Bubble Tanks

Bubble Tanks is an online a series of online Flash games by Hero Interactive. In it, you use a tank made up of bubbles, while shooting enemies and collecting their bubbles they explode into when defeated. The more bubbles you collect, the bigger and stronger your tank becomes.

Bubble Tanks 1 and 2 have you controlling a Bubble Tank. There's also Bubble Tanks Tower Defence, which does Exactly What It Says on the Tin, and Bubble Tanks Arena, which allows you to build your own tanks, both your own and enemies'. The recent^[when?] addition to the roster, Bubble Tanks 3, has the classic gameplay of the original two games plus the features from Bubble Tanks Arena.

Tropes used in Bubble Tanks include:

• Anti Frustration Feature: In Bubble Tanks 2, if you get damaged too much in an area and hence lose a lot of experience points, the next new area you move into will have quite a high chance of containing harmless Pinata Enemies.
• Asteroids Monster: Life Carriers, which are harmless and will explode into lots of harmless Mooks when defeated. They're there to give the player back bubbles.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: 2 has Spawn Carriers, Tri-Guardians, BFTs and especially the Destroyer. The last of which is tougher than the game's boss.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: 3 has expansion packs which allow you to include more weaponry, such as railguns, lock-on missiles and such. You gotta buy it, though.
• Bubble Gun: Everything you shoot, and everything the enemies shoot, are bubbles.
• BFG: The Super Heavy sports one. It's not as strong as the Ghost Sniper's sniper shot, though.
• Collision Damage: Averted. Except for Death Field Bubbles.
• Enemy Summoner: Spawn Carriers, BFTs, Destroyers and Heavy Heavy Heavy 2s. They can summon enemies and can attack as well.
• Evolving Attack: Your Bubble Tank evolves to the next level once it collects a certain amount of bubbles. So do its attacks.
  • Although with 3, the system was altered slightly. Now, as the base size of the bubble increases, the number of usable (and more powerful guns) will increase respectively. Of course, achieving the next level will still increase the number of max GP (Gun Points) available - but the increase will be relative to the base size.
• Evolution Power-Up: Every time you level up in 2, you will be able to choose your evolution path. By the end of the game, you may be either a Fragile Speedster, Mighty Glacier, or an in-between.
  • With 3, you can follow the evolutionary paths provided, use one of the player-made tanks, or just customize and create your own. Though, the number of guns you can use will be limited according to the base tank size.
• Experience Points: When you defeat an enemy, the bubbles they are made out of get dispersed. By going near the bubbles or beating all the enemies in an area, you will collect them and your tank will grow. Collect enough and you will be able to advance to a stronger evolution path. Careful though- if you get hit by an enemy, you lose experience bubbles!
• Frickin' Laser Beams: Averted with the Beam Cannon in Bubble Tanks 3. The attack is an instant hitscan move.
• Game Over: Averted. If you get damaged at level one ad you have zero experience bubbles, you will get sent to the safest adjacent area. In short, you can't die.
• Gatling Good: One of the weapons added to the first parts pack is a minigun.
• Giant Mook: Several of them. Four of them serve as Bosses- The Spawn Carrier, Tri-Guardian, BFT and Destroyer.
• GlassNinja: The Ghost Sniper. Least amount of health of all the final evolutions, but it can move extremely fast, become intangible, and the sniper move it uses hurts like a ton of bricks, does massive splash damage, AND pierces everything it hits.
• The Goomba: All the enemy varieties you fight near your starting point are these- they cannot harm you in any way. You also tend to fight them in almost every bubble too.
• Homing Projectile: Seeker missiles, as well as the Doomsday Infector.
• Interface Screw: Sticky Bullets make your tank slow, Jammer Bullets prevent you from firing, and Ink Bullets cover the screen in huge ink blotches that obscure everything. Thankfully, all three are temporary, but still irritating nonetheless.
• Instant Death Radius: Death Field Tanks. Not exactly instant death, but they drain your bubble count rapidly if you so long as to touch their red radius.
• Level Drain: If you get hit by an enemy, you lose experience points! Thankfully, should you lose too many in a bubble, the next bubble will have harmless Pinata Enemies.
• Kill It with Water: Your tank shoots out well, bubbles, to hurt the enemy.
• Macross Missile Massacre: This becomes very easy with 3's rocket launcher part, especially if you have more than one.
• Making a Splash: See Kill It with Water.
• Mighty Glacier: The Super Heavy and the BFT Carrier are large, slow, and have sheer firepower in the former and deadly minions in the latter.
• Tank Goodness: It isn't called Bubble Tanks for nothing.
• The Minion Master: The BFT Carrier can send out small, fast, invincible minions to shoot his enemies apart to shreds.
• Monster Compendium: Present in 2. Note that one of the enemies (Sapper Fighter) was never obtainable due to a bug in the game that didn't allow the player to encounter it.
• Mook Maker: Heavy Heavy Heavy 2, Spawn Tanks, Spawn Carriers, BFT and Destroyers are able to produce smaller Mooks. Especially notable is the Destroyer, which produces powerful Mooks as opposed to the rest which produce rather weak ones.
• Pinata Enemy: Part of 2's Anti Frustration Feature to avoid Unstable Equilibrium. When you get hit, you lose bubbles. If you get hit too many times in a bubble, the next unexplored bubble will tend to contain an enemy that can't fight back and drops a lot of bubbles.
• Power-Up Magnet: You attract experience bubbles as you pass near them. If you defeat all enemies in an area, you collect all the remaining experience bubbles regardless of distance.
• Smart Bomb: 3 has the Apocalypse Cannon, which nukes and kills every enemy in the bubble. However, it takes a mind-blowingly long time to recharge, and there are Mooks with a special device that can neutralize the attack.
• Shout-Out: BFTs are a definite reference to Doom's BFG.
  • The Beam Cannon's description: "I'M FIRIN MAH... No, just no."
• Shows Damage: Enemies visibly lose bubbles as they take more damage. Some of them lose weapons as they take damage (as their weapons are made of bubbles too).
• Spread Shot: The 3-way spread, the 5-way spread, and the Sticky burst are a regular burst, and the Starburst Cannon is an exploding shot.
• Unstable Equilibrium: Getting hit makes you lose experience, which weakens your tank, which makes it harder to kill enemies, which makes you more likely to get hit. Have fun Level Grinding!
  • Thankfully, the second game does give an Anti Frustration Feature- if you get hit too often in a bubble, the next unexplored bubble that you go into will have a high chance of containing Pinata enemies.
• Useless Useful Stealth: Sorta, in 3. Stealth-using enemies will periodically vanish from sight, but you can see where they are by seeing where their shots come from, and their stealth proves useless against homing missiles.
• The Virus: The Doomsday Infector, which sends a homing virus to infect enemies and slowly kill them. Once the infected enemy dies, 1-3 (2 in Bubble Tanks 3) new viruses will emerge, hell-bent on infecting more enemies.

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Bubble Tanks Tower Defense provides examples of:

• Airborne Mook: Not exactly, but Ghost creeps function like these- they use Dungeon Bypass, acting like the regular flying mooks in most Tower Defense games.
• Anti-Air: Present in this game as "Anti-Ghost" and "Ghost Splash".
• Asteroids Monster: Splitting creeps. Cursed Creeps will become a ghost when they die.
• Dungeon Bypass: Ghost creeps do this to you.
• EMP: EMP creeps explode into an EMP on defeat, which will disable all towers in a nearby radius for a few seconds.
• Fragile Speedster: Fast Creeps are fast, but take less damage than normal creeps.
• Frickin' Laser Beams: Averted with the laser tower, which hits an enemy instantly and does continuous damage.
• Giving Up the Ghost: Literally with Cursed creeps, they turn into a Ghost creep when killed.
• Interface Screw: FML mode causes block walls to randomly appear around the arena, severely limiting your space. Dark Mode blacks out the entire screen save for a small area around your mouse.
• Invisible Monsters: Stealth creeps do this to you. While your towers are able to see them, they are invisible to the player. They do lose their invisibility for a short period of time when damaged.
• Mighty Glacier: Slow Creeps are slow, but they can take a lot of damage before going down. They also cannot be slowed by slow burst towers.
• Mook Maker: Spawn creeps place "eggs" onto the ground that soon "hatch" into smaller non-spawning copies of itself. Thankfully, each new copy does give points and resources.
• Regenerating Health: The Regenerative Creep has this.
• Standard Status Effects: Slow (which slows enemies), Poison (which makes an enemy continuously lose health), Confused (makes an enemy move randomly), Weak (enemy takes more damage). Your towers can also get disabled by EMP creeps, which makes them useless for a short while.
• Tower Defense
• Zerg Rush: The Swarm Creep, which appears in a large swarm. They're pretty weak, but they're also pretty fast.