Bug Blazer

If you have ever wanted to become an omnipotent spacetime-traveling exterminator capable of extermination on scales so massive that you're dealing with numbers of pests greater than there are atoms in the observable universe, then this might just be the game for you. The progression works pretty well and there has clearly been some thought put into the upgrade systems. You start out by wiping out only a few bugs and before you know it you're eliminating bugs in the parallel universes by the bajillions. The basic gameplay loop is to build up your multi-kill bonus at the beginning of a stage, then watch the numbers go up as the bugs destroy themselves by running into your trap, or take a more active approach to completing the stage even quicker by splatting bugs with the various weapons you unlock as you play. Quests allow you to progress by unlocking new areas and bugs to vanquish, and some bonus currency upon completion. Overall a nice experience and I'm looking forward to seeing more from this solo developer.

On the surface, you're squishing bugs and getting better at it. Underneath, you're playing a game of numbers that has been tested, re-tested, simulated, optimized, tweaked, queried, corrected, re-corrected, and after all that we've already had several updates since launch. That's because the developer of this game cares deeply about the complexities of math and logic that make the reward system in our prefrontal cortex buzz. Yet, we're just squishing bugs and getting better at it. I don't even kill house flies at home, but I'll keep this multi-dimensional swarm simulator running next to me at work to squish a few between calls and collect my upgrades. And being part of the testing process, I can say that those upgrades are worth all the carnage when you reach them.

The other aspect of this game I love is the artwork, all of it hand-created by the developer's partner with love and attention to detail. Each insect moves realistically and gives off a creepy enough vibe without going over the top.

An "idle clicker" was not the genre of game I was expecting to take over my life, but here we are.

Like other games in the genre, the game does boil down to making numbers get bigger so you can make numbers get bigger, but the method in which it's presented -- a comical adventure to rid this universe (and many, many others) of all variety of creepy-crawlies -- is so compelling that no matter how much I want to click the quit button, I somehow cannot.

The dev's obvious passion and humor flows through the game at every moment, leading to unexpected laughs and smiles all the way. The cartoonish art is wonderful, and the bugs are presented so well that it's hard not to get the oogies when a swarm of cockroaches fills the screen, and then even harder not to want to set them all ablaze with whatever devious method of bug obliteration you have on hand.

And that's just the beginning.

This game brings alive the old adage: "If you give a man a flyswatter, he can swat a fly. If you teach him to rend and fold the very nature of space/time to his will, he can swat 27 quadrillion of them."