Battle Bugs by flyingbear

It's survival of the buggest as you compete to be the best bug in town! Kill other bugs, take their heads, and build up your bug piece-by-piece until you reach utter nonsense levels!
Made in Game Maker along with Photoshop, sfxr, and Audacity
4/28 Update: Spent a couple hours after the compo to make a music track. Play the Post Compo version if you want tuneage!
Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xqdu6ud6be1zzn4/BattleBugs.exe?dl=0
Download (Post Compo): https://www.dropbox.com/s/tnp7sepg2dmgh0v/BattleBugsPostCompo.exe?dl=0
Source Code: https://www.dropbox.com/s/x0jw7b6x42egvz0/BattleBugs.gm81?dl=0
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/flyingbear


| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/battle-bugs |
Ratings
| Overall | 25th | 4.1⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 6th | 4.35⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 50th | 3.85⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 89th | 3.9⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 140th | 3.8⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 99th | 3.5⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 102th | 3.313⭐ | 18🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 98th | 3.647⭐ | 19🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 32🗳️ | 13🗨️ |
OMG man, this is the most fun game I've played all LD38! My only complaint is that you can downgrade parts (beetle thingies to shooters), which artificially doubled the difficulty of this game because I'd lose my top tier gear out of nowhere because the bug I just killed dropped it's head right onto mine! Or I'd accidentally run over a shooter head. Also, the only way I could win was to exploit the lack of despawning loot, and stockpile heads so that if (read: when) I lose mine in battle, I could (in most cases) run back for a new one.
I'm betting on this to hit top 5 in at least 1 category! But you'd better get some more reviews!
This is one of my top ten for most fun, it had a cool idea and cool gameplay mechanics. Well done!
But even so, I spent a long time playing it. There were so many things to evolve to... Really nice!
It's amazing how it feels so simple and yet engaging and fun.
It's the entry I played the most this LD!
It's pretty hard though!
I also had a bug multiple time, when I lost my head, I could get stuck against a block. It happened 2 times and the only thing I could do was restart the game :/
Congratulations for that anyway! =)
However, not being able to recover your head once it's been removed is extremely frustrating! Especially considering how every head is just as vulnerable as the next. Mightn't it have made sense to always remove segments from the back first?
Either way, wandering around without a head and trying to kill my bug so I could start again really broke the flow of the game for me.
That (unfortunately big, for me) issue aside though, it's a really great idea for a game and really fun--just needs a bit of ironing out on the design side!
Keep it up!
-Skruffye
This is a clever concept. Great entry, keep up the great work!
Good job! :D
It was challenging, but whenever I lost, I felt like if I just played a little better I could have survived, and every time I got back to that point I managed to overcome the challenge, which was a great feeling!
Normally I delete LD games once I've finished them, but this one is staying in my collection :)
Overall its awesome and so fun!