Papa Panda: Bubble Shooter is a bubble-popping game that features "baby animal rescue" gameplay. In this subcategory of bubble-popping games, the player shoots bubbles hanging in a pattern on a playfield to reach trapped baby animals. They must free baby pandas across 24 chapters with dozens of levels per chapter. In many cases, they don't need to pop every bubble. Instead, they meet goals displayed at the upper-right corner.
Each level features a unique pattern of mixed bubbles. To pop the bubbles, the player must form a group of three or more matching ones using a bubble projectile, a glowing white ring shooter, and a dotted aiming line. The shooter contains two swappable projectiles. To release baby pandas from standard bubbles, the player forms a group of three matching bubbles that includes the bubble encasing the panda or a group of matched bubbles around a panda bubble that isn't attached to the pattern in any other way. If the player needs to free a baby from a large hexagon-shaped bubble, they only need to shoot a color-matched projectile at it.
Papa Panda offers boosters, including a long-arrow booster that extends the aiming line and adds a frosted targeting bubble to the end of it, a rainbow bubble that acts like a wild card that can match any bubble it hits, and a fireball that acts like a bomb and takes out a circle of bubbles. The game rewards the player with points to fill a progress bar at the upper-left corner and collect three stars. The player can receive extra points, coins, projectiles and boosters by spinning a fortune wheel, opening treasure chests and collecting daily rewards.�
