Puzzling (Mis)adventures: Volume 4 – Crayon Physics Deluxe, Your Doodles Are Bugged!

Your Doodles Are Bugged!

Jack Allin

Once there were lemmings; now there are doodle bugs. Back in the early ‘90s, DMA Design introduced the adorable green-haired creatures who would unadorably march straight to their doom if you didn’t save them from their own stupidity, using a variety of skills to guide them out of harm’s way. Fast forward a couple decades, and the lemmings-like doodle bugs are no smarter. In the appropriate-titled Your Doodles Are Bugged!, a one-man indie project by Spyn Doctor’s Johannes Hubert, a bunch of bugs have been magically dispersed into the artwork of Doodleus, Master Doodler, and now need your help to rescue them. The trouble is, they have no special insect abilities (or even useful regular ones) and their final destination in each doodle is far away and blocked by obstructions and hazards. Oh, and they’re really, really dumb. (They are tiny, after all, so you can just imagine how small their brains must be.)

Fortunately, they’ve got you to do their thinking for them. Like in Lemmings, you have no actual control over any of the bugs. Instead, you are a godlike figure who must guide them through a series of 24 different obstacle courses using only a pen cursor that works very much like it does in Max & the Magic Marker. For the most part, each level follows the standard laws of physics, and the bugs can only slide or hop along a horizontal path and up manageable slopes. As soon as they hit an impassable barrier, they’ll turn around and start moving the other way. A few levels introduce deadly traps or timed elements, but generally your main opponents are gravity and ink resources. There is only so much ink available for each doodle, so figuring out how best to guide your bugs to the highly-inaccessible honey pot isn’t nearly as easy as it sounds.

A few features help you in making the most of your limitations. The first is that the entire image is visible from the start. Often puzzle games rely on side-scrolling platforming elements to reduce strategic planning, but Doodles gives you a full view of the big picture right away. Not that you can simply plot out an entire level at once, as usually you’ll need to progress in small increments, managing your ink from one stage to the next. There are no ink “power ups” of any kind, but erasing redundant lines will continually refill your available supply. Drawing is done simply by clicking and holding the left mouse button, while erasing is done the same way with the right button. It couldn’t be simpler. And since all you’re ever actually drawing are lines, this game really requires no artistic ability at all. If you can draw stick figures, you can play.

Another helpful option is the ability to zoom in with the mouse wheel for a closer view, which is often necessary when your bugs are packed into tight quarters. Zooming also allows you to reclaim a great deal of wasted ink. Though it doesn’t look like it in the regular view, the default line thickness is a fairly bold, ink-intensive size. Swoop in for a magnified look and you’ll see just how thick it really is, and there you can half-retrace the same line to erase any unnecessary ink. This is an invaluable skill – a little too invaluable, really, as it’s needed too often and gets tedious after a while. And although you can typically take as much time as you want, it also requires a reasonably steady hand, which the rest of the game rarely does.

Even a steady hand doesn’t guarantee success, however. Doodles does have a few frustrating quirks that can impede your progress. The first is the bugs themselves, which don’t always behave predictably, as they seem to slide and hop at all-too-random times. One bug will perfectly navigate your path, while the next following right behind will jump at the exact wrong moment and bung everything up. Or worse, it will get caught on the tiniest of snags. This game is overly finicky about non-rounded edges, and while your lines may look smooth from a distance, up close they’re full of tiny ridges and bumps that the bugs are inclined to treat as mountainous roadblocks. The bugs also have a tendency to get caught up tiny corners and crevices of the game’s own design. Many times the most taxing part of a level is simply nursemaiding a few particularly inept bugs to the finish line.

You can’t just leave the stragglers, either, because most doodles require you to get every bug into the honey pot. Naturally, the courses get tougher and the numbers increase as you go along, so while you may be cruising with just 20 charges at the start, you won’t be laughing as you’re forced to save 100, 500, even 1000 by the end. This can make some stages pretty lengthy, and there’s no way to save your progress mid-level. If you need to stop, or if even a single bug blunders into an unexpected precipitous drop, you could find yourself replaying long stretches all over again. Though a clock tracks your progress in each level, none are actually timed other than a single drawing with rising water levels that will kill any bugs trapped in it. Another level, a “suicide” run, involves guiding just one bug across a wide open terrain, requiring a rapid draw-and-erase process across the screen. The remaining levels can be played at your leisure, however, and there’s rarely any danger. There are occasional “poisoned” objects or floors that kill bugs on contact and defile your ink, but these are rare and easily avoided.

In fact, there really isn’t a lot of variety at all. The odd doodle injects a new element like portals that warp from one point to another or keys that unlock barriers, but these are one-time affairs that are neither properly introduced nor revisited. Only two levels are particularly creative: one involves drawing only on a mirrored-image half of a doodle and another keeps flipping the screen upside down at regular intervals. These provide a welcome change of pace from the usual shepherding grind, and it’s a shame there isn’t more diversity. Doodles isn’t a long game, providing maybe five or six hours of playtime, but most of that time will be spent on the same basic task of getting new bugs up and across densely-impeded screens, then lather, rinse, repeat. Thankfully, there’s a button that fast forwards the scrolling speed, so once you’ve implemented your desired design, you can speed the pokey bugs up in following it to the goal.

The visual design doesn’t change much along the way either, though the screens tend to get more fully packed with obstacles. As you’d expect in a game about doodles, the artwork looks like exactly that: a plain white background with hand-drawn sketches made up partly of real objects like clouds and houses and partly random shapes. It’s very childlike in its simplicity, but it’s bright and cheerful, which is all it needs to be. The bugs are cute little critters in close-up view, and you’ll start to grow attached to them when you’re not cursing them out. Their personality is further enhanced by charming helium-induced yips and squeals, which they’ll offer up regularly. The music is appropriately jaunty, with a nice range of styles from jazz to Latin, from synth music to instruments like bongos, flutes, and guitars. That’s if you can get sound at all, however. I had to turn down my sound acceleration completely to get any audio at all; a solution offered on a hint forum from others with the same problem.

In keeping with the no-frills presentation, there’s no great payoff for reaching the end, just a virtual pat on the head for a job well done. You can replay any completed doodle from the level select screen after completing it, but there isn’t really much incentive to do so, as the tasks and challenges are always the same. The PC version comes with achievements to pursue, though these are for bragging rights only. The game also challenges you to resolve the secret of the “Blue Bug”, which presumably means rescuing the one blue bug per level, though I can’t tell you what reward that might yield. The farther you progress, however, the more standalone bonus levels you’ll unlock, which can easily double your total play time. There don’t appear to be any new surprises in these extra levels, but if you’ve enjoyed yourself to that point, there’s plenty more where that came from. And for those who really want to exercise their artistic muscle, the game also comes with a do-it-yourself Doodle Studio editor to design custom levels of your own.

Once through the main campaign of Your Doodles Were Bugged! was enough for me, though I’m glad I played it, a few momentary frustrations aside. It’s not quite as varied or creative as its premise could have inspired, but it’s a whimsical, engaging few hours of doodling entertainment. Don’t let the “I can’t draw!” excuse hold you back, as even a child can have some ink-stained constructing fun here, though perhaps not those who are quite so young as its artwork might suggest. There’s a demo to try, so jot the name down in a note to yourself and pull it out the next time you’re in the mood for something a little different. Just don’t scribble over it in the meantime!