Bumble Bots
Bumble Bots is a puzzle action game for the PICO-8 fantasy console. You control a bot which needs to find its way in sixteen small but increasingly more difficult levels. You need to collect pick ups, push boxes, fill gaps, use teleports and more while being chased by enemy bots or the clock.
Be warned, this is a tough game. The puzzles will challenge your problem solving skills and the action your reflexes and agility. I expect only a minority of players to reach the end, but if you do, I think you'll find the experience a fun and rewarding one. Feel free to share in the comments below how far you got.
How to play
The game is self-explanatory. You will encounter new elements and learn new tricks as you go along.
Use 
, the Z key on your keyboard, to go to the next screen. During the game, you only need the arrow keys to move and turn.
The game keeps track of your progress. When you start a new game, you can skip the levels you already completed. A cookie is used to retain your progress across browser sessions. If this does not work for you, enable cookies or use a different browser.
Credits
| Game design Coding Graphics Sound effects | Erwin Bonsma |
| Music | Paul Bonsma |
See also
- Bumble Bots v1.0 - The earlier, "hi-res" version of the game
Development log
- Touch ControlsMay 29, 2018
- Less is MoreMay 21, 2018
Comments
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I thought this game would be slightly easier...but it wasn't. It was so friggin hard. I loved the music though.
Ha ha, thanks for the funny play through. I enjoyed watching that. It made me cringe a few times though. "No, why does he go there? Again? Why? Why doesn't he just do X?"
Btw, the fact that you can skip a level in the level selection menu is by design, to reflect the game's difficulty. At least there will not be a single level that blocks your progress. There are always two levels you can try to beat in order to unlock a new one.
Anyway, I will pass the compliments wrt to the music on to my brother, who composed the tracks. Happy to hear you at least enjoyed that part.
Well, I did enjoy all of it. It was just REALLY hard. I know there's like a pattern that you have to figure out but I just couldn't do it. Overall, if I'm being a serious adult, it is a well crafted game definitely intended by hardcore gamers. Me, I tend to take things a bit loosey goosey though and just have fun. Overall, very impressive. And I love Pico-8 games.
Nice work!
Consider checking out this template with touch controls for phones:
https://github.com/headjump/pico8_html_template
I use a modified version here:
https://trevorade.itch.io/bubble-pond
In Chrome, if you open the dev tools, you can simulate a phone with touch controls, reload the page and see what the controls look like for different phone sizes.
Thanks!
I will definitely follow up on your suggestions to support touch controls. It looks fairly straightforward, and nice to have the game playable on mobile devices as well.
Btw, I like your Bubble Pond game. It's an original puzzle idea, and quite challenging, which I like.
Thanks!
I'm pretty much done with that game but there always seems to be something else to add :) At the moment, I'm working on Undo support which should make the game a little more fair.
Bumble Bots now has touch support. It's based on the template you suggested, but also customized. Thanks again for the suggestion!