Winter Whirl is a bubble-shooting game that offers non-traditional play. The player is tasked with knocking spheres that look like round Christmas tree ornaments decorated with snowflakes from a whirling piece at the center of a playfield that features a nighttime winter scene of a house in a forest with smoke coming out of a chimney and a snowman in the foreground.
With a snow globe and arrow shooter, the player shoots matching spheres as projectiles at the central ones. The snow globe holds the projectiles until the player is ready to shoot. The weight of the spheres attached at the center of the field and the force behind the projectiles cause right and left rotational movement. The player can only knock away spheres when a projectile hits two or more linked matching spheres. They use the arrow to aim direct and angled side-wall shots.
Winter Whirl assigns points for each successful hit. The player can improve their chances by swapping the projectile spheres to pick one that provides the easiest shot at any given time. The game also offers them intermittent bombs that take out sections of matched and unmatched spheres, perimeter projectiles that knock off spheres along the outside, and rainbow projectiles that act like wild cards to match any colors to complete a line of three or more matching ones.
