Bug N Out Reviews

Bug N Out is, well, apparently made this way on purpose. I looked to see if this was ported from some ancient arcade machine or something, but it really doesn't look like it was. And if it was, that would certainly explain the poor quality, even if it doesn't excuse it. But now, it seems we have both no excuse and no explanation. Ah well. Before we get ahead of ourselves, what is this anyway? Well, it's a kind of platespinning action game. You've got 8 columns, each with a little hammer at the bottom. Bugs crawl down the screen along each column, so you have to move your little light to each column and then trigger the hammer when the bug gets close enough. Action gets frantic as they send more than one bug at a time! Yeah... this is an incredibly shallow arcade game. So shallow, there's free browser games and free mobile apps that far exceed the scope and complexity of this game... and remember, the developer wants you to give them cash money for this trashware. And that's not really okay. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. The game features somewhat lazy, simplistic "retro" looking 2D graphics, of the type you normally expect to see in low effort Flash/browser games and mobile apps. Considering this is being evaluated as a PC game, having the graphics phoned in like this isn't going to result in a high quality, visually impressive game that PC gamers are used to seeing. The game only displays in 4:3 pillarboxed aspect ratio. It's possible they developed this using an old CRT they found in a dumpster, or this game has been specifically designed for people gaming on PC's from 1995... either way, this isn't really acceptable in the modern era of PC gaming. The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts. Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the video game library/engine, Microsoft XNA Game Studio. It's rarely used, because it's arguably worse than construction kits like GameMaker Studio, RPGMaker and Clickteam Fusion, but it's also much harder to work with. Despite this, Microsoft XNA Game Studio has very limited capabilities, which go some way to explaining the poor quality of the game. Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the game all-time peak player count was only ONE player. That's right, only one person ever played this at a time. When I played this for the purposes of reviewing it, I equalled the peak player count for the game. OUCH. The only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. So, should you buy this game? Bug N Out is relatively cheap at $3 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. This is also competing with over 11,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.

filled the bug-shaped hole in my bug-shaped heart :)