Bubble Tanks is a Flash game originally released on Armor Games, a two-decade-old online game aggregator that somehow still exists. In the game, you pilot a small bubble through a procedurally generated foam universe, absorbing smaller bubbles to grow larger, evolving into increasingly complex configurations of spheres and cannons. Here is a reasonably accurate video of the gameplay, recreated in beautiful high-definition.

Bubble Tanks was first released in 2007, with a sequel out in 2009, and another sequel in 2010. Back when I first played it as a child, I was convinced, absolutely convinced, that there was someone in the world whose entire life was nothing but Bubble Tanks. This person—and I took it on faith that they were real—woke each morning and immediately, before coffee, before the basic animal functions of evacuation and sustenance, played Bubble Tanks. They posted on obscure forums, arguing bitterly over tank builds and bubble physics with three other people who had the same devotion. I knew that their room was disgusting, repulsive. This was essential to the vision, that their stained clothes lay across their floor, worms crawling over them. They were either skeletal or enormously bloated, monastic asceticism or excess gluttony, one [...]

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