Bomberman is the next big icon to show up on the Apple Arcade. Unfortunately they didn’t give him the biggest effort here. The game really does the bare minimum and so ultimately I do think that it will be doomed to fade away rather quickly. This is really a game that is 90% focused on the online components with just some offline stuff. For example you can play an offline game with some bots but that’s it. There’s no set mission structure or anything like that. You can level up to unlock new parts which are called missions by doing a lot of different tasks but that’s the only time you will ever go to offline. Most tasks can be done online and are even easier that way.

So there’s no story or anything. When you jump in you will learn the basics and then jump into action. The controls are the classic Bomberman ones so it shouldn’t take long to master them. You walk around the map and drop off bombs that you want to hit the enemies with. You have to be careful as you can die to your own bomb though so there is a lot of strategy here. As you blow away enemies and objects you will pick up objects that increase your power, speed, and the number of bombs that you hold. They’re all pretty handy to be sure so you will want to keep that in mind at all times.

Now there is one part of the game that I will give some high praise and that is the soundtrack. We’re talking full lyrical pop songs that are actually pretty exciting and then some classic tunes as well. You unlock more music as you level up which is a fun bonus. It felt like the game really went above and beyond the call to action with this ost. It really overshadows the rest of the game which probably sounds like a massive diss to be honest but that’s just how it goes sometimes. The graphics are more on the okay side. They’re fine but don’t really stand out.

The gameplay is fun as always but I would say that it doesn’t work super well on the phone. It’s hard to come to a complete stop so you’ll get hit by bombs in moments where you know that you really shouldn’t have gotten tagged. That is always one of the most frustrating moments out there because there was just no reason for it. I know a controller could fix that but again, a mobile game should work well on the mobile right? I’d get more used to it the more I go though.

At the end of the day it’s still okay but the problem is there’s really no reason to play this one for long. I at least need some more single player content here. Multiplayer only/focused games can absolutely work like Fortnite but for every one that works there are probably at least 20 that don’t. This is one of those, Bomberman needs a story, it’s one of the things that he is known for. Without it, well he just doesn’t stand out quite as much.

Overall, This wasn’t my favorite title but it’s still worth checking out if you have the Arcade. I think right away you’ll see why it didn’t really work for me. It’s fun enough but just doesn’t have enough content to play around with which holds it back in a big way. Throwing in some missions or a proper story would have been great. As with any multiplayer mode you can probably buff up the enjoyment factor by 10 if you have any friends who play the game so you can hang out with them but that’s probably a longshot. I doubt this game has a very wide user base to be honest although I could be wrong. It just feels like there are too many rivals around at this point who would have probably gotten a bunch of users on their side already by now. That’s the beauty of the industry though, the amount of games that are around are basically endless.

Overall 5/10