Igloo Games have carved out a somewhat small niche in the App Store - releasing innocent looking budget titles that are devilish in gameplay design, and make inventive use of the iPhone's input mechanisms. Bed Bugs follows on this tradition nicely, being priced at an impulse pick up of £1.19, and it shares many of the same traits as it's predecessors.

One headache that's still present is no save state. Now, you can make the argument that because each level is relatively short, it's no big loss overall - while that is true, it's still annoying that when you're doing well on a stage to have to quit and lose your progress. It's the only glaring omission that we can see in the game though, because the rest of the presentation is brilliant. Five sublime music tracks play in the background (you can substitute these for iPod music if you're weary of them), and each of the environments look picturesque. 28 enemies give plenty of variation, and we loved the little poster of Dizzy Bee hanging up in the bedroom, before the stage starts.

So how does it play? It's safe to say that this is another game that just wouldn't have worked as well (and probably not at all) on any other platform. It starts off as a simple tap to eradicate game, and then it gets a little trickier. Suddenly, enemies appear that you have to double tap, or tap at the right point, or swipe up to rearrange them. Later on you'll be pulling apart enemies with two fingers, or tapping and holding on the screen until the enemy puffs up and explodes as a result. There's a simply exhaustive list of things that you must do, and we haven't gone into them all here. The good news is that multi touch is a requirement here, and it works superbly well, especially given sometimes the insane amount of creeps that can be onscreen at once.

Once you work out how to kill an enemy (the game doesn't offer help), you'll notice that successful elimination spawns a small Z onto the screen, which zips along into your level progress bar. Failing to eradicate the bug results in a little skull icon making it's way into the bar. It plays like a tug of war, so you'll do alright until you fail a few times consecutively. Completing a level without failing one enemy earns a gold trophy, and a silver star is awarded if you simply complete without letting your sleeper wake up. If he does wake up, you'll have to retry the level.

Each of the 28 levels have a set pattern to follow, they aren't randomised in any way. So winning isn't about luck, it boils down to good timing, and you'll need to think fast because Igloo didn't pull any punches as far as tricky design goes. The exception comes in the form of the four bonus waves, where you will try and survive for as long as possible. Each of the levels has a total score, and an overall score is shown in the selection screen.

There's plenty of content here for £1.19. The difficulty is just right, and the stages are designed to be easily winnable once you put the effort into retrying each a few times over. We had the game beaten in around 1-2 hours, but that was without attempting to replay the harder stages, so we reckon you could squeeze a few more hours in to finish the game completely. Bed Bugs is definitely a fun experience overall, and offers another unique take on iPhone gaming. We recommend it.

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More by this developer

Dizzy Bee 2, B

Review by Ben Briggs, February 09, 2009

Dizzy Bee, A

Review by Ben Briggs, October 28, 2008

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