Your Doodles Are Bugged! is quite the game. Created by German developer Spyn Doctor (responsible for Golden Tangram and Kuchibi), this is one of the most unique, personal games on Xbox Live Indie Games.
So, what the heck is it? Well, to speak in gamer’s terms, it’s a combination between Lemmings and Paint. It’s genius in it’s simplicity. Your task is to guide the little bugs to the jar of honey, passing the various “doodles” that block your way or form your path. To do this you basically draw lines for the bugs to jump and walk on. The gameplay is almost rudely intuitive and it’s a breath of fresh air in an ocean of twin-stick shooters, platformers and massaging apps.
You control your doodling pen with the right analog stick that responds pretty well to your touch. To draw you hold down A and to erase you hold down X, simple as that. You can go faster by holding the right trigger, a much appreciated addition for the bigger levels, and you can undo with the B button. The most important control feature is the ability to zoom. The levels in YDAB! are remarkably advanced at times and without zooming on you wouldn’t have much luck trying to complete it.
To add a bit more depth to the gameplay you have a limited supply of ink. This might seem obvious and harmless at first but really provides a challenge in the later, densely doodle-populated levels. It’s really good fun trying to figure out the best way through the dragons and clouds and fishes and smiling faces and trolls and squids and trees and birds and.. oh sorry, kinda lost my trace of thought there. What I mean is, there’s much challenge in just finding the least ink-draining route. You soon figure out that you might only need a little dot to get your bugs over a gap that a lesser player just would’ve made a bridge over. Overall it’s a very rewarding albeit sometimes time-consuming experience to make it perfect. Add to this a classic timer to compare your high-score to your friends and you’ve got some terribly addicting gameplay. Add to that some very clean and pretty the doodled graphics, in-game tutorials and an adorable story and you end up with quite the package.
I have a few very minor issues with the game though. The first, and least intrusive, is in regards to the music. There’s only one track looping infinitely and even though I appreciate chiptune-infused folk music for mandolin and accordion as much as the next guy it gets a bit grating after a while. Another issue is that the bugs can be quite the little assholes at times. If one of your drawings is a pixel off that might result in a squadron of bugs leaping to their death. It does add a lot to the challenge and you get used to it but it’s still a bit disturbing.
Overall though, YDAB! is one of the absolute best on Xbox Live Indie Games. The amount of love and polish in this game is just amazing. There are plenty of levels and they’re suitable for a pick-up-and-play session basically anytime. I mean really, for 80MS (1 PUNY EARTH DOLLAR!) you’d be an idiot not to pick this up. There I said it, you’d be an idiot.
