Your Doodles are Bugged is a title that has a few too many jokes attached to it. Besides the obvious misspelling of bugged creating a whole new genre of gaming, it conjures up images of doodles with massive bugging devices attached to them. Or at least it does if you’ve got my sort of imagination. In the case of Your Doodles are Bugged, there’s no sign of covert spying devices nor intimate relations with doodles, instead it’s much like the classic puzzle game Lemmings.
Your mission is simple: guide various doodle bugs to a honey pot using a magic pen to create platforms and stairs. Simple eh? Not exactly as after the early tutorial levels, things get rather tricky to figure out. The first time that you’re left to your own devices, things become a little overwhelming. With a number of doodle bugs in different locations across the drawing, it’s all a matter of focusing on each group while ensuring that you clean up after yourself so as not to run out of ink. It takes a fair bit of practice to work out the best method of getting all the doodles back to the honey pot. Fortunately there’s a zoom function which helps with accurate drawing, particularly useful considering the 360′s analogue stick doesn’t lend itself to artistry.
Occasionally annoying is the fact that the doodle bugs have lives of their own and sometimes react quite randomly. Typically they hop along the path you set, but every once in a while a bug seemed to decide not to jump which would invariably cause a problem. It became quite frustrating at times when after carefully setting out a supposedly foolproof path, a doodle bug would come along and react in a way I hadn’t anticipated and fall into an awkward position. The ability to reset each puzzle quickly became very useful.
Despite the odd quirk, it’s really hard not to like Your Doodles are Bugged. The hand drawn style represented in each level is charming along with the music which swiftly reminded me of Tetris. Your Doodles are Bugged is a challenging game despite its child-like exterior which does make me wonder if a choice of difficulty level might have been a good design choice. Just an option to save less doodles would make it a more casual game. Then again for only 80 points, equating to less than £1, it would be churlish to criticise too heavily. Almost everyone is bound to have 80 points spare on their account at some point, and you really can’t go wrong with a purchase like Your Doodles are Bugged.
VideogameUK verdict: 8/10
Download Your Doodles Are Bugged! to your Xbox 360 here.
