Almost a year ago, I played a Pang! clone called "Pirate Pop Plus". This year, I played a modern remake of Pang! called Pang Adventures! Yup. This is Pang!

Bubbles! Aliens are attacking and it is up to the Pang Brothers to defeat them. I imagine if I was still age 7 I would fight with my cousin on who played what shirt colour, just like we did with Bubble Bobble. There's no difference aside from the sprite on what one you play, I was Red Brother.

Neither brother can jump, probably too many doughnuts, I know I ate too many before writing this up.

The aim of this game? Shoot the bubbles to split them in to smaller bubbles. Shoot the smaller bubbles to split them in to even small bubbles. Shoot the even smaller bubbles to pop them... Clear the stage to win!

Along the way you gain access to different types of guns to shoot these bubbles with, each having their own strategy and use cases.

Your main enemy may end up being the time-clock! Despite the limited seconds available rarely getting in the way, it can be annoying to hit it before clearing the round. Far more leading to a rage-quit than just-one-more-attempt.

Of course, there is a little more to it. Blue Bubbles move faster than Red Bubbles. Destructible Blocks require being hit to release bubbles, and you need to be careful not to unleash too many. Lightning bubbles shoot back when struck with your normal gun, and need to be dodged. Cloud Bubbles prevent you seeng movement on the screen for a short period. Gunk Bubbles slow your movement down. And Lava Bubbles hate you with all the nine levels of hell.

The game is very good on introducing new challenges however. You tend to encounter new bubbles or objects just on their own (or with a few Reds) before they combine with other items you have encountered.

It makes the game easier than others I've seen with this shallow difficulty curve. However the number of stages per map area limit what you can face before it moves on to the next type. This does continually keep things fresh, but I can see how others would like a tiny bit more grind.

At the end of each map, there's a boss battle. A giant evil tentacle alien. It grows bubbles out of its arms, one of which will not fully form. Shoot it to blow off the arm. Shoot off all arms to go into the second attack mode. Shoot the eye to kill it.

Each boss has more arms and greater bubble spawn speeds. Personally I would of liked more variety like you have with the final boss.

Aside from this, there's a 99-levels mode where you do a single run of levels through the game. And a Score-Attack mode, maddeningly locked until you complete the main campaign... Come on. Don't do that for such a basic mode. NG+ I can accept, but this is something co-op new players would like to jump right in to.

Pang Adventures! is a decent Pang! remake. Classical fans will complain on the easier difficulty and changes for a modern audience. The 3 hour campaign is 'just' short and long enough to not feel like a chore, and the other modes allow drop in play solo or with a friend.

Game Acquisition: Bundle Stars (Killer Bundle X (2017))
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Threads: 1 - 7 May 2019
PC Used: Scorptec Master-RTX2070 2019 MK1

OS: Windows 7, 8, 10
Processor: Core 2 Duo 2.2 Ghz
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: 256 MO 100% COMPATIBLE OPENGL 3.0 AMD RADEON HD 5000 SERIES/NVIDIA GEFORCE 9000 SERIES
DirectX: Version 9.0
Storage: 1 GB available space