Ac!dbomb Details - LaunchBox Games Database

Overview

Acidbomb is a puzzle game where the player is tasked with defusing bombs. Each bomb is composed of a number of cells arranged in a grid, and each cell can be empty or contain a "piston". To defuse the bomb, the player must correctly mark all the cells with pistons, but if the piston layout is not identified correctly before the time limit runs out, the bomb explodes and the puzzles must be restarted. The player can also mark cells with an X to indicate they are empty, or a question mark if he is unsure. The layout of pistons is random every time, but their number is always the same. The piston layout can be found with the help of "SDUs"; these are horizontal, vertical or diagonal light beams that stretch across the screen and can be moved around to highlight different cells. The player is informed about the total number of pistons which are present in the area highlighted by the SDUs, but without any information as to where they exactly are. To make things harder, some of the empty cells contain "viruses"; when clicked, these cover the screen with static for a short time. Some puzzles give the player access to several one-use chaff grenades which instantly reveal the contents of a tile. Apart from the basic, "explosive" bomb, the game includes other types of bombs with variant rules. For instance, the "flammable liquid" bomb heats up every time the player marks a cell, threatening to explode if cells are marked too quickly; the "spontaneously combustible" bomb has a timer which ticks down twice as fast. The game consists of a series of puzzles, represented as bombs which the player has to defuse across different neighborhoods. After defusing all the bombs in a neighborhood, the player faces a boss level in the form of a large, complex atomic bomb which takes a long time to defuse. Getting past the nuclear bomb allows access to the next neighborhood. Additional features, unlocked later in the game, are the "Virtual Bomb Simulator" where the player can create a customized puzzle to solve, and the "Ac!drop" arcade mini-game.