Bloons

Bloons is a simple yet highly addictive flash game in which you control a chimpanzee who throws darts to burst balloons, or "Bloons" which was released in March 2007. The aim of the game is to burst or pop a set number of balloons by using a limited number of darts. The game starts out with the simpler levels and gets more and more complicated as the player progresses through the levels until he reaches level 50, which is the final level in this version of the game. Below are some of the key aspects of the game:

Main Game Play

Is there anything to be gleaned from this game apart from the satisfaction of fulfilling a childhood desire of being able to pop an unlimited number of balloons? A resounding yes would be the answer. The complexity starts to really rise from the 10th level onwards, and not once does the game let up after that. Everything keeps getting tougher from the number of darts available to the balloon patterns to the type of balloons and so on. The innovations seem quite endless, and every level offers a new challenge, keeping the game from getting repetitive. The changing types of balloons and darts can be put down to the different power-ups and dangerous objects that keep turning up in various levels. The power-ups consist of everything from exploding balloons, triple darts and boomerangs to amazing innovations like the Pac-Man balloon, which releases Pac-Man and puts it under the player's control, allowing him to happily chew through the balloons. Then you have things like ice balloons, which make things even more challenging.

If that level of toughness wasn't enough, you have various obstacles quite unimaginatively titled "walls". And even these are of different kinds, with there being walls that are quite literally walls and won't let anything through, walls that just bounce the dart back as if it were a rubber ball and walls that you can break through.

All of these features are factors within the game, so the player needs to try some levels more than once to get it right and work hard to develop a strategy for a level and even then have to rely on dumb luck to get through. The best part of the game is that there are no impossible levels, although levels 30 and 42 have been deemed as being particularly hard until you learn the exact tricks needed to get through.

Level 30, which was aptly named "Ice Bounce", requires the player to shoot his dart right down the middle of the uppermost ice balloon. In doing this, the dart would ideally hit the bouncy wall right in between and get deflected onto the line of bomb balloons on the left. The next dart is actually supposed to bisect the icy balloons and go right in between them to pop just enough balloons to secure the win.

Level 42, called "Chilly Chips", requires an unprecedented level of accuracy according to the standards of the game. To begin with, the player will need to take out the balloons which are to the left of the leftmost ice balloons without hitting them, and then take out the balloons in between the left and right line of ice balloons with the next dart, again without hitting the ones on the left. Next, you have to garner the triple dart balloons at the bottom of the screen and use them on the left line of ice balloons where they will ping around and hopefully get enough balloons to cross the threshold. This level in the end relies on luck, so it makes sense that this is the trickiest level of the game.

Even if you do get through all 50 levels and finish the game, it scores high in the replay value department by allowing the player to retry all the levels to try and achieve a 100% shooting rate either by using the original available number of darts or choosing the unlimited darts option. The player can't go through to a previously unlocked level while on the unlimited darts option though, and quite rightly too.

Visuals

Graphics are pretty much the simplest you can find in Flash games anywhere today. They mainly consist of an admittedly cute chimpanzee, regular colored balloons, clouds floating behind the balloons and the blue sky in the background. The simplicity only adds to the game in this case though by further emphasizing how the game is only about popping balloons.

Sound

Audio is pretty much non-existent, with the only sound being the popping of balloons. One wonders whether the addition of a soundtrack might add to the experience, but that might also adversely affect the hugely satisfying sound of balloons bursting, so it seems about right.

To sum things up

All in all, Bloons is an entertaining game and a hugely addictive one for anyone who has a lot of free time and likes to burst balloons. The only glitch is that are some issues with the aiming mechanism, but that might be deliberate seeing as it is a chimpanzee who's throwing the darts. Otherwise, this is as good as a game about bursting balloons gets.