Your Doodles Are Bugged! Review

Your Doodles Are Bugged! released on Xbox Live Indie Game this week and has quickly drawn attention for its unique graphical style and game play. The game has a goofy yet endearing story line about a magical accident that releases all of a magician's pet bugs into his doodles and drawings. You must use your magic pen to free the bugs.

As a puzzle game there is a simple and yet distinct game play mechanic. You control a pen that you must use to draw a path for the bugs on the level to cross to get to the honey pot. Yet, you have a limited amount of ink to work with to complete your task. Fortunately you can always erase the lines you have previously drawn. Because of this, in some levels due to the sheer size you have to move the bugs across the map a section at a time. Other than having the ability to draw and erase with your pen the only other controls are to zoom in and out so you can see better what you are doing, and an option to increase how quickly the pen is moving.

The game's graphics are very cartoony and kid friendly. Yet, they are not so cute as to scare off adult players. When you first start the game the graphics may seem a little amateurish, but after playing a few levels it is easy to see that this is by design and adds to the overall feel of the game. The sound effects in the game are funny and goofy and fit the rest of the atmosphere of the game perfectly.

While the game's look is very child friendly the difficulty is not. The first few levels as you learn how to play are simple enough but the difficulty ramps up very quickly. About 10 levels in you'll find your frustration level rising, but all your frustration quickly fades away when you find your own unique solution to each level. Even with the quick difficulty ramp up I would still recommend Your Doodles Are Bugged for gamers of all ages. It is great to play for 15 minutes at a time between other games and the challenge of the harder levels will really make you think through your strategy.

Sources:
Your Doodles Are Bugged, Spyn-Doctor.de
Your Doodles Are Bugged, XBLIG Ratings
Your Doodles Are Bugged, Xbox.com