Bugdom - Pangea Software - 1999 - First time playing?: No, played as a kid

In a small patch of a garden known as Bugdom, the rollie pollies and ladybugs lived peacefully, until a cruel fire ant by the name of King Thorax overthrew the bugdom with the assistance of his many followers. The ladybugs were all captured in spider web cages, while a rollie pollie by the name of Rollie McFly managed to escape. It's now up to him to rescue the ladybugs and overthrow Thorax to return peace to Bugdom.

Wow, that's it? I dunno, after the complete madness of Nanosaur and Weekend Warrior this setup feels like, too conventional for a Pangea Software game, a very standard 'defeat the bad guy' type plot with an evil king and damsels in distress, with a fairly grounded setting to boot. Though I did notice Rollie McFly is the only rollie pollie (or 'slater' as we call them over here in Kiwiland) we see in the entire game and they're never shown to be captured like the ladybugs are, so I can only assume this means the rest of the rollie pollies were slaughtered and Rollie McFly is the only survivor. Yeah, let's say that King Thorax committed genocide, that will add the level of crazy I have come to expect of this developer.

Genre-wise, Bugdom is kind of a 3D platformer, but to quote the philosophical thought experiment from beloved gaming icon and scholar Bubsy Bobcat, “What would a platform game be without platforms?” The answer is Bugdom. It's got the aesthetics and controls of a 3D platformer alongside many of the common tropes of the era such as exploration and collectables, but there's only three levels in this ten level long game that I'd consider particularly platform focused. This is more an action adventure type game based around finding keys, rescuing ladybugs and fighting enemies, or maybe more commonly running away from enemies.

Rollie's basic moveset consists of fully 3D movement, finally without tank controls as a first for Pangea, a simple jump with some decent height, and a weak short-range kick that can be used to fight enemies, breaking open item-containing walnut shells and freeing ladybugs from webbed cages. More interesting is the roll ability, a special move that depletes your energy metre while using it, but allows you to Sonic-style spin dash through levels, allowing for faster level traversal and damaging enemies if you hit them with enough impact. This roll feels wonderful to use, it's really a shame that the energy metre prevents more frequent usage of it, the weight, physics and speed behind it all make rolling extremely satisfying to control, the same way something like Super Monkey Ball, Marble Blast or even Sonic Adventure's spin dash feels great. The last ability you have is the Buddy Bee, a special attack that can only be used when you find a bee hidden inside a walnut. The bee will then follow you everywhere and can be launched at an enemy where it basically functions as a heat-seeking missile, exploding in a fireworks-like display on impact.

Levels are large but ultimately linear in the sense that there is a main path with a single exit point to reach, but secrets and collectables are off the beaten path if you choose to explore those. Occasionally you'll be required to search around a little for a key or switch to progress, but other than that you're never required to go out of your way for collectables. Regardless of if you care about completion or not, there's going to be plenty of walnuts to crack open for items along that main path, and as their contents include raspberries that fill up your health metre, mushrooms that fill your energy metre, buddy bees, invincibility powerups, keys and extra lives, it's in your best interest to break every walnut you come across. This is actually an issue I have with Bugdom, the sheer amount of time that is spent simply kicking walnuts one by one. This might sound like a nitpick, but there are tons of walnuts in every level in the game and with how few platforming sections there are and how frequently you're encouraged to just ignore and run away from enemies, it ends up almost feeling like the core gameplay loop, kick a walnut, walk to the next nearest walnut and repeat.

Crash Bandicoot ended up being something I found myself thinking about, which has a similar focus on breaking a common object littered throughout the levels, but in the case of Crash it's crates instead of walnuts. However, in Crash it's satisfying since your spin attack is a wide range attack that surrounds Crash's entire body and doesn't slow him down, allowing him to break tons of crates at once with a single spin, keeping the pacing fast and fun. Meanwhile in Bugdom, Rollie's kick is short range, can only hit one walnut at a time and forces Rollie to come to a dead stop each time he uses it, no running and kicking at the same time allowed. Entering a new area in Bugdom and seeing tens of walnuts scattered across the screen should be exciting, leaving you eager to see all of the goodies that they contain, but it's more likely to make you groan due to what a tedious process breaking them all will be in order to check if any of them contain keys required to progress, while you're completely aware that the majority of them will only contain clovers which do absolutely nothing except give you some points for your high score.

In between walnut kicking sessions you'll of course have the combat to deal with, and sadly it does not fare much better. There's a variety of enemies like the boxer flies, mosquitoes and spiders, but the most common enemies are the red soldier ants who attack by throwing their spears at you. They take three kicks to kill and in between each kick they have an invincibility period where they fall on their arse and shake their head while staring at the ground, regretting their life choices before getting back up and trying to fight again, after which you of course just kick them again and repeat the cycle. This would be tedious enough on its own but it's made much worse by the fact that the ants always come in swarms, it's never just one. You're fighting three of them at once during your very first encounter with them, their numbers increasing even further in later levels. As they are slow and easy to walk right past most of the time, the best strategy commonly ends up being just ignoring them and running past them. Fighting isn't fun and it doesn't reward you with any points, so even for completionists it's not worth the hassle. The manual even recommends running from battles, which is encouraged in game by later levels introducing enemies that can't be damaged by the kick such as the flying bees and fire ants. You'll sure want to kill them though, not only because they come in massive swarms that are constantly getting in your way, but the sound design, oh dear, the sound design.

Starting out, the sound design actually seems quite good, the soundtrack is excellent with Level 8 and Level 9 having two of my favourites, really adds a level of atmosphere to the game and plenty of these tracks are earworms too. The issue is, this is a game about bugs, and as I do not need to explain to you, many bugs make a buzzing noise when they fly. Early on, this isn't an issue, Flying enemies come in small amounts and as a result the buzzing is infrequent and fairly quiet. From level 5 onwards though, you better get ready for hearing ridiculously loud, constant, non-stop buzzing for the rest of the game. The main culprits are the bees and the fire ants, both flying enemies that come in absolutely massive hordes in the second half of the game and as mentioned earlier can't be easily killed. Multiple buzzing enemies all grouped together like that results in the buzzing sound becoming even louder for each extra enemy included in the horde, until you're at a point where the rest of the game’s sound is completely drowned out by a deafening buzzing being produced by enemies in a room you haven't even reached yet because it's still locked off. It's awful, I swear it could give someone a migraine, while for the rest of us it's just unbearably annoying.

Well, this has all been rather mean of me so far, Bugdom is actually one of the more fondly remembered Mac games after all. While I think that the core gameplay is pretty weak for the reasons I just described, there actually are quite a few good moments in Bugdom that prevent it from being a slog akin to Weekend Warrior. Bugdom actually has quite a bit of variety to liven up the game and prevent it from becoming too monotonous. The first stand out example of this is Level 3, the pond. You start out either hopping along lily pads or swimming across the pond, avoiding water skippers in the water and mosquitoes on land, but then you'll reach a stretch of water filled with hungry fish that will instantly eat you whole if you get anywhere near them. It's not possible to swim past them as Rollie swims much too slowly, so instead you find a coin to pay a pond skater that you can ride and take full control of as you drive around the surface of the pond, mosquitos chasing after you and fish lunging at you as you dash through all the danger that Rollie was too slow to handle on his own. It's an exciting and fun little stand-out set piece, and Level 4 after it keeps up the pace with such set pieces as well.

The intro of Level 4 has a large field for you to get across, but dozens of humans are stomping across the grounds (all barefoot for some reason, do you guys not see all of the thorns around here?) and you have to weave your way through those stomping feet without getting crushed in a surprisingly intense sequence, with the red lighting and dramatic music making things all the more intimidating and leaving Rollie feeling all the smaller. That's just the intro of the stage however, as after that section you then meet a dragonfly you can ride in a similar manner to the pond skater, but now you can fly freely up and down and even fire projectiles allowing you to bomb ants from above. Just don't fly up too high though, or else a bat will swoop out of nowhere to devour you whole, much like the fish in Level 3. This ends with another memorable set piece, a tense trench run at the highest point of the level where you're weaving through spiders, bees, webs and thorns while riding the dragonfly, but also making sure to not fly high enough that the bat sees you, which is much easier to accidentally do here since you're already so high up to begin with.

Unfortunately, the game kind of peaks here. Of the remaining six levels after Level 4, three of them are just boss fights which are all pathetically easy and short-lived, barely feeling like levels at all. The first boss against the beehive in Level 5 doesn't even have any attacks, it is the most literal “shoot it until it dies” type boss fight as you just blast it with the dragonfly's projectiles until it explodes. The boss fight against the queen bee in Level 7 is more annoying than hard since she spews globs of honey that slow you down and she can only be damaged by ramming her with the roll attack, but she is still easy to just repeatedly ram before she has a chance to spread honey. Even the final boss in Level 10 is really pathetic, feeling more akin to what you'd expect the first boss to be in any other platformer, with only a single attack and an easy to exploit weakness. The bosses really just feel like filler in place of what could have been actual full levels.

Of the remaining three levels, Level 6 in the beehive is mostly mediocre, just consisting of long hallways filled with annoying bees to roll past and occasional bits of extremely rudimentary platforming. Level 9 is much harder with more precision platforming and vine swinging above instant death lava keeping the stakes constantly high, along with the fact that any ants you kill here will then rise as ghosts which continue to fight you but can't be killed, but overall I don't mind Level 9 too much, it's not too long and feels suitably climactic.

Level 8 is where I really get irritated however, it feels designed specifically to annoy the player above anything else, with huge swarms of fire ants you can't fight directly and will tear through your HP with their fire breath, and also the roaches which spread toxic gas preventing you from getting close enough to kick them without taking damage. There are neat ideas here like how you can lure the fire ants into lighting sticks of dynamite to take them out, or the fact that the roaches’ gas is flammable which means you can light groups of them ablaze with a Buddy Bee attack, but these are both clumsily executed. It's extremely difficult to lure a fire ant into lighting dynamite without also getting caught in the blast since they only follow you at fairly close range, and your ability to combat the roaches is limited by the fact that you can only have one Buddy Bee with you at a time and they are a single use attack, requiring you to find yet another walnut containing another bee after firing your Buddy Bee just once. Once again, you'll have to run past them a lot, which is made especially annoying when hordes of them are placed in your way specifically to guard walnuts, keys and locked doors. Level 8 is also by far the largest level, but the designers didn't really seem to know what to fill all of that empty space with other than just hordes of enemies, so the level feels barren and empty as well with no stand out gimmicks other than the fireflies which carry you back to the start of the level if you get too close to them, which is again more annoying than anything.

It might not sound like it with how much I'm complaining, but I don't hate Bugdom at all. The presentation and character designs are very charming, the HUD being one of my favourite aspects of the presentation with touches such as Rollie physically holding items in your inventory, rolling around feels great, there's a good amount of variety and the rideable insects in Levels 3 and 4 are a lot of fun. I've 100%ed this game multiple times, mainly out of nostalgia to be fair, but there's still enough that I enjoy there to occasionally revisit. It really could be better though in a lot of ways. I feel that the game would be a lot more enjoyable if the energy metre was removed entirely and you were able to roll around as much as you wanted with no limits. You can still get hurt by attacks while rolling so it doesn't make you invincible or anything, but enemies take more damage from rolling attacks which makes them less tedious to fight, and it even helps with cracking open walnuts, allowing you to break large groups of them much faster and without coming to a complete halt to slowly kick them open one by one. The roll is also part of what makes the game unique in my opinion, even though it's spin dash-esque it's quite a bit different in execution since it handles more like something like Super Monkey Ball, so it's a shame that your usage of the coolest mechanic in Bugdom is so limited.

Personally, in spite of how short it is, I still prefer Nanosaur when it comes to 90s Pangea Software games. Not only is Nanosaur more engaging with fun weapons to make combat actually interesting, but it's got superb replay value too with speedrunning and score attack runs. Bugdom's replay value is pretty limited once you've done a 100% run. There's a high score table, but the only thing that contributes to your score is how many of the collectables you've gotten, so if you get them all then you can't raise that score any higher. This is also the only purpose of the clovers and ladybugs, there's no reason to go for them unless you care about points. In contrast to Nanosaur, where how many eggs you can retrieve and dinosaurs you can kill under the time limit results in a lot of replay value as you figure out the best possible routes to maximise your score before time runs out, Bugdom is much more limited in its scoring system.

There aren't really many 3D platformer/action adventure games on Mac OS 9, especially at the time of Bugdom's release. The only alternative I can think of is the Tomb Raider series, and while I recommend those games much more highly than Bugdom, they're likely not the kind of Rareware-esque cartoony platformers people are thinking of when they say “3D platformer”. Later on in the early 2000s, Rayman 3 would get ported to Mac, which also gets a high recommendation from me, but in the 90s, I feel Bugdom helped to fill a void in the Mac's library, and on top of that it's a Mac original as opposed to a port like Tomb Raider or Rayman, which makes it all the more stand out. It's not the best, but it's not a Weekend Warrior tier disaster either. Basically, Bugdom is a game.

Once again, jorio has done a great job porting Bugdom to Windows, Linux and modern Mac OS, give it a download here if you're interested in trying!

- Page written by MSX_POCKY, 28th January 2024