Poppa - Pop Bubbles! Live

Some days aren't hard, exactly — they're just full of palaver. The form that wants filling in, the call you're still waiting on, the thing you keep turning over at the traffic lights. Poppa is a calm bubble popping game for those days: something for your hands to do while the top of your mind goes quiet. Hold a finger down and a bubble swells under it; move, and it stops growing and gathers speed instead; let go and it flies off, trailing smaller ones behind it. Touch any bubble to pop it — a soft bloop, pitched to its size. Bubbles drift, wobble, bounce gently off the edges and burst on their own after a while. A big daisy floats through, shouldering them aside, drawn behind them so the film tints its petals. There is weather, and there are birds, and there are powerfups that let off a big burst of bubbles. Now and then one is carrying a surprise. Nothing too exciting. No score, no timer, no fail state. Nothing to unlock, nothing to collect, no account and no sign-in. It counts the bubbles you have popped, and that is the only number in it. It is made to be autism and ADHD friendly, and what that comes down to is this: nothing here asks anything of you, and nothing can be done badly. It is built to be easy to stim with — the same motion over and over, a soft sound pitched to each bubble, and something happening whether or not you are steering it. Every part of it has a switch: sounds, surprises, wind and rain, the birds, the things that go off on their own. Turn off whatever is too much and leave the rest. Nothing is taken away for switching something off, because there is nothing to take. There is an optional screen lock that pins the app so it cannot be left by accident. Hold the padlock for three seconds to let it go again. It is free, and there is one banner, on the title screen. Nothing interrupts you while you are playing. And if you have left the screen lock on, it opens straight into the bubbles and never passes the title screen at all. Something for idle hands, and ten minutes where the rest of it can wait.