Bug Planet

Ants are capable of great things when they are organized into large colonies, because they apparently use what’s called a “hive mind” to tackle all sorts of problems as a group. Hence, they might be small and frail individually, but they can accomplish impressive tasks if they coordinate and synchronize their actions.

Bug Planet is a simple arcade game in which you control an ant trying to reclaim the stolen eggs and rebuild a fully-functional colony. The idea sounds pretty complicated in theory, but the actual gameplay resumes to dodging a few obstacles and collecting eggs by running over them. Hence, if you are willing to practice your reflexes for a bit, this could very well be the solution.

The ant you control happens to be robotic, on the other hand, so it certainly moves a lot faster than a regular one. Most of the landscape is futuristic as well, given the fact that the action takes place in some kind of wasteland scarred by metal pipes and other robotic insects. Your only goal is to press the arrow keys in order to dodge obstacles, so the theme doesn’t not really influence the mechanics in any way.

There are only a handful of levels to play on, but they gradually get more difficult along the way. On the other hand, the speed does not seem to increase, so you only have to deal with more obstacles at once. On top of that, moving obstacles are introduced in the later levels, which are basically, other insects trying to stop you from stealing the eggs.

Speaking of which, the number of eggs you manage to pick up decides your score at the end of the stage, so it’s important that you try to gather as many as possible. This theoretically increases replayability, but it’s not that appealing unfortunately. Obviously, this could be fixed by adding additional levels and maybe more types of obstacles.

In the end, Bug Planet fails to be as engaging as it needs to be in order to keep players interest, but that can change in the future. Hence, if more levels and challenges are added, this could certainly turn into something a lot better.