Kaboomania Review
Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PC
Release Date: August 13, 2026
Developer: Fancy Factory
Reviewed on PS5
Gameplay screenshots captured by NextUpDaily
Simple, Explosive, and Surprisingly Addictive
Reviewing games can get weird when you start staring too hard at the numbers.
A score for one game doesn’t necessarily mean I enjoyed it more or less than another game with the exact same score. You can’t judge a small indie puzzle game by the same standards as a massive AAA release with hundreds of developers behind it. That comparison doesn’t really tell anyone anything useful.
What matters is much simpler: Does the game accomplish what it sets out to do? Is it fun? And is it worth the time of the audience it’s trying to reach?
With Kaboomania, the answer is yes.
Pac-Man, Bomberman, and a Whole Lot of Explosions
The easiest way to describe Kaboomania is probably Pac-Man meets Bomberman.
You control a little character running around maze-like stages, dropping bombs and trying to wipe out every enemy before they wipe out you. Many enemies are initially boxed in by explosive toxins and other obstacles, leaving you to figure out how to safely blow open sections of the map without accidentally turning yourself into collateral damage.
The layouts and structures change as you progress, and while the premise never becomes complicated, there’s more strategy involved than I expected.
You can increase your bomb radius, combine explosions, pick up different power-ups, and eventually start planning some surprisingly satisfying chain reactions. Dropping one bomb that triggers another, which then catches three enemies in the blast, has the same stupidly rewarding feeling every single time.
It’s simple. It’s supposed to be simple. That’s part of why it works.
Don’t Let the Pixels Fool You
There’s actually a decent skill gap here.
Some enemies are relatively easy to predict, while others can completely mess with whatever brilliant plan you thought you had five seconds earlier. The ghost became my personal enemy more than once. It’s unpredictable, can move through obstacles, and has an impressive ability to appear exactly where I don’t want it.
Later stages start demanding noticeably better movement and bomb placement, but thankfully, the controls hold up.
Kaboomania feels extremely responsive. Whenever I needed to quickly cut down a hallway or change direction to avoid an explosion, the game almost always did exactly what I asked it to do. In a game built around narrow paths, split-second movement, and explosives constantly going off around you, that responsiveness is essential.
If the movement were sloppy, the entire concept would fall apart.
It isn’t.
The Old-School Presentation Absolutely Works
One of the bigger surprises for me was the presentation.
There’s a distinctly old-school arcade feel here, from the pixelated visuals to the soundtrack, and it gives Kaboomania far more personality than I expected going in. With so many games chasing increasingly clean, modern visuals, there’s something refreshing about a game that looks like it knows exactly what era it’s trying to channel.
And the music genuinely got me.
By around Level 6, I was jamming.
That probably wasn’t on my review checklist going in, but here we are.
The art and audio work together nicely, and neither feels like it’s trying too hard to recreate the past. It feels more like Kaboomania understands what made those simpler arcade experiences appealing in the first place and builds around that.
Please Just Let Me Select My Level
My biggest frustration has nothing to do with the actual gameplay.
It’s the password system.
Instead of simply selecting previously completed stages from a menu, you’re given level passwords that allow you to return to specific points. It’s certainly old-school, but this is one retro mechanic I would’ve been perfectly happy leaving in the past.
I repeatedly found myself trying to remember codes just so I could get back to a particular stage.
With 1,000 levels, that’s not exactly ideal.
A traditional level-select screen would’ve made Kaboomania considerably easier to play in short bursts, which is where I think this game fits best. This is exactly the kind of thing I could see myself pulling out on a plane, before dinner, or whenever I have 15 minutes to kill.
Having to keep track of passwords works against that.
1,000 Levels Is… A Lot of Kaboomania
There is an absurd amount of game here.
Kaboomania features 1,000 stages, along with a high-score system and three starting lives, with opportunities to earn more as you play.
Personally, I cared far more about progressing through the levels and seeing what came next than chasing a high score. I don’t know if I’d ever have the determination to sit down and bulldoze through hundreds of stages in one stretch, but that’s also not really how I’d want to play it.
This works better as a game you keep around.
Play five levels. Play 20. Put it down. Come back later.
For the low asking price, there’s a ridiculous amount of content available to anyone who gets hooked on the loop.
Simple Games Still Have a Place
Kaboomania doesn’t pretend to be something it isn’t.
It isn’t trying to tell an emotional 30-hour story. It isn’t drowning you in upgrade trees, quest markers, or 15 different control combinations.
You move.
You drop bombs.
You solve the level.
You try not to blow yourself up.
Sometimes that’s enough.
There’s something genuinely refreshing about playing a game with such an obvious direction: have fun and beat the puzzle. It captures some of that simplicity older arcade games had, where you could understand the basic concept almost immediately but still spend hours getting better at it.
The password system feels unnecessarily dated, and eventually the sheer number of levels is probably going to outlast most players’ determination to see every last one.
But Kaboomania understands exactly what kind of game it wants to be.
More importantly, it does that job well.
Puzzle fans, old-school arcade players, Pac-Man fans, or anyone looking for a change of pace that doesn’t demand their full attention for hours at a time should find plenty to like here.
Sometimes you don’t need a giant adventure waiting for you.
Sometimes you just need a few hallways, some enemies, and a bomb.
Disclosure: A review code for Kaboomania was provided for review purposes. Receiving a review code had no influence on the opinions expressed in this review or its final score.
