Chacham's Journal: Verbiage: Bubble Shooter low score

One game that has been around for years is Bubble Shooter. It's a game that appears on plenty of websites. The i use is on shooter-bubble.com. My brother brought it to my attention years ago, and i've had a love/hate relationship with it ever since. The game is unfair and cheats, though as you play you get used to its quirks and just roll with them. It's great for playing while talking on the phone, and sometimes just as a break when switching tasks. I used to play for high score. Mostly, you get it until there are two or three colors left, and just play until it forces you to win or lose. Some scores are ridiculously high, and the game gets quite boring at that point.

At some point though, i decided to play for a better challenge, that is, to win it quickly. I jumped between lowest score, lowest ball set changes (refreshing the balls on the bottom and adding a row to the playing area, more than one when colors are removed from play), and both. Eventually i just settled on lowest score because ball set changes can be played strategically.

It took a while to realize the importance of the three ways to lose balls. The obvious method is to connect (at least) three balls. That gives 10 points for each ball including the one shot. The second is to cause a drop by removing its connection to the other balls (or top of the screen). That gives 100 points per ball. The third way is to when adding a row to the playing area lowers all rows on the screen which causes some balls to shift. If a shift causes a ball not to be connected to the other balls, it is eliminated and gives 0 points per ball.

The games starts with 9 rows of 17 balls each, making 153 balls total. Meaning, the lowest score possible with a cleared board would be if all were the same color, including the balls shot, for a score of 1540. Considering that it starts with six colors, the more likely lowest score, though quite unlikely, would be 6 balls shot, for a total of 1590. Maybe there is some way to force the third way of balls disappearing to get a lower score, but i would assume that due to the new row added, the benefits would be outweighed by the loss. Of course, considering the "bonus" which doubles the score when the screen is cleared, the score is actually 3180.

Anyway, i have developed some (mostly) rules to play by to get that low score. No more then 4 balls can be dropped by the second way. When of of the lower balls is the same color as upper balls, make sure to hit both, maximizing mathed balls with only 10 points each. When on the last ball in a set, do not cause the color to disappear, because when the row resets, it will have yet another extra row in the playing area. So, better to put that off until later, or when there is a fresh row set. When near the top, start planning which balls have to go to allow others to make a set. And, when there is a choice, remember the third way might disappear the balls anyway for free.

When i was trying to get this low score, i started to get under 20k (before the doubling). Eventually 15k, and then even lower. From texts to my brother about my progress :), i see i hit 11,950 on 5/24/16, and then 9580 on 8/10/17. I always knew i must beat 10k to be good, as the bar is lowered each time i win. Well today (it's just after 12, so technically, yesterday) i went to new lows, 7330/14,660. Woohoo! Fwiw, the score beforehand was 7200.

To beat that low score i'll need a good board. I wonder if it's even possible to go lower. Then again, until today, i thought you always had to be "over 9000!" Who knew?