When a circus monkey orders you to keep on poppin’, it’s in your best interest to listen. Keep on Poppin’ is a Match-3 Facebook puzzle game that’s not especially revolutionary, nor will you even be able to play it for long before you run out of “lives” and must recharge. That said, it’s still an addicting experience—like popping bubble wrap. Also, there’s a pretty cute monkey cheering you on, and that’s certainly worth something.
When a circus monkey orders you to keep on poppin’, it’s in your best interest to listen. Keep on Poppin’ is a Match-3 Facebook puzzle game that’s not especially revolutionary, nor will you even be able to play it for long before you run out of “lives” and must recharge. That said, it’s still an addicting experience—like popping bubble wrap. Also, there’s a pretty cute monkey cheering you on, and that’s certainly worth something.
Keep on Poppin’ orders you to pop groups of three or more similarly-colored circus balloons. Each balloon is also decorated with a symbol, like a heart or a diamond. The balloon decorations don’t seem to fulfill any additional purpose, but they’re worth mentioning because the orange balloons boast a “Radiation” warning symbol for some baffling reason.
If you manage to “keep on poppin’,” you build combo multipliers. These multipliers boost your score, but they serve an additional purpose. The more combos you chain together, the faster your monkey pal fills up a special paint balloon. If you keep up your run of good luck and the balloon reaches maximum capacity, it explodes and “paints” the board with a single color. From there, you can go to town and receive an enormous boost to your score. If you do well, you might even trigger a “Fire Balloon” that clears out entire rows on the board when it’s matched up with other balloons of the same color.
As is typical for Facebook’s Match-3 games, you can unlock and buy single-use power ups with soft and hard currency. Bonuses include score multipliers, a pop gun that clears away random balloons when you’re stuck, time extensions, and more.
Keep on Poppin’ is a decent game—its main problem is that you’ve played games like it over and over again throughout your Facebook career. The game’s Energy system is problematic, too. A round of Keep on Poppin’ lasts a minute (unless you add a little time with a power up), and you get five lives that you’ll burn through in, well, five minutes.
A smaller but still notable issue is the game’s paint-filled balloon. When it explodes, it bleeds red paint—but it’s just as likely that the balloons on the board will turn orange, green, yellow, blue, or another color. And let’s not beat around the bush, here: when that balloon pops, the somersaulting bits of red paint look a lot like blood leaping from a gunshot wound.
If you’re not burnt out on Match-3 games and you just love popping balloons (perhaps the action reminds you of disappointment, sadness, and children’s tears), then run away to the circus and give Keep on Poppin’ a try. It beats mucking out elephant pens, at any rate.
