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!

 

Gunpowder

Developer: Rogue Rocket Games
Steam Release: Jul 2015
Hours Played: 2.2
Similar To: Khaba / Lines / Lowglow / OMG Zombies! / Scarab Tales
Rating: 5/5 Parsnips

GAMEPLAY
Gunpowder is a super-compelling and very well-done puzzler that, put simply, tasks you with the responsibility of blowing up safes and piggy banks that have been left out in the desert. All is done in top-down view as you start a level by perusing the lay of the land and figuring out how best to destroy said items. Your best friends are the barrels of explosives and the camp-fires that have also been left unattended. So how do you set about going to work? Well, by utilizing the supply of the limited gunpowder that you're given of course. Sprinkle this around to make little trails that, when lit, become paths of destruction. In short... ignite the fire, watch the sparks follow the lines you've made and watch the kegs go kaboom in little explosions of delight.

BALANCE & PACE
First off you'll draw simple lines to create simple chain reactions before moving onto new mechanics. You'll then soon graduate to placing barrels yourself; figuring out how to pass the spark over bodies of water; igniting cannons and exploding rocks so they fall off cliffs. By the time you move onto later chapters you'll be facing speeding trains and waterfalls plus ever-more elaborate means to embellish those route-making skills. The volume of gunpowder you're allowed to use is shown in a convenient meter at the top of the screen and you get an erase mode, with a broom icon to click on, if you wish to sweep back up poorly placed gunpowder. There is also an explosion icon that, when clicked on, displays how much of an area is covered by blasts. All in all, levels are moved through at a good steady pace.    

PRESENTATION & DESIGN
The vibe of Gunpowder is all about the vibrant and sunny world of the wild wild west. A huge clear blue sky, large rocks and bright golden barrels adorn the desert landscape as you start the game. The title is set in that umistakable Redemption font-style as are the path names nailed to a signpost in the foreground. As you complete levels and liberate gold and cash, Robin-Hood style, the screen becomes a sea of crackling explosions as the safes and piggy banks shatter and crack. Satisfaction is heightened all the more as the outraged evil Boss Grimshaw fumes in a screaming rage in the corner. All, of course, brought to you with that thoroughly enjoyable and distinctive Mariachi sound of Mexico.           

PROGRESS SYSTEM
Thankfully, there is no convoluted or complicated progress system here. The game is divided into five chapters that are represented tastefully by leather-bound books at the Level-Select screen. You may open each book to reveal 25 cards or stamps that represent each level. Destroy the safe and you complete the level before moving onto the next one. For each level, there is also the added challenge of destroying up to three piggy banks making it possible to acquire 75 piggy banks in total. This figure is actually significant as subsequent chapters can only be unlocked if a certain piggy-bank goal has been hit. Finally, for the hardcore, there is a speedrunning element to the game where your best-time gets uploaded and placed onto the leaderboard for each level you complete.  

CONCLUSION

Interestingly, although a simple concept to absorb, Gunpowder is quite a unique game. Sure, there are the limited ink mechanics used by the pens of the player in Your Doodles Are Bugged and Max: The Curse of Brotherhood but none are used in such a way to spark gunpowder, ignite kegs and to cause such satisfying explosions! It's really the way that this simple yet unique concept is built upon and the way ever-more inventive levels are created that makes Gunpowder the quality game it is. However, as someone who is not too deep into the game, I have heard that frustrating elements get introduced at the later levels. But hey, with a price tag of just £1.59 at the time of writing, Gunpowder is well worth it for Chapter 1 alone and comes as a high recommendation.   

Puzzles

While compiling this genre an important distinction arose between one type of puzzler and the classic kind you see here. In short, the former involve responding to moving objects or NPCs, adding an arcade-like quality to proceedings (Dynamite Jack, Farm Frenzy, I Zombie, Gravity Ghost, Nimbus, Robbery Bob...) while the latter are more like puzzle books in nature and largely involve studying a fixed or static screen before figuring out and applying a solution. It is the latter which we concentrate on here...

 

 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To Play

 These titles have either not been played or not been played enough to be included above. When they have, they will be awarded one to five Parsons' Carrots as a ranking.

Baba Is You

The Cat Machine

Claws & Feathers

Divide By Sheep

Drop Hunt

Dungeon of Elements

Evergarden

Glass Masquerade 🥕🥕🥕   

Grab the Bottle 🥕🥕   

Hexus 🥕🥕🥕    

Khaba

A Monster's Expedition

Plunge

Road Not Taken

Sagrada

Scarab Tales

Slayaway Camp 🥕🥕🥕

Star Vikings Forever

Triple Town (Second playthrough required)

Tumblestone