Last updated on January 3rd, 2026 at 10:27 am
BUST-A-MOVE JOURNEY – Puzzle Game Review
BUST-A-MOVE JOURNEY is a Puzzle game from TAITO Corporation, first launched in 21st August 2017.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 45+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes BUST-A-MOVE JOURNEY Stand Out
BUST-A-MOVE Features:
- Shoot bubbles and match 3 or more bubbles of the same color to make them pop!
- Complete your missions in every stage such as "Pop all the bubbles!", "Reach the target score!" and "Save Chack'n!"!
- Clearing a stage unlocks the next stage. Move forward on your way!
- Skillfully use the helpful items and characters to advance the stages efficiently!
- "EASY MODE" to assist "Guide & Change Up" functions is now available!
- The game includes 270 + αpuzzle stages with a variety of gimmicks!
- You can purchase a MAP to play additional stages from the Stage 271.
How to play:
- Shoot bubbles and match 3 or more bubbles of the same color to make them pop.
- A stage is cleared by completing Goal Target.
- Bonus points are awarded when you remove a bunch of bubbles at once or remove bubbles with a bubble bouncing off a side wall of the game field.
- COMBO occurs when you successfully remove bubbles in a consecutive manner.
- Collect STARS and unlock TREASURE BOX by getting a target score in every stage.
Notes:
- iOS version 7.1 or newer is required.
This Puzzle game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, BUST-A-MOVE JOURNEY is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 11th September 2017
Recent improvements include:
This app has been updated by Apple to display the Apple Watch app icon.
WHAT'S NEW
Ver.1.0.1 Update Notice
- Other in-game feature improvements
We hope you continue to play BUST-A-MOVE JOURNEY in the future.
Download & Availability
BUST-A-MOVE JOURNEY is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get BUST-A-MOVE JOURNEY on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Im not sure why the reviews on this are so low, but this is easily our favorite game. No annoying adds and probably the best old school Bust a Move game you can get. Its also huge, Im in level 150 and not even half way through. If you you were a fan of the original Bust a Move on Nintendo, then this is the game for you.
We used to play Puzzle Bobble growing up and we still have fond memories of your classic game. We think it would be cool if you can make another Puzzle Bobble game thats single player/PvP similar to Clash Royale with similar menu as well. As long as the in app purchases is fair and reasonable we would love to see a PvP Clash Royale version of Puzzle Bobble. If you can response to this please do. Thank you.
We don't have a lot of time for video games so when we play we like to save our progress. This game exists on the Japanese iTunes Store as puzzle bobble and you can save your progress via the ubiquitous LINE app but on this American version of the game that function is lost. We've been playing the game for years and we would hate to see our progress wiped Away by an accidental clearing of our iPhone. They could easily build a Facebook function in the app to save your progress with your Facebook account? There's just got to be a way to save your progress? You really should merge this app with the Japanese version and have one app that does it all for you with all of the features of the game available to every player regardless of country… The internet made the World International so why can't this game have an international mindset. Americans aren't that stupid to accept a less than standard port to a great game.?? You can find us playing the line puzzle Bobble version of this game we will skip this game until it gets a save feature and a commitment from the Publishers to keep the game up. This game was called Bust A Move Islands not too long ago. Your fans have a memory longer than 10 minutes!! Please reward the hardcore bustamove fans.
The developers have made unlocking certain characters far too complicated. Players are forced to grind for around 30,000 coins, which takes an excessive amount of time. On top of that, in-app purchases only allow gamers to buy maps. Why arent we, as players, given the option to purchase other contentlike charactersinstead of just maps.
We love this game so much but we stopped playing because we lost all our data. We would love to play this game again but we really want a reliable way to restore our save data.
The game is a must have for Bust a Move fans, but the only problem is summoning new characters cost too much coins. And on top of that you could get the same characters each summon. Hopefully Taito will lower the summon prices.
Brings back old memories! People need to relax on the downloading data. It only happened to us a few times in the beginning. We have a 7 plus so that might make a difference. Anyways, having a blast with this gem! Edit: What's up with downloading the data again? It didn't bother us at first but now It's happening way too often after the last update. It's still an awesome game but we changed our score to a four because of this.
So its pretty clear that this was a game that was initially built as a freemium game that they then switched to being a non-freemium game but kept all the freemium aspects. The RG seems to be geared towards picking bubbles that are attached regardless of how close the bubbles are to you. This effectively kind of forces you to use the cheats that are provided by the game that will require in-game currency to use. So theres a feeling of artificial difficulty built into the game. Additionally, the game is constantly breaking. You could have had a great run on on one of the special stages that happened once a day, but the game will suddenly freeze when it tries to load after you win, you will lose all of that money that you won because the game will just effectively restart and ignore the progress you made. So it constantly feels like youre running uphill. So if you choose to buy the game, Id strongly suggest play it with the data and Wi-Fi off. It doesnt fix the freemium aspects of the game, but it does help mitigate the broken loading issues of the game.
When we pay for a game, even if its just a few bucks, we expect to be able to play the game. After 270 levels, you have to pay $1 to get another 90 levels. We would rather have to pay for the coins to buy power ups than have to pay for levels. Or, let us pay with the in game coins to unlock more levels. We love this game but cant justify paying more money to keep playing. Will continue playing other games that dont nickel and dime us to death. In game currency is easy to come by, so thats a good thing if you have the cash to keep buying levels after playing 90.
Cant get past level 922. Crashes all of our devices. Please fix!! Also – how about some more Event Levels? Its been a long time 188 has been the end of Events. Thank you.
You have to be connected to the internet in order to launch the game. It checks for a connection at various points in the game; and stops the game if it doesn't find it. Its a good game if you always have a connection, but frustrating if you don't. YMMV. Another problem is that it lowers the volume of your music, even if you have SFX and background music turned off. Im sure that this is a minor gripe for most players, but for us its a deal breaker. We havent played this in months for this reason alone.
UPDATE IPHONE 11 PRO COMPATIBILITY ASAP.
Grind is ridiculous for a paid game but its playable. But PLEASE update for iPhone X screens.
This game will be fun for fans of the bust a move franchise. There are lots of levels to keep you playing and tons of characters/special items to unlock for use in game. The main problem is earning coins. There seem to be about 30 characters to unlock and in order to unlock a premium character at random you must spend 30,000 coins(which takes quite a bit of time to gain. The problem is that the game unlocks the same few characters. After a few weeks of playing and unlocking characters we must have spent 30k twenty times to unlock characters but we keep getting the same 4 characters. So instead of spending 6000 coins and leveling up a low tier character, the game takes your 30,000 coins and levels up your low tier character. There are 1000 levels you can purchase but we are incredibly bored after 270. Unlocking characters seems to be the only progression to make but it is incredibly grindy and you never know what character you will get because RNG. Played for a month but have no desire to continue and we're a long time fan of Bust-A-Move. Imo this game stinks because of the RNG factor in character progression. Edit: we went two weeks without playing this game and only collecting the daily bonuses. We finally got 30,000 coins from this so we decided to unlock another 30,000 character. We got a duplicate character again. We have uninstalled this game.
We have seriously been playing this off and on for over a year. Ive seen few to no updates really and on top of that? EVERY TIME we OPEN THE APP IT ASKS ME TO SIGN INTO MY ITUNES ACCOUNT. Why? Im already signed in. No other app is having this issue. Additionally? Why would this game even need that? Im signed into Game Center. Im signed into everything. Why is this an issue? Whats the angle? We paid for this intending to relax. Instead it is giving us more stress. This isnt worth the cost. This isnt like the Bust A Move games we remember from childhood. At all. Its literally an entirely different year! Why hasnt this been updated.
You can skip it, but you wont go further.
Hello, TAITO, we bought all the game titles from TAITO and we love always TAITO shooting games. Got it on sale in $2.99. BUT, this game keeps downloading and 'CRASH' during installation. We cannot play in iPad mini at all. DO NOT BUY.
Need to be online to play. 1 star.
Bob and Bub are just so cute, and it's a great childhood game for our phone. Works fine on our iPhone and the data download is not the end of the world. Hope the devs continue to update it.
Finally the original bobble shooter game is back, one of the best games in store, we don't know about the reviews but the game is working fine, we were playing it for hours, very cheap and worth the price, remember it's from Taito, one of the best games companies from childhood.
The occasional extra few sips of data downloaded aren't nearly the world-shattering tragedy reflected in the other reviewer's sentiments. Everything is fine. Like Bub and/or Bob? Welcome home.
We used to love playing this game as a kid. Now we have the pleasure to enjoy it on our phone. There is a ton on content in the game and it's just as fun like it was back in the day. The only complaint we have is that the app icon looks to have low resolution, which sort of looks ugly when next to other app icons. Anyhow, thanks for releasing this gem.
The frequent downloading of new levels is problematic if you are not on Wi-Fi. Still very fun game that we have been playing with no other complaints.
We love puzzle bobble however this game keeps downloading between levels. Also the resolution seems to be low. It doesn't look to par with newer games on an iPhone 7 resolution. Please make some updates. Otherwise it's a good game.
Like the game well enough crashes non stop though, for us anyway. Will get a higher rating if that issues fixed.
We paid five bucks and what do you know? It's constantly downloading content and the locked features resemble f2p aka pay to win features… Never again taito.
Keeps crashing and we already paid for it. Needs to be fixed.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.0.1
- Size: 127.06 MB
- iOS: 7.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: [TAITO Corporation]()
Last updated: 11th September 2017 | Genre: Puzzle | Developer: TAITO Corporation