Tumblebugs are set on a typical American backyard, however horrible atrocities are taking place in the grass and under the ground as the Black Empire are enslaving colourful bugs. There is only one bug that can help, Tumble. Tumble is some sort of crossbreed between a fly and every other insect you can possibly think of.

Basically the game is about shooting colourful bugs out of Tumble’s mouth while trying to match the colour of the bugs with the bugs already moving around on the board. The bugs that are moving are being pushed to a hole in the ground in a straight line by the Black Empire bugs.

When the player manage to get three bugs of the same colour in a row those bugs will disappear and make the line of bugs moving shorter and thereby saving the bugs from falling down the hole. The game concept is really fun and I haven’t seen that many games like it.

As I mentioned before Tumblebugs is set in a backyard, each level has a background based on what you can find in backyards. That is sometimes there is a grass and a garden hose and sometimes there is a drilling machine on a concrete floor.

The various level and the setting in an backyard is actually pretty neat and helps add a special cosy feeling about the whole game. There is always a risk limiting a game to one particular setting and that is boredom, however I believe that Wildfire has managed to get the environments interesting enough.

Graphically the game is pretty neat with nice effects when you get power ups. As the game is seen from above and is stationary the room for blistering 3D graphics are limited. However the graphics does the job well, much better than many other similar games.

The story is presented at the start of the game with nice comic book clippings explaining the background and current state of affairs. I really like the idea of presenting stories as a comic book since no one really loves reading endless pages of a storyline.

Tumblebugs are truly a great game with virtually no learning curve. I do miss a multiplayer mode or maybe a hot seat mode, but it’s still a game worth your time and money.

Requirements:
Pentium II 400 MHz, 64 MB RAM, 3D Accelerated Graphics Card
Tested on:
Pentium 4 2.4 GHz, 512 MB RAM, ATI Radeon Graphics Card