Beetle Brigade by bentglasstube
A puzzle game where you guide ladybugs through a garden maze.
Rearrange the paths so that the ladybugs can get from the left side to the right. Use WASD or arrows to move your cursor. Hold space to and use WASD/Arrows to slide the rows and columns. You can't disturb the ladybugs with the movement, and there are also rocks that will block the way.

The game turned out to be much more difficult than I planned. If you fail a level you can retry without it shuffling the level again, so some persistence should get you through. There are 15 total levels. Post screenshots of your end screen if you finish to compare how you did :smile:
- The game is written in c++ using my own game engine, gam
- The art was drawn in aseprite
- The music was made with a polyend tracker
- The sound effects were made using sfxr
Ratings
| Overall | 107th | 3.688⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 163th | 3.375⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 140th | 3.458⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 167th | 3.62⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 144th | 3.62⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 119th | 3.413⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 158th | 3.37⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 29🗳️ | 21🗨️ |
I didnt beat it. But I'm also really bad at these type of games :D
Didn't really know what "start" button was mapped to but figured it out pretty quickly.
I am not a fan of the automatic deployment of ladybugs because that means I lose control and can't take my time to think and try. Instead, if you wanted to force them and limit player action, one way could be to trigger them after X player action or by increasing the deployment time.
I did not finish the first level. Probably could have with enough time but patience wasn't with me today.
Good work.
My strategy for each level:
- Step one, block the entrance so the beetles don't get in my way while I'm configuring the map.
- Step two, locate all the straight horizontal pieces. If there aren't enough to fill the width of the map, then I'll have to add 4 corners for every two spaces I'm missing. There were a couple times I had a three-space-gap, and had to use 6 corners plus a vertical piece to fill it.
- Step three, build the structure I need, but offset by one so that it's easy to shift it in place, but still keeps the beetles out.
- Step four, shift everything in place, and put on my sunglasses, because my beetles are going home for dinner tonight. (⌐■_■)

Not being able to spawn the bugs / try out a level on demand was a bit rough. 'Cause of this I got stuck with them running around a lot and it took me AGES to beat it (but I did). Luckily the music is an absolute certified banger so it was really easy to jam out and keep playing.
It reminds me of the board game "Labyrinth", I love the idea.
It's just a little annoying to have to hit Enter every time my beetles die while I was building the path. I wonder if the game would have been the same with no beetle at all. There would just be a timer, telling the player how long it took to create the path (then, if you want, you can add a nice animation with beetles taking the finished path).
Are there levels where we are obliged to change the path while the beetles are moving? It happened to me a couple of times (especially the level 12 which doesn't have enough horizontal tiles). But maybe I could have been smarter and could have created a "static" path.
By the way, here is my victory screenshot.

@recher it is always possible to build a static path, but it can be faster and/or simpler on the bigger levels to destroy the start of the path to finish the end.
I agree with all the feedback about the bugs being annoying and coming too quickly. Initially, the entire level was regenerated if the bugs died, but that made the game very difficult. I planned to fix this by having a longer delay before the bugs appeared but I wanted to implement a "fast forward" button before I did that. In the interest of making the game somewhat approachable, I changed it to not regenerate the level when you lost which gives the strange experience of having to press enter.
Awesome game!