Your Doodles Are Bugged!

By: Guest Reviewer

On: February 12th, 2010

[This is a guest review by anosou. If you’re interested in writing an article for TIGSource, please go here.

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 of Lemmings and Paint. Its genius is in its 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, which 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 them.

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 it 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 train 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 addictive 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.

  • http://lumberingdream.com/ !CE-9

    Lemmings + Paint = <3

    but XBox?=(

  • raigan

    This is the most “screaming for WiiWare”-looking game I’ve ever seen.

  • Spyn Doctor

    Yeah, now convince Nintendo to give me a Wii development kit… ;-)

  • Alomard

    this looks great, but a windows port would be the only way i could play it

  • Phasma Felis

    It is really bizarre that he chose to develop this for Xbox, rather than Wii or DS or iPhone or even PC.

  • Yello

    “Yeah, now convince Nintendo to give me a Wii development kit… ;-)”

    Somebody do this!!!

  • nihilocrat

    @raigan : I was thinking the exact same thing. A game the wiimote was made for.

  • Derek

    This does perfect for DS (or iPad?!), but… I’ve never found the Wiimote to be particularly precise myself. Maybe I just have the shakes. :)

  • anosou

    This would definitely not work for the Wii, you need to be quite precise as I mentioned in the article. iPad is definitely possible though and I’d love to see it there :)

  • http://www.godatplay.com God at play

    Ohmygosh, the magic pen with doodles just brought back a wave of nostalgia. Magic pen, of course, is just a nickname. His true name is Mortimer Ichabod Marker.

    The only thing this game is missing is some Bill Cosby.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWg0U3fi7sE

  • Phasma Felis

    I dunno, I think if you can do World of Goo on the Wii, you could do this.

    But then again I only played World of Goo on PC, so maybe the WiiWare version sucks.

  • bateleur

    @Phasma Felis – That’s not really true, because World of Goo actually requires very little precision. It’s mostly strategy.

  • Dusty Spur

    The review makes it sound like this is some new concept that’s never been done before.

    Allow me to direct you towards http://www.nitrome.com/games/scribble/

  • Michael

    I’d buy that for a dollar, but I need a PC port please. Why struggle with a thumbstick when we live in a world with mice?

  • http://www.smallcavegames.blogspot.com SmallCaveGames

    would be tough on Wii, I agree – you need a steady hand on the joysticks as it is

    I am finding at least one good XBLIG per week now…

  • Rant

    Please, stop filling tigsource with these trash reviews. The game is not bad, but this review sucks ass. It’s unnecessarily long and looks really biased. Oh, and thanks for insulting me for not picking this game up.

  • Fecal Brunch

    What rant said.

  • dawg

    this game aint look no good

    also:

    “You control your doodling pen with the right analog stick”

    “To draw you hold down A”

    whaaaa?

  • GZ

    I don’t have a lot of interest in XBLIA games, but I have to give a lot of props to the developer for going with the dollar price point.

    From what I’ve just seen in the video, it looks like he could have charged more, but I think by having this low price point, he raises the bar for other games that cost a dollar or more.

  • Alex

    Is there a PC version?
    There should be.

  • nickthedude

    i like dat. might want to start on port for ipad. jez sayin.

  • LegacyCrono

    Nice! It looks simple and funny. Looks quite a joy for those boring weekends, but maybe it’s eas…
    *0:38*
    What!! Are you insane?!

    By the way: Tetris theme FTW.

  • http://0xdeadc0de.org Eclipse

    why most XNA developers don’t do a PC version of their games? that’s plain weird to me because most of these games would sell at least the same on pc if not more… (and who replies “because it’s hard to make a PC game that runs on the most of hardwares” sucks at coding)

  • Apnea

    No PC version? Sad, that.

    Because, you know, I don’t actually own a XNA or XBLA or whatever it’s called.

    Yes, I’m absolutely kidding about not knowing what it’s called. Yes, I would indeed enjoy a PC version of this game, especially a $1 PC version.

  • farik

    fun, and pretty difficult after a bit. takes some patience. easily worth a dollar.

  • Quanrian

    Just as a note to those complaining about it being on the Xbox 360, it is much easier to port work onto the PC when program is made with XNA than it would be if he had originally designed for the DS or Wii. In fact, part of the XNA framework is that it is multi-platform, which does include the PC. Thus, there is no reason why he cannot release this title onto the PC and simply change the controls to use the mouse instead. All in all, good job on a fantastic game, Spyn Doctor, and I wish you a good interview on the VeteranGamers Podcast this week! I even got in a couple questions of my own for you.