays in Hyper mode. In Hyper mode, your score is doubled, giving you a real chance to claim one of the top spots. Hyper mode should more be treated as a delicacy to be worked towards rather than something to train yourself on. As to get into this lucrative mode of high scores you must pay a 25-coin entry fee that could otherwise be better spent on all kinds of customisable decals. Once in you have the chance of the all-important high score, so long as you can hold your nerve with the faster beating music and the reduced lives to contend with.
When creating a game around a familiar online classic, the style becomes a hook to diversify your game on. While Pirate Pop Plus has an obvious pirate theme, the stronger thematic element comes from the retro style. The square frame of the game is given a background of a retro handheld controller, where each button and switch will react to your keystrokes to bring you into the experience, making it feel like you are controlling it more than you already are.
In Pirate Pop Plus, to make the game feel more yours, there is an in-game shop that you can spend your hard-earned coins in. While most of the purchasable items are for the background casing of the game itself, with a variety of skins and stickers that you can use to make your game feel more yours, there are also unlockable characters and music to diversify your experience. Each new character has variations on their health and speed letting you pick your playstyle after you save up a little. While none of the new characters are groundbreaking in design, they are still fun to play with and keep the gameplay fresh with new styles of play emerging with each character.
The first purchase I made in the shop was one of the additional music tracks. Don’t be mistaken in thinking this was to be rid of the starting music of the game, which is a jaunty 8-bit tune that brings life to the game. It was rather to see what more the music of Pirate Pop Plus could offer since its first track was such a joy. While there is an obvious loop to any of the tracks that can comes across as quite jarring, this is often lost in the action of the game, and becoming jaunty overall rather than being hampered by this loop.
Summary
While Pirate Pop Plus is not the deepest experience, it does bring new life to an old classic format which is not only a joy to play in quick, short bursts, but can also easily keep you entertained for long periods of time.
Alex was a community contributor to ICXM, writing 3 articles in 2016 covering game reviews. ICXM operated as an independent Xbox and Windows gaming outlet through the run-up to Xbox One S and Project Scorpio, plus the broader Windows 10 gaming push, drawing from a rotating bench of editorial volunteers. They post on X as @CrtlAltDlt.