now playing: "Chain Reaction"

BUBBLES! Bubblesbubblesbubblesbubbles...

According to my own informal observational studies, high school students fall into one of two categories: those so mortally terrified of taking a physics class that they'll shun even the name of gravity, or those so unashamedly in love with all things nerdy that they've seriously considered NASA as a future employer. And while physics wasn't by any means my favorite science (I'm more attracted to good chemistry), I could spend hours of my own time goofing off with the CD-ROM simulations often assigned as homework and lab projects. So when I discovered the chaotic Chain Reaction (Yvo Schaap, 2011) just the other day, I felt a twinge of happy nostalgia from taking physics... last year.

It caught my eye whilst I browsed the Chrome web app store on my never-ending quest for browser games. It advertised almost 200k users and offered a simple tagline ("create a chain reaction of explosions to clear the level"), so what was I waiting for? As it turns out, Chain Reaction is designed just as quietly as it is advertised--and that's a bit of a rare thing compared to most web games I see plastered with commercial phrases/actual commercials imported courtesy of the hosting site, annoying pop sounds... even achievements after a while can dull the senses. So it is in a similar vein to my review of Entanglement that I offer you this little pixel--or should I say, bubble--of true transcended joy.

Suspended over a sheet of graph paper, your omnipotent explosion of power waits to fall on the unsuspecting atoms/balls/bombs/people's heads/other-things-that-circles-might-represent below and catalyze a most epic catastrophe of color. Although the effects of each explosion fade in a few seconds, the ripples from each successive explosion multiply your damage area and skyrocket your score into a beautifully meaningless string of six, seven, eight digits--all without more labor than a single mouse click. Should you fail in detonating the minimum proportion of balls in a level, there's no penalty for trying again. By the time you get the hang of the game after the first few levels, more and more innocent circles dominate the screen, resulting in a near impossibilty of failure due to the explosion area repercussions. In short, most of the reviews I saw on the Chrome store actually complained about all this darn simplicity! 

You don't get to do anything, just watch bubbles pop, they ranted. That is to say, they didn't think it was interactive enough. Of course it's not interactive "enough"--too much interactivity, and the whole beauty of the chain-reaction concept is lost! Watching a game do the work for you turns out to be a fantastic idea in this case. Chain Reaction eliminates player and score rankings by leaving almost 100% of the outcome to chance. In turn, it rewards you with a visual Dadaist work of your own making. You're getting way more than out than anything you invested.

Could use sound effects. Turned up my speakers and didn't hear a thing. WTH?, they exclaimed. And while OF COURSE sound effects make everything awesome, I actually kind of like not hearing anything for once while I'm playing a game. A dark grid coupled with some generic web colors and the notable lack of audio kind of creates an atmosphere like a void. That is to say, no atmosphere at all. Just bubbles popping. No distractions.

Most likely in response to some of these complaints, Schaap developed an "advanced" version which includes a dynamic range of ball velocities, explosion diameters, and (negative) point values. It does stir the mechanics up a bit, but ultimately, it's a bit more distracting and not as much fun as the simple joy of dropping bombs on graph paper. Screw gravity, science is fun.

...my bubbles.