Little Bug

Sometimes it feels like every month there's a great new release that I end up quitting due to game-breaking glitches. This month's candidate is Little Bug, a haunting new platformer that reminds me a lot of a nightmarish version of Bionic Commando. The problem is that the game has a misleading title. The issue isn't that it has a little bug, but rather that it has one giant game-ending bug that made it impossible for me to complete the story. It's just another tragic example of a terrible thing happening to an otherwise great game.

The Little Bug in question is a young girl with a big imagination named Nyah. She's an adventurous soul that isn't afraid of getting dirty and playing with road kill. This is clearly not something her mother understands and it seems to be just one of the many things they fight about at home. It's enough to make Nyah want to be left alone for good, which is exactly what happens when she's quite literally dropped into a weird fantasy world. It's an immediately captivating setup that will ultimately lead to some real revelations for our little hero.

The important thing you need to realize about Little Bug is that it's actually Bionic Commando. Okay, so it doesn't have Rad Spencer killing Hitler, but the central gameplay conceit is surprisingly similar to Capcom's classic 1988 action game. Nyah can't jump and has limited moves, so her only chance of surviving this strange and hostile world is to use an energy grappling hook to get around.

As strange as it sounds, the thing you grapple with is actually a manifestation of Nyah's words. What's more, you control this floating spirit and position it in a way that will allow the titular hero to make it to the next checkpoint. That's the goal in this game -- to get from one checkpoint to the next without falling into a bottomless pit or smacking into one of the many red hands. And it's not just Nyah who has to worry about the enemies, because that floating spirit I just mentioned can also die by hitting a red bad guy.

Being able to control both Nyah and the object she grapples with at the same time is an interesting twist on this type of platformer and allows the developer to come up with a lot of unique obstacles. There's no doubt that a lot of the challenges are incredibly difficult, but they are also fair and rarely frustrating. A lot of this comes down to how well Nyah controls in the air and how fun it is to swing around. There's certainly a learning curve to the gameplay and you'll probably die in a lot of silly ways before getting it down, but it's also a lot of fun when you've mastered the dual-stick controls and all the swinging works to your advantage.

If it sounds like I like this game, it's because I do. I like the look of the game and how it controls. I like the story and the dream-like backgrounds. I like the music and atmosphere. Hell, I even like the little blurbs you get when you pick up the numerous collectibles. And yet, despite all these things that I like, I'm going to have a hard time recommending Little Bug in its current state. For as much as I was into everything about this game, I simply couldn't beat it due to a game-breaking bug.

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Let me set the scene: There comes a point where you're so far in the sky that you're walking on clouds. It's a part where you're supposed move both Nyah and the floating spirit through a complicated maze. This is already a difficult challenge, but it's made nearly impossible when you realize that you can fall right through the floor. And the problem is that you don't simply die, but rather the game holds on the background to remind you that you completely exited the level. The only way to restart from the checkpoint is to completely exit back to the main menu and load from a save.

What's frustrating is that the floor I fell through was actually solid just a few minutes before. But even then, I was still running into the problem where I wouldn't die from hitting the red hands and instead fell out of the level and had to reload the game from the main menu. And without being able to stand on the very important platform, there's absolutely no way to complete the stage. I was stuck.

So what I did was restart the game from the very beginning in hopes that the same thing wouldn't happen again. But wouldn't you know it, the same thing did happen again, and I got to a point where I had to give up. I wasn't able to complete Nyah's adventure or see all this game offered, and that's disappointing. Maybe one day I will and all the things I love about Little Bug will wash away the bad taste of the game-breaking glitches, but until that happens, buyers beware.