So a few weeks ago I went to go see Inside Out, Pixar’s newest movie.  It’s about a girl and her personified emotions, and it’s a very touching, thought-provoking film.  During the previews, they had a commercial for a downloadable Inside Out free-to-play game on iOS and Google Play.  In the movie, the girl’s memories are represented by colored bubbles, so I guess someone got the idea to make a puzzle game out of it similar to Puzzle Bobble/Bust-A-Move, or another game I reviewed recently called Bubble Bath Blast.  And since I liked the movie and Puzzle Bobble is one of my favorite puzzle games, I decided to review this game, too (reviewed on iPad here).

The object of the game is pretty simple.  Memory bubbles of different colors are on the top of the screen, and you use the touch screen to aim and fire bubbles from the bottom, which can bounce off walls, too.  Match three or more bubbles of the same color to clear them away.  In each level, you may have a different goal to complete the stage.  Sometimes you must clear out all the bubbles, other times you must free trapped mind workers, and other times you might have to keep the bubbles from reaching a line.  There are special bubbles you will have to deal with, too.  Brain freeze snowflakes will freeze bubbles around them, and you must clear all of them to make the freeze bubble go away.  Faded memory black bubbles must be dropped by matching other colors around it.  You’ll discover other kinds of bubbles as you play, too.

You’ll have to use a bit more strategy in the levels because you have limited moves, and if you use them all up, it’s Game Over.  Luckily you can switch out to the next thought bubble, and the aiming lines are always there.  You can also buy and use power-ups to help you out in a pinch.  As you progress, you’ll also unlock characters from the movie to play as.  Each one has their own power that you can activate by matching enough certain colors of bubbles.  Joy makes a cluster of yellow bubbles appear to clear out a whole section.  Sadness can make a rain cloud that turns a large row of bubbles blue.  I wish I knew what Anger did, but the game got too hard before I could unlock him.

And that leads us to the main problem of this game.  It has several of the annoyances that many free-to-play titles have.  If you lose, you’ll have one heart taken away, and if all five are gone, you’ll have to watch a few hours for them to fill up again so you can keep going.  Also, at about level 40, the game gets pretty near impossible unless you buy items.  It’s a shame, too, because they really utilize the characters and themes of the movie in the game in a fun way.  The map screen has locations from the flick like Hockey Island and Dreamland Studios, and the animation and voices of the characters look and sound just like the film!  I just wish the game didn’t get too hard to enjoy, like a lot of other free-to-play games do.  I’d rather pay a small price to be able to enjoy the game more, but oh well.

Kid Factor:

Nothing violent or objectionable here.  If you’re OK with your kids watching the movie, they’ll be OK with the game, too.  Reading skill is helpful for some of the text, but not necessary to play the game as picture cues and simple gameplay make things easy to figure out.  As a free-to-play game, parental supervision is recommended for the pop-up ads and in-game purchases, but Disney is usually pretty good about keeping their games safe for kids anyway.

Tags: Game Reviews, Movies with Children