Bug Chucker Review
PROS
- Complex puzzles with elegant solutions.
- Familiar gameplay; easy to pick up and play.
- Relatively smooth difficulty curve; new features added regularly to keep things fresh.
CONS
- Mastering levels can be frustrating; sometimes subject to pure chance.
- Conflicting aesthetics; cartoonish audio and concept, realistic graphics and physics.
VERDICT
Consider Bug Chucker as the next step on your journey to mastering physics based puzzles once the ordinary 'catapult' variety looses its challenge.
- Full Review
- App Store Info
While it's no real defense, being original can be difficult, so sometimes it's best to embrace what you are and simply come up with something interesting. Bug Chucker by Cyan Worlds may take its inspirations from App Store classics, but the overall result is something far more intricate and complex, making it a difficult game to compare.
Many players will be familiar with the basic setup as you fling objects with a cannon in an attempt to blow up enemies on the screen. Instead of Earth-like gravity constantly curving your shot, various space-entities including planets, stars and black holes create permanent wells of force, allowing shots to not only curve back, but to also loop around. Debris floating in the level often acts as a temporary barrier, reacting to being hit in different ways depending on its composition and many puzzles must be solved by working out how to utilize these objects as fodder to set up chain reactions. Additional bug-types are added over time, ranging from the usual 'explosive' to the far more unique 'mosquito' that changes the gravity of objects within the level.
The complexity of the puzzles are tempered by the cannon leaving a trail and a marker to indicate where you positioned it last giving you a chance to correct your shots accordingly. Frustratingly this isn't always enough as the 'first shot' can mean the difference between success and failure, especially when you're aiming for those elusive platinum three-star scores.
Aesthetically the game feels a bit flat as it tries to strike a middle ground between something fun and almost cartoonish, while remaining realistic to highlight the physics gameplay. It's a conflicting mix that doesn't feel fully-realized, however it gets the job done and despite the potential for complex reactions the game's framerate remains smooth.
Ultimately Bug Chucker is for fans of physics puzzles, especially catapult varieties like Angry Birds, but unlike many in the genre this one will take time and patience to master as you'll have to suffer through the occasional session of restarting a level over and over to get it right.
Screenshots
$0.99
