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Oh! Bomba


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Rating: 4.2/5 (101 votes)
Comments (73) | Views (5,140)

bomba.gifJohnBBomba is a brand new arcade avoidance game from the folks at Nitrome. Look just beyond the surface and Bomba reveals itself to be much more than a simple "don't touch the walls" game. There's strategy, there's speed, there's planning, there's even backtracking and careful timing involved. Think of it as an adventure/avoider and you'll get an idea of what to expect.

Controls are almost entirely mouse-driven save one important feature: pausing with the [spacebar]. Each level begins with the action frozen, and after you click on the critter to begin, the character becomes your cursor. Collect bomb power-ups and use the left mouse button to drop them. At any time you can use [space] to freeze the game, relinquishing the cursor to your control so you can take a breather.

The first couple of levels in Bomba are fairly straightforward. Dodge moving gears, skirt around narrow corners, and avoid moving enemies. The fun begins when bomb power-ups appear along with the fuzzy green moss. Since you can't touch anything solid, grab a bomb, drop it above the moss, and let gravity do the rest. Be sure to duck behind a corner so debris doesn't fly back and crush you. Sometimes you'll need to bomb the moss a few times in order to clear a safe path. The wider, the better!

In later levels new obstacles are introduced, such as laser barriers that allow bombs through but not you, and water that will pull bombs upwards. New power-ups also make an appearance, such as bombs that can fly! Nitrome puts everything to good use to keep the game feeling fresh even after a dozen or so levels.

Analysis: Another good looking game from Nitrome, with its signature art style and game design qualities fully intact. Bomba does a nice job blending arcade action with a more laid-back atmosphere, giving you the freedom to explore but never letting you rest on your laurels. One key factor to keep in mind is that Bomba doesn't time you, so you're free to sit back and strategize. Only when you're carrying a time-limited bomb or using a timed power-up do you have to hurry.

It's a subtle but enjoyable mix of genres, but if you're using a touch pad it won't be a walk in the park.

Play Bomba

Cheers to Marta for sending this one in! =)

Walkthrough Guide


(Please allow page to fully load for spoiler tags to be functional.)

Complete Walkthrough:

Don't bump into anything.

I usually don't like these kind of games, but this one is just easy enough for me to keep trying. I've gotten frustrated a few times, but I keep coming back.

73 Comments

A pause button! Finally, a mouse avoider with some common sense put into it!

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I'm sad :(
The page won't load...maybe I'll try on a different site than Nitrome's.

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The Nitrome site is loading just fine for me.

In any case, the game is also available to play at Miniclip.

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Level 11 is impossible, the bombs go off too quick!!!

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Level 11 is very annoying. Tricks that helped me:

Take the time to blow up all the large pieces of debris to give yourself a clearer path to the last section of moss

You can clear out about half of that last section of moss by placing a bomb on the other side of the wall

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I also tried to do it as "keith" said above, but lvl 11 is too annoying for me. Especially when you're using a notebook's touchpad. So i gave up.

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You're playing games with a notebook's touchpad?! x_x

I hear this complaint from people all the time when they say a game isn't playable in some way.

A touchpad is an input device of convenience used in portable computers (because bundling a mouse with it would be inconvenient and clumsy).

Use a mouse to play games designed for mouse input. It's by far a better—if not more appropriate—input device.

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I'm using a touch pad too, that's why I'm having issues. Used a touch pad for all the other Nitrome games and managed to finish them!!! This may be the one that I can't do with a touch pad. I'll have to get a mouse!!

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Perhaps Nitrome should consider quality instead of quantity. They've been spitting out games at a ridiculous pace, and most of them suck, including this latest release. It already becomes impossible after the first or second level.

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Nitrome is making some really good game lately. I have liked almost everything they have put out in the last six months or so. This isn't my type of game, but I am enjoying it more than the usual "avoidance" junk that I have seen.

That being said, how is level 22 even possible?

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I'm beginning to agree with everyone else... the difficulty ramps up way too high. I'm having to use little tricks to "cheat" to get through several levels.

Trick for level 22:

When you right click, your character is taken automatically back to the start.

That means you can take your time placing bombs in the upper-left corner of the screen and right-click to get out of the water immediately so you don't run out of air.

I'm on level 25 and I think I'm going to quit. It's just too frustrating, level after level.

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Taybo, although I can appreciate criticism when it applies to the games we highlight here, providing only negative statements without any facts or evidence to back it up is just not helpful at all, either to the developers or to the visitors here who are sincerely interested in an intelligent discussion on the relative merits of games.

Obviously, judging from other comments posted here, the game is not impossible after the first or second level.

Your comment sucks because it has nothing valuable to say.

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I enjoyed it...thanks for the post!

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I usually love Nitrome but I'm not patient enough for this one (and I'm using a mouse!). I bailed out after many attempts at level 11: too little time with the bombs and some other little annoyances like the green goo that sometimes seems to multiplicate rather than dissolve under the effect of a bomb. I'll stick with Numbskull for the moment! (I love the little skeleton dance at the end of each level...)

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Complete Walkthrough:

Don't bump into anything.

I usually don't like these kind of games, but this one is just easy enough for me to keep trying. I've gotten frustrated a few times, but I keep coming back.

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The_Corruptor November 3, 2008 5:05 PM

While I always enjoy the first few levels of Nitrome's games, I have found that consistantly they have had a problem with difficulty scaling. The exception is Hot Air 2 - the only nitrome game I have been able to beat without excess frustration.

This is a very common problem amongst game-making companies (mine included) that have limited resources and so can hire a small number of testers (or none, they use people from other parts of the company) to test the game over and over again. Thus, these testers get really *really* good at the game, making the difficulty curve about twice what it should be. For an expert player, the difficulty is perfect. For a new player (like Nitrome's target audience) the difficulty is just too high.

If Nitrome wants to improve on this, they could hopefully find beta-testers that they hire for 'one shot plays' to see how far an average person can get in, say, an hour. Not a person that's played every level thirty times to make sure they're bug free, but a person who's never played that particular game before.

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Excellent feedback, the_corruptor, thanks! :)

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Jay,

Taybo says the he/she doesn't like the game because it's too hard and that he thinks Nitrome is focusing on quantity instead of quality. The_Corruptor basically has the same criticism, but because he is a game developer, has insight into WHY this may be.

But according to you Jay, Taybo's comment "sucks", and The_Corruptor's is "excellent".

I don't get it. And I'm guessing others may feel similarly. Just letting you know that you're coming off a little unfair.

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This place is the drama hub, today. I think the attitudes between Taybo's post and The_Corruptor's were very different.

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debaser80 - I respect the fact that you see both comments as being similar, I do not.

We encourage and promote constructive criticism here. Comments like: "this game sucks" or "all their games suck" have no merit and are (usually) treated as spam and deleted.

Just because you can say anything you like on the Internet, doesn't mean you should.

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It's GREAT!! I always enjoy games Mouse Avoider style, but Nitrome have improved it to make it Nitrome-y, and above the average level. They EVEN included the pause feature!

The hardest part about the game was having to

Avoid a relentless fire of flameballs :)

.

I had to finish it on Miniclip, as the Nitrome site showed me a loading screen instead of the first level.

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as a general matter, I hate wall-avoider games. My hand always gets twitchy. But I often enjoy Nitrome games so I gave it a shot.

I appreciated sentiment behind the pause feature. Except that it only freezes your player, not any time-based events! (air while underwater, timed bombs, moving landscape obstacles) And it's only when I need to rush that my hand gets twitchy, so it was effectively useless.

I guess wall-avoiding is the whole point of this game; but I liked the non-accelerated motion with mouse control, I found the air bombs really fun, plus I generally like small avatars, and I would like to see a game with those elements but with a different core challenge. Alternatively, getting rid of the timing aspect would be great, but I guess the only challenge to wall avoiding without timing would be to make obstacles with one pixel margins of error, which would be equally unpleasant.

I still found it fun, but I also gave up after level 11. I agree about the need for level testing for difficulty.

In comparison, I LOVED numbskull, especially when I solved, what was it, level 43 I think? That was so rewarding, although it was by far the most difficult and probably should have been the last level. I've liked Nitrome's straightforward puzzle games much more than their 'concept' action/puzzle games, even though I generally like action better.

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Both the Nitrome site and the Miniclip link are just showing me the loading animation over and over...

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jimbog - sounds like a Flash Player versioning issue. Have you updated your Flash Player lately?

Try that and see if that fixes it on either site.

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I found a useful trick that helps a lot.

If you right click, you will be taken back to the start of the level or the most recent star you touched!

I found this out on level 11, where it is useful. I can't get past the level, however.

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Well? Off of the puzzle games, and back to action! Now, level 12 stuns me.

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Well... it just turns into a massive

fireball avoidance fest..

and I'm really stuck on level 29.

Where the fireballs and the flying creatures are with the timed bombs..

AHHH.

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I didn't find this game fun. I usually suck at wall avoiders anyway and just give up after a while, but the addition of more game elements both helped and hurt in a way.

It helped in adding a flare that took away from the general hate for wall avoiders and added to the "Nitrome-y" (thanks Dav) feel of the game and made me feel good inside :P

But the addition of different things hurt in the fact that it gave you more to do, and had me running back and forth to get more bombs, or to renew my fire power.

Overall, I find this game to be quite enjoyable for someone who hates wall avoiders. And I really think the addition of the "a" at the end of "Obomba" was a bit funny because of the realease date. 4/5

A note on all of the drama is just some immaturity and overreaction. I think that Jay has justifiable reasons for saying what he said, and I agree. Back yourself up or you're just wasting space, time, and spacetime.

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For some reason, whenever I click bomba it just explodes. It's like the game does not hold bomba to the mouse and simply detonates it...I can't pass the very first lvl!

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Normally nitrome games that are totally mouse based have given me trouble. Twang and Pest control gave me mouse torubles, and both hot airs were too hard for me.

I'm seven levels into this one though, and I'm liking it.

Still, for my money, Nitrome does platformers the best ie. Final Ninja, Dirk Valentine etc.

Great work Jay!

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Level 22 hint:

Dropping all three bombs at once makes the round thing move further when they all go boom.

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I would just like to say a few things...
- I'm a Nitrome fan. (comments may contain bias)
- These positive and negative comments appear on almost every discussion - whether it because of a touch pad, or difficulty curve, or whatever, this doesn't mean that you shouldn't try (if you're new) or come back to it after a few weeks (if you're disappointed)
- Oh, and just to show off a bit - I witnessed this game join the ranks. Or rather, the Web. Therefore I got to see the unreseted high scores - the highest was nine thousand something, under the name JHC or something, and then you had ones like TEST or TESTY.
- Knowing some Polish, I have noticed a weird coincidence - the name, Bomba, means bomb in Polish and TESTY (see above) means tests. I also know many Poles have emigrated to the UK - is one in Nitrome? Makes me wonder...
- I suggested this game at 17:30 GMT 0 and I pressed suggest, then Done (instead of suggest another game) but before the next page loaded, I closed the window. I suggested under the same name, to help Jayisgames write a review faster than any other web page (dedicated user ^^) and to see my name appear somewhere else - but maybe you didn't get the suggestion?
Anyways, I love Bomba - oh yeah, why is it called Oh! Bomba???

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We're sorry for the oversight, Natsuko. I've just updated the entry with the one and only submission we received for this one.

Often times a review is already written, or in the process of being written when suggestions come in, and therefore may get overlooked. As was the case here.

As for the Oh! Bomba title, I added that for the play on words it represents at this momentous occasion. :D

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I'm having trouble with level 11, someone help please.

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I can't beat level 11, it is too hard for me.
I will wait for Toxic 2

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Okay, after writing a long review for this game, I figured I should put it in spoiler tags. So I did.

Long, rambling review

First off, I'm a huge fan of Nitrome, and I've loved every game they've ever made. Second, I'm not a big fan of the mouse. The keyboard is more intuitive. But I'm one of those crazy Linux fanatics who often types [ESC] :dw (bonus to anyone who knows what that does, and in which editor) in text boxes, so my opinion on that subject shouldn't count. But, that also means I don't have a huge affinity for mouse-avoider games, so I can't be totally non-partisan (election related pun completely intended). Despite that, I'll try to be objective in debating the pros and cons of the game.

Okay, the first thing I have to say is the lack of innovation. One of the things I like about Nitrome is the fact that every game seems to be unlike anything I've ever played before. Examples: Skywire, Onekey, Cheese Dreams, Small Fry, Knuckleheads, Magneboy, Snot Put, Off the Rails, Yin Yang (although Shift is better, Yin Yang came out first), Toxic, and the list goes on. Now, just because something is based off of something older, doesn't make it worse. The third Back to the Future movie was the best, and I've already said that Shift is better than Yin Yang. If you do enough different, you can do great things. But the problem is, Bomba doesn't do enough different.

Don't get me wrong, the pause system is great, and the character is pretty cool, and the sound is some of the best video game music ever (Overworld from Super Mario Bros. takes the top prize). But it missed it's big chance, which is to stop making these games about speed, but more about accuracy. My hands cramp up when ever I go too fast, and that's a pain. It could be more about making it through smaller gaps, but slowly.

Also, isn't the point of a game to entertain, and the point of a flash game to do so quickly? To paraphrase Ben "Yahtzee" Crowshaw, "The whole point of episodic gaming is to create A: shorter games B: at a lower price C: released more frequently." This applies to flash games quite nicely. A flash game shouldn't take years of practice to complete, you should be able to finish in an hour, tops, and move on to the next one. As it is with this game, making it hard to beat any given level, just makes a short game aggravating.

I'm sorry if I seem overly critical, it's really a game worth a play, and I'm sure it's going to be a good game for some people, it's just I personally don't care for it, and other Nitrome fans probably won't either.

Short review

If you like mouse-avoider games, you'll love this. If you're a huge Nitrome fan, you probably won't like it.

Off-topic question for Jay

"Just because you can say anything you like on the Internet, doesn't mean you should," is the greatest quote ever. Can I quote you for that?

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I'm having serious issues getting the rings out of the way on level 12. Any tips?

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Or rather, I can't get the rings out of the little ditches at the bottom. (on lvl 12)

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I beat the game. The last level stumped me for a while though. Great game over all.

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is it just me or is it that nitromes last couple of games are all mouse based?

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Is it me or is the name of the game a bit um.. coincidental? Oh-Bom-Ba?

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Thank you Jay, oh, (pun intended, considering title) and I love the walkthrough, debaser08! Anyways, another off topic question - about suggestions - I suggested a game called Smashing, did you get that? It's quite retro, but it's a game I couldn't find on jayisgames.com
PS I love the fact that Jay appears from time to time on these forums - it gives a feel of real equality and a strong relationship amongst reviewers, players etc.

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Now's your chance, Nitrome! While all of us are stuck on level 11, you can take over the world!

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This is so annoying. I'm still stuck on level 11. I don't have enough time. Help please.

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Tobberian November 7, 2008 7:40 AM

Last level solution:

First star:
Just follow the fireballs along top wall, QUICK-pull to star when above.

Second star:
Stand between the cannons on the right wall.
When you see an opening (happens every sec), QUICK-pull all the way to left side.

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i need help on level 11, that should be the last level

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Walkthrough for Level 11

Blow up the first moss with two bombs. Proceed down. Then take the time bomb, and move a bit to the left (1mm) then down. It will rest by the wall, and blow up the second moss. Do this twice, then do it twice inside the tunnel (and sometimes in the corner to get rid of the fourth moss). Then proceed to the third moss (make it so you have three lives left) Do the same, bomb in corner twice, then over the wall and proceed to the hard fourth one. You can do it!
Also, try to get away from the range of the bomb and press space to rest your hand. Good luck - it doesn't come at once!!!

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Could someone help me with level 28, please?

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Tobberian November 8, 2008 8:20 AM

Last level is 30 (forgot to mention).

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I still have problems with level eleven. Can anyone help me?

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Did anyone else have a weird glitch where you drop a bomb onto some moss and then the bomb falls right through?

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help me with level 11, please.

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shortfuse November 9, 2008 3:22 PM

Level 11 is seemingly impossible. But, I am getting closer each time. I really like Nitrome's style and sense of humor—they make good games.

I find that keeping my eye on the 'bomber' really helps avoid walls. That seems like an obvious thing, but I find myself looking ahead and then forgetting to evade walls.

Those bomb timers are so short.

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Hi, I'm a bit new here, but having SERIOUS trouble with level 28 as well as daniele. I can get past the first two lots of fireballs but I cant work out how to get down to the last star, help please!

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Actually, dont worry, I've finished the game! Wooo! It's all about timing! I thoroughly enjoyed it, at some points it got fairly hard and I did feel like giving up a couple of times, but hey, at least it wasnt one of those annoyingly easy games :)

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grant87945 November 9, 2008 10:06 PM

I know! level 11 is so stupid. I haven't completed it yet.

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How are you supposed to get out of that tiny corridor on level 22? I can't get that round thing out the way.

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can anyone help me with lvl 17?

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Bomba-Player November 15, 2008 10:58 AM

Can anyone help me at level 25? this is really hard....

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I second the following comment:

For some reason, whenever I click bomba it just explodes. It's like the game does not hold bomba to the mouse and simply detonates it...I can't pass the very first lvl!
Posted by: Lasiurus

I feel stupid for just not getting it, but how exactly do you play? please forgive the Q, thank you very much,

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This trick will work for all levels (especially level 11)! Every time you want to escape a ticking bomb that you are going to be killed by, just left click on your mouse and that will take you to the safe spot you started at. That way, you can drop the bomb and get out of there right in time!

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What is up with level 22?

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Someone please help me with level 15. I can't get past those little metal balls at the bottom.

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For those of you who are struggling on level 11, I just thought of something. As long as you are not too slow, and have two/three lives(Two lives might not work but I don't know cause i haven't got there yet) just allow yourself to be bombed at the forth moss instead of dropping it. Then you have a little more time instead of having to get away! I hoped i helped. Have fun!

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I really have to say: It is the best nitrome game for a long time!

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Jay, why does the name say Oh!Bomba, when it never says Oh anywhere in the name or instructions.

[Edit: Because I felt like adding that to the title. -Jay]

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This is probably one of Nitrome's best games! A lot of fun, a lot of frustration and a lot of work will be involved, but it's definitely NOT impossible. I've reached the last nail-biting level and I'm stuck on it, but ah well, it was a nice ride, and with some luck, I might actually pull it off. There are other Nitrome games that are better, obviously, but this is in the top 5. Way to go, guys!

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Joe Gona March 16, 2009 8:37 PM

Seriously, this game is hard. Overhazardly hard. I beat level 11 after like two months and then i went on, and ended up being stuck again. So ends Bomba. Oh, and one thing is true- if you are a Nitrome fan, this game can hurt you bad.

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funlerz June 6, 2009 2:56 PM

i just found a secret, as said, right click teleports you to the start, here is a great tip.

lets take level 15 for example, to get the flying bomb to destroy the moss, theres that annoying spinning thing that you must go through very small area that keeps moving down, you get to the bomb and think "OH NO! I have to go back up through that again, well right click and that solves that, you take the bomb with you!!!

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funlerz June 6, 2009 3:27 PM

hmm i just noticed something, i know this game came out before Obama became president, but if you say it like oh-bomb-a it sounds like Obama, wierd >.>z

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Visitor June 16, 2009 2:45 PM

Is it me or do I see a bit of the Scary Maze Game in this, without the scary bits?

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level 11 is hard! but the best way to pass it is to 'commit suicide' on the last mossy bit... Just take the bomb, go as fast as you can to the mossy bit, get as close as you can and let the bomb go off... Assuming you have more than one lifes left, you'll then be able to go through the level to the last star... If you didnt understand check out youtube... Its usually helpfull!! :P

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