BugOut! is game created with A Bug’s Life and Honey I Shrunk The Kids in mind. The story is that the player has been shrunk by a home experiment and must find their way back into the room that has the machine that does it. Since you have been shrunk by the machine, your size is comparable to an ant. Unfortunately for you, you have been having a bug problem so you’re overrun by them everywhere you turn. You must fight your way back to find the key you dropped after the machine turned you into a pint sized person. Find it and get back into the room to turn yourself back into your normal size.
The best strategy to get the key is to complete the level on the right to get the shard which deals significantly more damage than the toothpick. This allows the player to complete the rest of the level as well as the second level more effectively and much quicker. Picking up the grasshopper armor is also a good strategy. This allows the player to jump much higher than normal which gives them the option of getting a higher score from jumping up to the spider web and defeating the second set of spiders. The aspect of this game that makes it emergent is the ability to choose which level you do first and can continue to do so as much as they would like. The player actually doesn’t have to do anything but run through the second level for the key if they choose to do so without ever picking up a weapon at all. That means the game is as hard as the player would like to make it. The grasshoppers are set to hop at random time intervals which makes it more difficult for the player to get a firm grasp on their movements. The spiders are set to drop at random time intervals as well. This keeps the player on their toes making sure they don’t get too relaxed with the way things move in the game. Some positive feedback would be the more accessories the player picks up the more powerful they become. This is an example of the snowball effect we discussed in class. As aforementioned, there is no right or wrong way to complete the game. It is completely up to the player to choose their path they wish to take. The enemy’s AI is a set side to side movement but with a focus on up and down movement being the thing to watch out for. The armor the player picks up allows the player to jump higher making them more difficult to hit. The better the player gets, the easier it will be for them to avoid being hit all together. The player is consistently finding new things(i.e. toothpick, shard, armor) these each have a different attribute in some way. Each can make the player more effective if they learn to use them correctly. The best items are at the end of each levels which encourages the player to defeat all the enemies to reach them. The bright colors of the wallpapers and enemies keep the player visually stimulated while the prompts make them wonder how the character is so small. Unfortunately, this installment is not all the story so the player never truly understands why, however, they get an idea. The armor allows the player to jump higher which means they can take shortcuts across the spider’s webbing and avoid being jumped on by grasshoppers more easily. The player can also defeat everyone in the second level using only the toothpick if they are able to master the controls as well as the movements of the grasshoppers and spiders.
Created by Romeo Medez and Daniel Trayler