Bubble Stories!

Does it annoy you that it's frowned upon to lock your child in an elaborate escape room style scenario and see how they'd fare? No? Umm, no... me.... neither....

Bubble stories is an 'escape' style game for children aged 4 and above. It attempts to tell a narrative, while challenging the player to locate 2-4 objectives. And you know what? It does it brilliantly. It also remains language independent and provides instructions in no less that 8 languages! 

There are three (and a bit) scenarios included in the box. Hide and Seek at School, Prize Stalls at a Fair and Treasure Hunting on a Pirate Island. They all start with a scene, and on the scene are bubbles. Those bubbles represent where the player can "look". Searching the climbing frame for little Dylan is as easy as finding the card that matches the climbing frame bubble. Flip it over and you're up on the play equipment having a gander. Spoiler alert: He's not up there, it's a dead end.

Dead ends are the 'challenge' side of Bubble Stories. The idea is to complete the scenario with the least dead ends to win different medals. Bronze for 3 or more, Silver for 1 or 2 and Gold for 0. This promotes replayability. While also preparing them for Trophy/Achievement Hunting on consoles at a later date.

What impressed me was how quick my daughter Elidi 'got it'. As soon as she turned over the first card in the tutorial scenario, she understood what she was doing and what she needed to achieve. The logic behind her choices isn't quite there yet however. For example a child playing hide and seek in school probably isn't in the kitchen, but she enjoyed being able to look there! Sometimes Elidi can be a bit of a sore loser, and I thought that the Dead Ends would be a stumbling block for her. But she took them in her stride.

Replayability was my other concern. She flew through all the scenarios in two play throughs. I tested this by replaying a scenario that we'd already done with her, the school one. Even though she insisted on searching the climbing frame for Dylan again. Spoiler alert: he still wasn't up there. She did improve on her previous attempt and more importantly she had fun doing it!

All in all we are more than happy to welcome Bubble Stories into our collection. I know that Elidi will look forward to playing it again!