PANGEA SOFTWARE Bugdom 2 (Macintosh)

Rating:
Summary: terrific game for kids (and their adults) who own a Mac
Review: Bugdom 2 is a clever and fun family game for Macintosh users. The hero is Skip the Grasshopper. A bumblebee has stolen his knapsack, and you will take him through a variety of tasks in a wide array of environments to get it back. There are ten levels, and the renditions are beautiful and charming. You start in The Front Yard (aka the scene of the crime), and this is a good level in which to acquire skills such as jumping, flying and kicking. Levels include The Back Yard; Fido's Fur (where you stamp out ticks and fleas); two levels in which you "surf" down a pipeline past obstacles; outrageously fun levels in the house's Playroom and Closet (with terrific details and thrilling action -- dodging vacuum cleaners! riding cars on a toy racetrack! completing a jigsaw puzzle! -- that leave our young 'un screaming with delight); a bombardier trip on a model airplane; and finally, a jaunt through The Park, fleeing ferocious frogs and gape-mouthed fish, battling picnic-crashing ants and ultimately retrieving your knapsack from the bumblebee's hive.

Along the way you'll kick acorns to find valuable clovers and extra lives, and collect powerups from the ubiquitous butterflies, who shower you pleasantly with flowers as they deposit strawberries and blueberries or arm you with "buddy bugs", who can assault the resident flies and fleas from a distance.

There is action as well as problem solving with no killing, though you do kick enemies. A wonderful Kids Mode turns most of the dastardly villains into neutral observers so that little ones can play without getting freaked out. I'd say a 5- or 6-year old could play unassisted, but our toddler loves playing the game with us and performs many of the actions. Use the arrow keys to move, the Space Bar to jump or fly (and it's really fun to be able to fly!), Control to kick, Tab to send a buddy bug out, and Option to pick up or drops objects (so you can get maps from Sally Chipmunk or complete errands for Sam the Snail). An electronic manual explains things well. The Return key lets you switch between four perspectives that vary in your distance behind Skip's shoulder. The levels are large with occasional checkpoints, but you can only save the game at the end of the level.

We've found two problems with the game that are annoying but surmountable, and will probably be fixed with a patch: the Garbage Can task of popping all the soda can tabs does not seem to work -- you have to pop them all then leave the game sitting for a while and come back in order to find the key you need; and sometimes when you are trying to jump to reach the top of the picnic basket the flowers are not solid but drop you through.

Pros: Fun, interesting, immersive environments. Flying. Volume, music and perspective controls at the keyboard so you can make immediate adjustments easily. Kids Mode tames the villains for younger players. Pleasant music. Good electronic manual. Developed on Macs for Mac users.

Cons: A couple of annoying bugs in the program. No key reassignment. Not being able to save except at the end of levels.

Caveats aside, our child has enthusiastically learned to use the arrow keys and now performs multiple key stroke maneuvers. I am an old first-person shooter player but I still find this game fun, and I've found my husband playing when he thinks we're all asleep. Fun for the whole family!

Rating:
Summary: A Worthy Follow-Up to Bugdom
Review: Bugdom 2, if anything, is a great game. It has everything that made its elder game, Bugdom, addictive and exciting---with some new things, too. It has many different levels, with different but equally challenging tasks on each one: find a shell, get acorns, fly a plane, save trapped critters, and battle, yes, Otto Matic. New features are also abound. Instead of the well-know bowling ball mode of Rollie McFly, Skip, the grasshopper hero of Bugdom 2, can fly for limited amounts of time (reminds me of Nanosaur).
If you're bored, or just looking for some decent, cartoonish RPG in a sea of Resident Evils, Bugdom 2 is a very good choice.

Rating:
Summary: What a great game!
Review: I tried the demo of bugdom 2 from my MacAddit CD and guess what,
you can only play it once and that's it!!
It only makes you want to buy it right away to continue the game.
I searched the website for 2 months before you made the game
available, SHAME ON YOU!!!

Thanks for making it available.