Band of Bugs Video

By: Brandon McCartin (BMcC)

On: June 13th, 2007

Is NinjaBee indie? I mean, they’re certainly friends with indies… Well, whatever. A friend of indies is a friend of mine. Literally!

So here’s a gameplay video of their upcoming XBLA game Band of Bugs. It looks similar to Tactics, but with bugs. Which, in my experience, make all the difference.

The video shows off the level editor as well as some combat.

(Source: Game|Life)

Posted in Developers, Strategy, Videos, Xbox 360 | Tags: NinjaBee

Ilia Chentsov

E-hm… The music was nice. Some Latin/Western feeling to it.
Aubrey

I must admit that when I first heard about the game, I feared that it’d be like Goo, but with swarms of ants instead of liquids (although we also have a “swarm of bees on a bee hive” skin for Goo).

Lucky for me, it’s not! Definitely looks cool though. I liked disgaea.
Neon

meh, doesn’t look very fun. i don’t mind those kind of games but that looks recycled.
Dan MacDonald

It’s an interesting follow-up to something like Outpost Kaloki (probably spelling that wrong). I really liked outpost K. Though I have to agree, it does seem a little generic. For me the jury’s still out though, Ninjabee works hard on their stuff, they don’t just shovel out games for no reason.
http://www.moonpod.com Poo Bear

“seems a little generic” – Is Outpost Kaloki more unique than this? Wasn’t that just lemonade tycoon in space?

I’d have thought the bigger issue is this “seems” a much more hardcore game i.e. final fantasy tactics. Mind you, they only make games for X360 these days so maybe that’s actually a clever move?

It looks extremely professionally put together though, hats off to them for that. Didn’t seem to take them long either, I wonder how many staff they employ. Anyone would think X360 pays good money ;)
Brent

I work at NinjaBee. It is always interesting to see what everyone thinks when they see the clip posted above.

As far as an Outpost Koloki sequel …
http://blogs.ign.com/SpaceStationTycoon/

Ok – It’s not realy a sequel and it is on a differnt platform but it may have what you are looking for.

As far as questions about how big are staff is – along with other information you should check out some of the many interviews out there:

http://game-spectrum.com/content/view/933/151/

This guys is a pretty big fan but this site has a ton of information on NinjaBee and BoB

http://wordpress.com/tag/ninjabee/
I AM OMINOUS

My brief response is – first off, Ninja Bee is not necessarily XBLA only (believe me – I work for them as a designer).

Second – this game isn’t cool because it’s a “hard core” tactics game. This game is unique because it’s a highly accessible tactics game. The main point is that it’s freakin’ fun. The gameplay is fairly fast-paced, getting rid of the slow pacing that is usually associated with tactics games, and the level-editor and live multiplayer aspects make it a super entertaining game, especially considering the price.

That’s all I have to say about that.
(Oh, and thanks for the music compliment Llia, I wrote and recorded that song)
http://www.tscreative.net BMcC

Cool. :)

Thanks for the info, dudes! I’m sure we’ll cover this game more in the future.
http://www.moonpod.com Poo Bear

Thanks for the links Brent. I didn’t realise ninjaBee/wahoo were so big, there looks to be about 20 people in that photo of the office! Seems like you guys made it big. It’s interesting that the company has 2 names, one doing xbla stuff and the other doing other stuff? Kind of strange.

You should get one of the big wigs there to do an “indie guide to making it big” for the rest of us poor schmoes :)