Day 134 - Bug Biomes
Immersive Sim, Has Treant Protector In It, Walking Sim ·
Skeeter’s Take:
Bug Biomes - how delightfully confounding. I know we’ve been leaning more towards itch.io for games recently, but there’s a very big reason for that:
It has a random games button. This is also why our last project used Newgrounds to find nearly all our games.
For me, part of the appeal of this project is exploration - I enjoy finding small games that I love so much that I want to tell other people about them (See: Pineapple on Pizza). Or sometimes we come across some games that I would really rather not tell people about. Then, rarely, there’s a game I want to tell other people about, but couldn’t in good conscience recommend that they play it (See: Space). Bug Biomes comes very close to that category.
Welcome to Bug Biomes. “What am I looking at?” you might be asking - don’t worry, nothing will make sense in due time.
First off, Bug Biomes went with the very bold choice to use tank controls. I can respect that - it’s fierce. Bug Biomes also makes the decision to not allow you to look up or down. It’s not just fierce, it’s Katy Perry Roar!
You probably noticed the strange hedgehog creatures. They are pretty adorable. They bob up and down in a synchronized dance to a song only their hivemind can hear. As far as I can tell, they don’t really serve a purpose other than existing (I mean, same, right?), but keep on keeping on dancing creatures!
There are three sliders at the bottom of the screen. Each one changes something in the environment:
I think the sliders affect the population growth somehow. Maybe there are secret stats that help population growth? I have no idea. It just seemed like before I started sliding all over my screen my population count was very low and consequently went up after I slid to completion.
Which brings us to what is making up the population:
These beautifully silly bugs. Look at these balloon animals. They are huge - probably near the size of the player standing up. They often clip through the ground, into each other, and through objects on the map. These creepy crawlies normally slide around without using tank controls to turn themselves first. This results in a lot of bug-strafing and generally silly looking movement. Every bug (regardless if the bug is a “flying bug” or a “crawling bug”) has a small set of wings that wiggle around pathetically. They also immediately phase from existence upon dying - très chic! It’s like looking out at a field of spontaneously-disappearing clones of this guy:
All of this was a little too much for my brain to process. The dancing hedgehogs, the strange sliders I had never seen in another game, and the stupid ass bugs tha I can’t help but feel affection towards. I was laughing like a birthday clown that just got accepted to clown college. I can’t explain it, I don’t expect anyone else to understand it, but there is something perfectly strange and beautifully bad about this game. It just tickles me pickles.
I forgot to mention - the music just adds to the element of surrealism. I feel like it was ripped from one of those “Relaxing Meditation - Nature Sounds” Youtube videos:
Actually, that gives me an idea:
The hilarious thing about Bug Biomes is I know just as much about the game as I did at the start - near nothing… I could tell you there are bugs, at least. Hell, I even went to the instructions to try to parse it out. They weren’t much help:
It wasn’t until I went to send the link to Sam that Bug Biomes pulled back the veil:
Ex-fucking-cuse me??? LEARN ABOUT EVOLUTION??? ON WHAT PLANET DOES THIS TEACH ME ANYTHING ABOUT EVOLUTION? I DIDN’T REALIZE THE EVOLUTION PIPELINE GOES HEDGEHOG ===> BUG ===>EXTINCTION, MY BAD.
Recommend: Can you find beauty in death?
Replay Percentage Chance: 50%
Time Played: Played: 5 minutes
Sam’s Take:
Yeah, I’m guessing that each color bug has some algorithm that dictates how fast they die/reproduce based on some variables determined by the sliders. This is a pretty common school project for computer science students (I had to do something similar for my Parallel Programming class), but it’s pretty cool that the developer not just made this algorithm, but also rendered it into a 3D world. It feels much more like a class project then something I was actually meant to see, but that’s the charm of it.
This has a Pig-like purity to me, it’s just a thing someone made and put online. There’s no attempt at design, there’s no goal, just variables and outcome. It’s baffling and innocent, and I appreciate that there is a completely useless fireplace just to keep the peaceful ambience.
Bug Biomes doesn’t need to exist, and yet it exists. The fact that we have time to create pointless art is something we need to remember and appreciate sometimes.
Bug Biomes is the sign of a blessed life.
Recommend: Doesn’t Matter
Replay Percentage Chance: Maybe?
Time Played: 3 Minutes
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