Nev's Jam Buster is a bubble-popping game that features pies rather than bubbles. The player helps Nev, the pet bear of Barney Harwood from the British series Bear Behaving Badly, clear an overstock of pies flowing through a pie-making factory with a jam buster cannon.
The cannon, like a traditional bubble shooter, shoots pie-style projectiles at the pies on the field. The player removes pies by matching each projectile pie's color to two or more linked pies. They receive a preview of the next projectile to the right of the shooter.
The player can shoot their pie projectiles in straight lines or bounce the shots off the side walls. If they remove five groups of pies from the field in a row, they receive bonus points. They also receive a mud pie that acts like a classic fireball and blasts through any pies in its path, no matter the colors. If the player hits a seagull carrying a pie with a projectile, all pies that match the color of its pie drop away from the field.
Nev's Jam Buster features two main obstacles. Although the cannon has a light that the player can use as a targeting line, it isn't always precise. As a result, the player must sometimes wait for the pies to flow into position at the end of the light to make the aim more accurate. The game also drops a metal chain and hook down to a blonde-haired character named Bouncer Boy. If the chain pulls him to the top of the screen, he drops a new pie color onto the field.
That said, the game offers the player additional ways to make up points. For example, they earn extra points for 10 seconds of play when they blast away double- and triple-score multiplier pies.
