Kill All Bugs is a new game from Bight Games which takes the tried and tested open arena style of Tower Defence (rather than the fixed path alternative), and creates an intelligent AI that can reverse it's path depending on the maze you lay out for it. Add to this the novel idea of tower wrecking - if you don't leave a clear path - and you have a pretty good premise.

Even though your defences are not upgradeable, there are a few strategic possibilities. Laser projectors beam a wall between each other, that bugs will try to avoid by default - you can make them travel through by placing towers around the path of the laser. Stun towers slow down the enemy, and there are power generators that can boost other towers. These two towers can be 'activated' to perform special abilities for a brief moment, which is quite a good twist. Your offensive towers include a long range missile tower, flamethrower and standard gun tower, with an airstrike that gets more ferocious as the missions progress, providing that you fully charge it before use - by killing bugs.

Bugs range from simple land crawlers to sea farers and aerial units. If you're not careful you can be overrun if you leave a gap in your defences at the wrong point - in many cases it's a game of trial and error as you piece together the perfect strategy for clearing the map. Simply put, it's hard, and brutally unforgiving at the best of times - with most missions only containing 10 waves, each wave feels like a struggle. With many maps containing terrain that you can't build upon, the result is extremely linear gameplay - there's definitely moments in which a restart was necessary as bugs flew past defences, or walked around them. It seems like there's just one way to finish a map, especially so if you want to collect the coveted gold medal at the end.

Although you can zoom in...you will notice pixellation if you get close enough.

Survival mode doesn't share this problem - it's just you, the bugs, and the towers over a large island plateau. Here you can really feel that you're concocting a strategy, building and letting the clock tick upwards for as long as possible. We enjoyed this mode a lot more than the main campaign as a result, although both could use a fast forward button for when you're low on cash.

Presentation is sprite based, and looks attractive when the map is zoomed out fully - in addition, the game has a day/night cycle which lights up the cities and towers at night, which is a cool touch. Although you can zoom in, it's easily playable from the zoomed out view, and you will notice pixellation if you get close enough. We liked the squadron of planes that come in to bomb the field, as well as the general look and feel of the game - extras such as the in game cut scenes and art are unlocked when you complete a mission, and are available to view at any point. The music and sound effects can both be turned off, but we did like the air raid siren at the start of missions.

Kill All Bugs is a good game that just needs some fine tuning and gameplay adjustments for it to really stand out.

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