Doodle Bob!

Use your doodling powers to direct Bob (the Doodle Rider) around obstacles as he collects stars and gifts. Bob will roll down and bounce off of the lines that you draw so you'll need some real ingenuity to successfully navigate the unpredictable world of Doodle Bob! Watch out for rockets and lightening bolts and other devious traps.

Doodle Bob! employs a novel control system. Tapping on Bob causes him to bounce up, while dragging on the screen draws lines that Bob will bounce off of, roll and ride down according to realistic physics. The side-scrolling, randomly generated environment is rich and complex and is rendered in a distinctive doodley-style that mirrors the drawing aspect of the game. Doodle Bob! combines elements from Line Rider-type drawing and scribbling games with the fast-paced side-scrolling game-play of platform games like Flappy Bird. The combined effect is totally unlike either and is truly original.

What makes Doodle Bob! unique is the puzzle-like quality of the game-play. This is not true of other games in which the player directs a character by drawing paths. In those games (like Scribble Scram, Scribble Run or the original Line Rider) the character has some internal means of gaining momentum. By contrast, in Doodle Bob! the only means of acceleration are gravity and the ability to jump or bob. The physics engine is extremely realistic, taking into account both rolling friction and air-resistance. This means the player has to be much smarter about how they get Bob from one place to another. Furthermore, the scribble-y doodles you draw have the potential to trap Bob and so the player needs to plan-ahead in order to avoid this.

The result of this is that the feel of Doodle Bob! is one of fast-paced problem solving. No other game provides the combination of intense action, simple randomly-generated puzzles and a creative drawing-based control system. The partially hand-drawn graphics are more organic-looking than other 'doodley' games like Doodle Jump or Draw Rider but cleaner and more visually pleasing than the crayon style of Scribble Scram.

Doodle Bob! was inspired by a youth spent scribbling, doodling, or both scribbling and doodling at the same time. And in a more immediate sense by the popular online game Line Rider (cloned by Android game Draw Rider), the game was originally intended to be a kind of 'live action Line Rider'. The use of drawing to control the character works well with the constraints of a smart-phone touch screen and rationalizes the school exercise book doodle style of graphics. Kids who spend their time scribbling shapes and drawing caricatures of their teachers during lessons should be naturally adept at the game. As of course should the many adult doodlers out their who scribble their way through business meetings.

My tips for scoring well are as follows: 1. First of all, make sure you understand the game's physics. The game takes friction into account and so you should not expect Bob to zoom up long ramps like in Line Rider. If you wish to ride to the right then your lines need to slope downwards. 2. You can use lines for more than just to ride down. For instance if you draw a line above a spring you can bounce off of the bottom of it and hence direct Bob in the desired direction. Also, lines can be used to deflect rockets, a feature of the game that less experienced players miss. 3. Think about your position in the game window, don't be afraid to draw downward sloping lines to ride down to the left of the screen, this gives you more time to react to objects that appear on the right.

Doodle Bob! was created by Ben Deaner (me) mostly over the summer of 2015. I am an independent developer and made this during my scant free-time. I hope you enjoy it.