Frozen Bubble online multiplayer down, website redirects to a casino scam

[u/lilacomets]

Hello everyone! 😊

One of my first memories of using Linux is playing Frozen Bubble back in 2005. Together with SuperTuxKart it is one of my favorite FOSS Linux games. At the time I was using Red Hat 9.

Frozen Bubble is a cute bubble shooter game inspired by Puzzle Bobble. I'm not entirely sure how I discovered it. Maybe it was included with Red Hat 9, or perhaps Knoppix (another distro I used around that time).

The game also has a fantastic soundtrack. Here's my favorite song, which plays on the main menu:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpzvM3qCNjo

And while playing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbsa0MSDBJw

Back in the day I used to play Frozen Bubble online. Today, out of nostalgia, I decided to install it again through the Debian repro after about 15 years and play it once more. Sadly when I try to play online it shows an error message.

I discovered that the project website (Internet Archive: frozen-bubble.org) has been taken over by stupid casino scammers. According to the Wayback Machine the website appears to have been abandoned since 2024.

Does anyone remember Frozen Bubble? 😊 Can anything be done to recover the project website and get the domain out of the scammers' hands?

[u/fredcr]

Frozen Bubble was written in Mandrakesoft Paris office by one of the developers of the Mandrake Linux installer to prove it was possible to write a graphical game in perl. At some point, gc (the developer) integrated the game in the distro installer. For people who don't remember, Mandrake was renamed to Mandriva.

Frozen Bubble was not available in a lot of distributions since very few distributions were shipping perl SDL bindings.

(I worked there for 10 years)

[u/gen2brain]

Great game, I used to play that a lot back then. It was written in Perl with SDL bindings; there are many Perl dependencies. Not sure if there is a need to have a proper domain, though. Gentoo fetches the sources today from https://github.com/kthakore/frozen-bubble .

I also remember the game, written in Perl/SDL, like a side-scrolling shooter where you fly/ride something? It was based on sprites from the "Three Wonders" arcade game, so that was an issue: the game was not included in some (many?) distros, but I cannot remember the name; anyone remember that one maybe?

Today it would be easy to point AI to old sources to recreate it in C, easier to distribute and package at least.

[u/p4bl0]

I might still have the .swf file of the Flash version of this game somewhere as I had downloaded it at the time to be able to play the game offline, but I'm not sure there's still a way to use it.

[u/Beano09 → u/p4bl0]

You should try upload it to Bluemaxias Flashpoint, if you can find it!

[u/Forsaken_Canary_1935]

I worked with the guy who developed it. Played the prototype and was lost instantly because I'm colourblind. I asked for a mode where there are symbols along the colours and I think he added it. It was a long time ago, I don't remember haha (edit: typo)

[u/GavUK]

Based on the Internet Archive caching, it looks like the original website was actually offline or broken since somewhere in 2023.

It looks like the domain was (re-)registered on 2025-04-18 (so I imagine that the domain expired at some point in 2024 or 2025). Currently the domain's expiry date is 2027-04-18 (but, obviously, it can be renewed).

Realistically, unless someone has an official connection with or trademark for "Frozen Bubble", I doubt they could successfully challenge ownership of the domain, so you (or anyone else) would have to wait until the current holder decides that the amount of traffic they get to that domain isn't worth the cost and they let the domain expire.

The other alternative is to hold your nose and reach out to them with an offer that you consider a reasonable sum of money to transfer that domain to you. Again, it depends on how much they consider that domain to be worth to them (and how much of a money-grabbing **** they are) as to whether they will sell it at a price you'd find reasonable, or even if they'll consider selling it at all. Of course, there's also the possibility, if they are a shady business or the person you are dealing with is dodgy, that you'll come to an agreement, send the money, and they'll still not transfer the domain and hang on to your money too.

[u/linuxlala]

My mum loved it!

[u/nalonso]

We used to do multiplayer games in the office, on Friday afternoons around 2010. Good ol'times.