Your Doodles Are Bugged

Developer: Spyn Doctor Games
Steam Release: Apr 2011
Hours Played: 3.2
Similar To: Crayon Physics Deluxe Zen Bound 2
Rating: 1/5 Parsnips

 

 

* No longer available on Steam. 

*Apologies - Page is experiencing some technical difficulties.

GAMEPLAY

This family-friendly offering puts the player in charge of transporting tiny bugs from one part of the screen to another. Screens are laid out with little doodles as if drawn by a young primary school kid and you use a blue-inked pen to draw lines for the bugs to travel along. In a receptacle, you'll see a load of bugs making little random jumps while on another part of the screen you'll see a beaker with yellow liquid. Your goal is to draw lines with the pen so bugs may travel along them and end up leaping into the bowl. Soon enough your ink will become limited but fear ye not, you may erase unwanted ink from the screen which gets sucked back into your pen to be recycled and used again!

BALANCE & PACE

On the one hand the game allows you to take as much time as you wish and, for me, that's I how like to enjoy it. With the jolly folk music merrily ringing out in the background I actually found that working out a route in my own pace was quite therapeutic and relaxing. With multiple solutions it's also a game that gives the player the feeling that they have a lot of choice - and I felt this to be a good thing. On the other hand, some delicate pen-work is often called for and if you jog your pen accidently or miss a pixel that lets the bugs leak out, you may well end up cursing the day you installed the game. For me, this makes the time-attack segment of the game off-limits and I wouldn't even want to start doing a speed run.

PRESENTATION & DESIGN

To a jolly and bouncy soundtrack inspired by melodic folk music from around the world, YDAB presents your level-select screen in the form of a swirling path of 25 doodles with each representing a level. Complete a level and the previously greyed out symbol appears in glorious colour, available to played at your leisure - as and when you wish. Completing a doodle unlocks an additional one found in the Doodle Studio making it a round 50 default levels to complete overall should you wish to do the whole lot. It must be noted, however, that those in the Doodle Studio are a lot harder and so will need a longer investment of time.

PROGRESS SYSTEM

YDAB can be experienced in a leisurely way but there is also a competitive edge to it if you want to go that route. From the title-screen, hitting options brings up a further menu that gives you the opportunity to view the Local Top-10 Records or the Steam Leaderboards. Your Top-10 records shows the top 10 best times for each doodle in a nicely presented chart, and these you can scroll through on a screen by screen basis. Similarly, Steam Leaderboards presents all the best times from the online community for each doodle and, again, shows this as charts that can be scrolled through screen by screen. It is very user-friendly and great for those who take best times seriously.

CONCLUSION

YDAB is a pleasant game for all ages that can be quite fulfilling and works well as a relaxing pastime. However, be warned, as the game unfolds some doodles require meticulous control with the pen and high-maintenance management is required which might drive less patient players round the twist. For me, it's a good solid game and I have enjoyed the three hours or so that I have spent on it. That said, I am now getting to those fiddly, harder levels and am gradually starting to get a little annoyed and impatient with some of the bugs' behaviour. The game is all about micro-management and what started out as a jolly little game is starting to feel like I'm herding cats. Nevertheless, this is kind of the point and even though it may seem like a chore at times, I'm still looking forward to going back and cracking those levels!