Game Review: Doodle Bug (Vic 20, Mastertronic)

Mastertronic only released 17 games for the Vic 20 (not counting Games Designer) and the bulk of those were released in 1984. The final five were released the following year and for the most part were regarded as some of their best games for the system. But did Doodle Bug, released at the start of 1985, meet the same standards of the other final releases?

Doodle Bug – The Premise

Regardless of the game, Mastertronic had a knack for coming up with some quite bizarre plots for many of their earlier games and Doodle Bug was no exception. According to the inlay, your planet (rather vague, I know) has been invaded and while most nations have capitulated to the alien attackers, your country remains defiant. However, food and water supplies are dwindling leaving survivors fighting over what is available.

You’ve been given the job of raiding the storage depots of some of your enemies to retrieve as much as possible, avoiding all the patrolling guards. While you have no means to attack them, you can slow down their pursuit through the use of turnstiles scattered around each complex to block their path.

Looks Familiar

At first glance it would appear that Doodle Bug takes its inspiration from Pac Man. However, it’s actually based on the little known 1981 arcade game Ladybug which found greater success and popularity through it’s home conversion to the Colecovision. In that, you controlled a ladybug that had to collect flowers and hearts as well as bonus letters while avoiding insects in a maze while still featuring the same turnstile mechanic.

Gameplay

Control is with joystick only and you move around the maze using up, down, left and right. Rotating each of the turnstiles is simple enough and you do this just by walking into them and they rotate automatically on contact. While the inlay mentions that the depot is protected by guards that you have to avoid, the game’s title screen refers to them as devils and your character looks more like an alien from Space Invaders than anything else so the plot doesn’t really resemble the game itself!

Levels are completed when all of the supplies are collected allowing you to progress on to the next, tougher level when more guards are added.

Starting Options

When you start the game off, you’re presented with a couple of options on the title screen. You can choose between 1-5 Devils (the in-game description of the guards patrolling the maze) and 5 different speed settings and while primarily the speed impacts on the difficulty of Doodle Bug, it also alters the playability as I’ll mention in a moment.

Playability

Once you get to grips with the concept of how Doodle Bug plays, you’ll find an enjoyable and challenging game and it’s a novel variant on the Pac Man genre. Unfortunately, it’s not without its problems. On the lower speed settings it runs at a sluggish pace and at times you genuinely struggle to gain any fun from playing it. In addition to that, it’s incredibly unresponsive and while moving along the straight segments of the maze is fine, navigating tighter sections often leaves you fighting with the controls.

Increasing the speed setting does help marginally and shows that the game isn’t sluggish because of the Vic 20’s hardware but was by design. Unfortunately the control issue still remains and more often than not you’ll lose one of your lives through no fault of your own.

Graphics and Sound

Even though Doodle Bug runs on an unexpanded Vic 20, the visuals are quite limited with your character, the guards/devils and background all looking rather bland. Other developers had managed to do much better, loading the graphics in first before loading the main game so I’m not sure why this wasn’t done here. Also the choice of colours used is somewhat questionable. The developer decided to use yellow for all of the supplies, but when this is set against a while background it doesn’t make them easy to see. While some games have had yellow objects on white backgrounds before, they have been larger so they’ve been easier to see (Vegas Jackpot being a perfect example).

The sound is also instantly forgettable. There are some basic effects as you collect each of the supplies, use the turnstiles and when you lose a life or complete each level but that’s pretty much it. The Vic 20 can do so much better, and it feels underwhelming to see its potential wasted here.

Overall

Doodle Bug is one of those games that shows a great deal of potential and at times is enjoyable, but you need to put an incredible amount of effort into it to make it worthwhile. It should have been a fun, fast-paced arcade game but instead you’re presented with a game that teases what might have been. It’s still mildly entertaining in short bursts, but once frustration sets in with the controls you’ll soon move on to something else.

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