By John Walker on April 26th, 2011 at 3:15 pm.
Sitting somewhere between Crayon Physics Deluxe and Lemmings, Your Doodles Are Bugged is a crayon-drawing game in which you guide a gang of bugs toward a pot of honey. It’s previously been popular on the XBox Live Arcade, and has just been released on Steam today. I’ve had a very quick go.
It’s an odd one. Playing it, I really haven’t fallen in love. In fact, I’ve fallen in quite a lot of irritation. The bugs have AI that compels them to seek out paths toward the honey, which you provide by drawing lines all over the screen. But I’ve yet to figure out exactly why they sometimes follow and sometimes don’t.
The most frequently annoying situation is watching one bug merrily jump up the path I’ve created for it and landing in the honey, and then seeing the rest all prance around and ignore the exact same route. Why was it good enough for him?
The pacing also seems peculiarly off. There’s no way to speed things up enough that you’re not left staring at the creatures hopping inanely toward a goal you’ve already solved – the fast-forward on offer seems just about fast enough for a default play speed. And there’s a paucity of PC options in the port – absolutely no choices for resolution, let alone an option for playing in a window to avoid its crashing during alt-tabbing.
£7 is a great price, and admittedly I’ve played very little of it. Many will find the hand-drawn design cute, and the core idea is a splendid one. But I’d really prefer to see a more optimised PC version, and some more understandable logic for the bug AI. Here’s a trailer so you can see it for yourself:
26/04/2011 at 15:28 Ba5 says:
But does it buklow?
26/04/2011 at 15:30 airtekh says:
Sounds interesting to me.
There’s also a demo available on the Steam store page, which I’m downloading now.
26/04/2011 at 15:31 Koozer says:
Seems like Lemmings with only one tool and without the risks.
26/04/2011 at 16:22 Kdansky says:
My thoughts exactly. It’s like Lemmings, except incredibly simple and easy.
26/04/2011 at 16:41 BAReFOOt says:
Considering it was made for the XBox, this one is kinda obvious: Try drawing those lines and stuff with a controller. Suddenly it will become pretty hard.
26/04/2011 at 15:32 shoptroll says:
Sounds more like Kirby’s Canvas Curse or the more recent Mario vs. Donkey Kong games instead of Lemmings / Crayon Physics.
Worth checking out the demo?
26/04/2011 at 15:39 DevilSShadoW says:
Well color me intrigued.
26/04/2011 at 17:47 Highstorm says:
No u
26/04/2011 at 15:40 Lugg says:
In Soviet Russia, Bugs has the AI!
26/04/2011 at 15:44 Anthile says:
Needs more grimdark.
26/04/2011 at 22:55 Wulf says:
Grimdark must be the most terribly overrated thing, ever.
26/04/2011 at 16:01 thegooseking says:
I have it on the Xbox, and I played it a bit last year. To be honest, the one thing that I thought it really needed was a mouse (trying to play it with a gamepad was awkward), so the PC version should win on that score. But it was indeed also lacking something less tangible and definable: that ‘something’ that would have kept me coming back for more. It’s a decent game to while away the odd half-hour, but somehow feels like it should be more than it is.