Tumblebugs

Title screen

**Tumblebugs** (sometimes stylized as **TumbleBugs**) is a sphere matching game developed by Wildfire Studios and was released on May 18, 2005. It was available on the RealArcade client until being shutdown in 2013.

## How To Play

Tumblebugs has two modes; a story mode and Time Trial. In story mode, you play as Tumble; a beetle at war with the Black Bug King and his minions. The Black Bug King uses his minions to lead colored bugs into his underground lair to enslave them.

Using Tumble, you match groups of 3 or more like-colored bugs to free them from the Black Bug King's tyranny and earn points. Once a certain number of points is earned in a level, Superbug will free more bugs and the trail of bugs will stop. Requiring Tumble to clear the level and destroy the minion pushing the row of bugs. Matching bugs earns points but chaining (freeing many groups in a row) or making combos (letting groups of bugs back into each other), will earn you more points; allowing you to reach Superbug quickly. One can also score gaps, which gives bonus points based on the size of the gap. Unlike in Zuma, gap shot point values are not always divisible by 10. The gap bonus ranges from 30 to 300. Some bugs will have power-ups attached to them that range from allowing the player to earn more lives to giving Tumble special types of bugs. There are 9 different power-ups in the game.

When a level in Tumblebugs is completed, the player will also earn bonus points for the time they took on the level relative to the Ace Time for the level. Unlike in Zuma, where the points are tacked on after the results for the level are shown; Tumblebugs adds them automatically. The formula is the following, with *n* being the number of seconds the Ace Time is beaten by.

B
o
n
u

s

T
i
m
e

=
200
n

{\displaystyle Bonus\_{Time} = 200n}

Across the game's 12 stages, there are a total of 70 rounds and 29 unique maps that all have between one and three appearances throughout the adventure. Tumblebugs also has bonus rounds where Tumble must clear the entire stage in 45 seconds or less. She also gets 10 Wild Bugs to begin each bonus round. Stages 3, 6, 9, and 12 do not have bonus rounds.

The Time Trial allows the player to choose any map they have unlocked throughout the main game, and play it as long as they can. You only get one life for this mode. Periodically, the bugs will get faster and if the player survives for a long time; purple and orange bugs may also appear. There is no limit for how long this mode can go on. It only stops when the player can't take it anymore.

## Game Status

Courtesy of TheBowlFoSho, the RGS for the game has currently been found and archived into the RealArcade Games Preservation Project.

## Trivia

* In April 2018, Wildfire Studios released a remastered version of *Tumblebugs* with higher resolution graphics.
* Tumblebugs was the first sphere matcher to utilize 3-dimensional components. Luxor 2 would eventually do the same in 2006.
* Tumblebugs can display up to 999 lives. If the player were to exceed 999 lives, the game would display their lives as **!!!** in the HUD.
	+ Through points, the player stops gaining lives at 750,000 points.