Boom Strategy: Safe Bomb Placement and Escape Routes

Updated October 2026

Boom has no clock. Nothing forces you to hurry, and the only resource you can run out of is your three lives. That makes it a game of geometry rather than reflexes: where you can stop, where the blast will reach, and which way you will walk while the fuse burns. Once you understand how movement, blasts and the creatures really work, most deaths turn out to be planning errors that were visible a few seconds before they happened. This guide explains the rules that matter and the habits that keep a run alive into the late levels.

The board and how levels change

Each level is a grid 11 cells wide and 13 cells tall. The outer ring is solid wall, and inside it there is a fixed lattice of solid pillars: every cell whose row and column numbers are both even. That lattice never changes and it is the key to everything, because it turns the open space into straight horizontal and vertical corridors that cross at regular junctions.

The rest of the open floor is filled with breakable bricks at random, each cell having a 58 percent chance of starting as brick. Three cells in each corner are always left clear. You always start in the top-left corner, and the first three creatures start in the other corners. Level 1 has two creatures, then three, then four, and from level 4 onward there are five. The fourth and fifth creatures start in the middle of the top and bottom rows, which are not kept clear, so they can begin the level standing inside a brick and walk out of it.

Your bomb also grows. It reaches two cells in each direction on levels 1 and 2, three cells on levels 3 and 4, four on levels 5 and 6, and five from level 7 on. Clearing a level gives a short pause and then a completely new random layout.

How movement really works

A swipe of at least 16 pixels sets a direction, and your character keeps walking in that direction until something blocks the way. There is no stop command. You come to rest only when you walk into a wall, a pillar, a brick or a bomb. Swiping back the way you came reverses you immediately, even halfway between cells.

A swipe in a direction that is blocked right now is not thrown away. It is held and applied at the first cell where that direction opens up. This is the most useful control trick in the game: while walking along a corridor, swipe toward the side you want to turn into, and your character will take that turn at the next junction without you having to time it.

A tap, meaning a touch that moves less than 16 pixels, drops a bomb on the cell you are standing on. It only works when your character is exactly centred on a cell. While walking, your character is almost always between cells, so in practice taps while moving are ignored. Bombs are dropped from a standstill, and since you stand still only against an obstacle, the natural moment to bomb is when you have just walked up to a brick.

What the blast actually hits

A bomb explodes 2.8 seconds after you drop it. The blast spreads from the bomb's cell in four straight arms. Each arm passes through open floor, stops dead at solid wall or a pillar, and destroys the first brick it meets before stopping there. One bomb can therefore break at most four bricks, one per arm.

Three details are worth knowing exactly:

• Damage happens in a single instant. The orange flames stay on screen for less than half a second, but they are only a picture. Walking through them after the explosion is completely safe.
• A cell is not yours until you arrive. The game counts you, and every creature, as standing on the last cell fully reached. If you are three-quarters of the way out of a blast cell when it detonates, you are still on it and you lose a life. The same rule can save a creature that was entering the blast area at that moment.
• You can only have one bomb at a time, and you cannot walk back onto it once you step off. Creatures cannot pass through it either.

Planning the escape before you tap

You walk at four cells per second, so a 2.8-second fuse gives you a little over eleven cells of walking. Time is rarely the problem. Getting out of the cross shape is. Because of the pillar lattice there are two standard situations:

• Bomb on a junction (where a horizontal and a vertical corridor cross): walk two cells along any corridor to the next junction and turn one cell. That is three steps, or 0.75 seconds, and it works at any blast range because you have left both of the bomb's lines.
• Bomb between two pillars: walk one cell to the neighbouring junction and turn. Two steps, half a second.

Running straight down a corridor also works, but only if you get further than the blast reaches, and the reach keeps growing with the level. Turning a corner is shorter and stays safe forever. Before every tap, check that the corner you plan to use is actually open floor and not a brick. If the turning cell is blocked, the held swipe never fires and you keep walking straight down the blast line. Make both swipes right after dropping the bomb: first the corridor direction, then the turn.

How the creatures behave

Creatures do not chase you and do not avoid bombs. Each time one reaches the centre of a cell it picks a random open direction, never doubling back unless it has walked into a dead end. They start at 2.4 cells per second, 60 percent of your speed, and get six percent faster with every level. They stay slower than you up to level 12; on level 13 and beyond they are slightly faster, which is where outrunning one stops being reliable.

Touching a creature costs a life when the centres of the two characters come within about six-tenths of a cell, so passing close in a corridor is fatal. When you lose a life the game pauses briefly, any bomb you had out is removed, and you reappear in the top-left corner. The creatures stay where they were and there is no invulnerability, so if one is wandering near your corner, move away immediately.

Because creatures cannot cross a bomb and avoid reversing, a bomb in a corridor works as a temporary wall. A creature in a dead-end pocket behind it will shuffle back and forth until the explosion, often right inside the blast.

Scoring and route choice

Each brick destroyed is worth 10 points, each creature 200, and clearing a level adds 500. On average a fresh layout has around 39 bricks, so even a level cleaned out completely yields only about 390 points from bricks, while five creatures plus the clear bonus are worth 1,500. Creatures are where the score is.

That does not mean bricks are worthless. Since there is no timer, extra bricks are free points if they can be taken safely, and every opened brick also opens a new path for creatures. A good pattern is to open the map gradually from your corner, keep a known escape corner near you, and wait for creatures to wander into a long corridor before bombing the end of it. With a range of three or more, one well-placed bomb on a junction covers a large part of two corridors.

Common mistakes and a practice plan

The classic death is dropping a bomb and then walking into a dead end, or into a creature coming the other way, with no second route. The second is leaving a blast cell too late and being caught mid-step. The third is respawning and immediately walking into a creature that was waiting near the start.

1. Spend a few levels practising the two-swipe escape from junctions and from between pillars until it is automatic.
2. Before every bomb, name your escape corner out loud and look at it.
3. Never bomb when a creature is in your escape corridor. Wait; there is no clock.
4. From level 7 the reach is five cells, so straight-line escapes almost never work. Use corners only.

Your best score is kept on your device, and any run above zero can be saved to the Hall of Fame from the game-over card.