Review: Big Bad Flower - Blowing Bubbles

Overview

Your goal is world domination, and what better way than to use, a flower? Not just any flower, but a Big Bad Flower that is sprouted from an evil seed. You draw circles around enemies to trap them in bubbles, and then swipe on the flower to spin the pedals, and blow the bubbles away.

Features

The game features three worlds with the backyard, city, and space with five levels per world. You begin by facing woodland creatures, and then it’s on to the military, and robots, and finally the perils of space. There are also three bonus survival modes that you unlock as you progress through the main levels.

The Good

Big Bad Flower offers a unique gameplay mechanic of drawing circles on screen to create bubbles, and then swiping to send them away. At first you think the game is too simple, but the difficulty sneaks up on you until you’re losing on early levels. You need to be quick with the bubble drawing as enemies pop up quickly, and start shooting at you and your flower can only take so many hits. The number of enemies on screen becomes overwhelming from time to time especially because you have to draw a whole circle which takes time compared to tapping a button. There are various types of enemies that come at you from different locations so you need to watch the whole screen space. The game is really nicely designed with great cartoon artwork that is highly polished. It’s great seeing the expressions of your enemies change once they’re encircled in a bubble. The game features a nice soundtrack that is a little evil, but a little bit fun loving, and just nice to listen to.

The Bad

Swiping on the flower to blow away the bubbles doesn’t work right away. The game often recognizes your action as trying to draw a bubble rather than spinning the flower. This costs valuable time when you have to swipe multiple times to actually blow away the bubbles with new enemies coming at you. The game lacks any kind of replay factor, as once you get through the 15 levels there really is no incentive to play them again with only local score tables. It doesn’t take too long to make it through those levels, and the bonus modes are somewhat simplistic. The gameplay is unique to begin with, but it’s the same mechanic over and over.

The Verdict

Big Bad Flower offers a unique mechanic that is challenging and fun to begin with. It does get repetitive fairly quickly, and with only 15 levels and no replay incentive you won’t spend much time with the game. The game is really nicely designed, but the swipe to spin the flower control doesn’t work well enough, and will cause you to die from time to time. For $1.99 Big Bad Flower is now worth it as the problems outweigh the positives.

Related articles