Hue Drift

Hue Drift is a bubble shooter built by QuickGameRoom, and the thing that makes it ours is the colour wheel. The six colours are not just six colours: coral sits next to mango, mango next to lemon, then lime, teal, lavender, and back round to coral. Every rule in the game leans on that order, so the board is never quite the fixed target you get in a standard shooter. It drifts.

The basics are familiar. Drag to aim, let go to fire, and land a bubble next to two or more of the same colour to pop the group. Anything left hanging falls and scores double. There is a next-bubble preview and a swap button. The ceiling comes down a row every few shots and the level ends when the board is clear or when a bubble crosses the line above the cannon.

Then there is dye. Every few shots the cannon loads an iridescent orb instead of a bubble. It never sticks: when it lands it nudges every bubble it touches one step round the wheel and vanishes, and whatever that creates pops. Aimed at a wall of mango with a lemon next to it, a dye turns the mango to lemon and takes the lot. The dye counter sits in the HUD, so you can set a shot up two or three turns ahead.

Heat rewards a run of good shots. Pop on consecutive shots and the meter fills; miss once and it empties. From heat 3 you are hot, and a group you pop takes one layer of its hue-neighbours with it, lemon with the mango, lime with the lemon. One layer only: we tried letting it spread and it wiped half the board in a single shot, which felt broken rather than exciting.

The tide works against you. Every few shots one random row drifts a hue, which can break the match you were building or hand you one you had not seen. From level ten, dark ink bubbles appear that ignore both dye and tide, and from level eighteen some boards start laid out as a gradient around the wheel, which is where planned dye cascades really pay off. Levels are generated from a seed and never run out; more rows, more colours, a faster tide and a faster ceiling as you climb.

Play it four ways. Play levels is the solo climb, and it remembers how far you got. Race the computer gives you and the computer the same board from the same seed; its board sits small at the top of the screen and the first to clear wins. Pass and play puts two to four people on one board taking turns, with pops scoring for whoever fired. Online, create a room, share the six-letter code or the link, and everyone plays the same level on their own device while the host decides the result. There is no account and no game server; the players' browsers talk to each other directly.

Pick a mode from the menu, then drag anywhere on the board to aim and release to fire. On a keyboard, use the arrow keys to aim, Space to fire and Shift to swap.

Watch the dye counter and leave a two-colour seam for it to land on. Keep heat alive with safe three-pops when you have nothing better, because the halo at heat 3 is where the big scores come from, and clear the lowest bubbles first when the ceiling is close.

Our take: the dye shot is the whole game. The first time a planned dye turns a messy corner into a nine-bubble cascade you will understand why we built the rest around it. A level takes two to four minutes on a phone in portrait, which is where it plays best; pass and play with three people is quick and surprisingly tense because the tide does not care whose turn it is. If you want pressure, race the computer from level five up.