YOU HEARTLESS BASTARDS: Bad Caterpillar

YOU HEARTLESS BASTARDS is a special award I present to good indie games that never found their audience. We all want an industry where the cream rises to the top, but in vast wilderness of indie gaming, sometimes quality titles never catch-on. You Heartless Bastards is a distinction no game wants, but sadly, many games will earn.

YOU HEARTLESS BASTARDS! You say you want indies to remake the classics, but when a really good one pops-up, you completely ignore it!

Now granted, Bad Caterpillar’s console lifecycle began and ended with XBLIG, and that’s on Kris Steele, the game’s developer. In the interest of full disclosure, Kris is my friend. In fact, he was one of those guys who endorsed my presence to the XNA development community. Xbox Live Indie Game developers weren’t used to critics who actually put their games through the wringer. Then I show up, my reviews are brutal, positive evaluations are rare, and I’m telling unfunny jokes the entire time. Hell, I’d of thought I might a troll, too. But, Kris was in the group that said “she’s exactly the kick in the butt this community has needed.” I’ll never forget that. Even when I gave his Volchaos a really negative review, he took it on the chin and has always been a great friend. He even made me proud when he landed a top 50 game that had a LOT of staying power: Hypership Still Out of Control. When we met, he was a relatively new father of a precious little girl. Today, that kid is in high school and serves as a constant reminder that, holy shit, I’ve been doing this a long time now. How long? I reviewed Bad Caterpillar eight years ago.

I’m not sure the exact font, but Bad Caterpillar uses the same font that many XNA-developed used. Despite being nostalgic for those old days, I sure don’t miss that ugly-ass font.

It’s not the same game it was eight-years-ago. In my original review, I noted that I wanted a lot less scoring bonuses and a lot more power-ups. Kris listened. He’s been updating it a lot over the last eight years, but the biggest update amped-up the weapon drops, added a few guns, and basically turned Bad Caterpillar into Centipede after smoking crystal meth. It’s an insanely fast-paced release that puts an emphasis on just having fun. It’s fun-infused, if you will. It’s not a glamorous, prestige type of game. It’s just Centipede, completely unhinged, that focuses on balls-to-the-wall shooting action. And I really liked it. This week, I’ll be posting a review of Atari’s recent indie-filtered Centipede remake, Centipede Recharged. They’re both pretty good, but Bad Caterpillar would be the one I’d rather play.

Hey look! There’s even shmup-type character selection, so players can tailor the game to their own play style! I preferred Kabuki, even though my high score was with Champ. There’s online leaderboards, but the boards don’t say which character the best players use. I’m kind of curious about that stuff.

Back in 2013, Kris’ take on the pastel-colored classic handily defeated all official versions of Centipede I tried out alongside it. But, in the case of choosing between Centipede Recharged and Bad Caterpillar, I can actually say “get both!” without being wishy-washy. The beauty is, they’re both completely different takes on Centipede. Yes, they’re based around power-ups and modern conventions, but the similarities end there. Centipede Recharged is a slower, deliberate game with an emphasis on survival (you only get one life). Bad Caterpillar is twitchy and quick and reactionary and designed to get your heart pumping right away. Well, I like my arcade gallery shooters to be quick and twitchy and reactionary. I’m not particularly a fan of Centipede, so that I like both games is pretty remarkable. I just like Caterpillar more. It’s just plain stupid fun. A huge improvement over the original formula.

MAD TIME is Bad Caterpillar’s ticking clock element. If you take too long defeating any level, the game unleashes the furies of hell upon you. Bugs launch from the sides and the Caterpillar will drop in and out of your shooting range. You really don’t want it to come to this. I only survived it once.

It’s not perfect. Bad Caterpillar takes longer for the odds against you to feel intense. It lacks that sense of being slowly overwhelmed that the truly great golden age games pull off (the only aspect Centipede Recharged easily bests Bad Caterpillar). Not all the guns are fun-fun, especially the homing gun that I found actually could hurt you more than help you if you get it too early in a level. But, those minor issues aside, the superior Centipede tribute still remains this little unsung 2013 XBLIG that’s now only $1.99 on Steam. Compare that to the $9.99 base price of Recharged. Neither game is going to have staying power in anyone’s game lineup, but I was surprised by how I couldn’t put Bad Caterpillar down. I hadn’t played it once in eight years. I figured I’d put in about an hour for this review, but instead, I almost put in two. You’ll get about the same amount of playtime out of Centipede Recharged, but you’re paying five-times the price. $2 for an hour or two of decent, if unmemorable, arcade action is fine with me. It certainly deserved to sell a lot more than it did, so you heartless bastards swooning over the Recharged series need to fire up your PCs and take a look. Bad Caterpillar is a lie. It’s actually a pretty good caterpillar.

Bad Caterpillar is Chick-Approved
IGC Leaderboard Ranking: #146 of 296*
Top 77 Percentile of All 626 IGC Reviews
Top 51 Percentile of All 296 IGC-Approved Indies
*Rankings based on time of publication. Check the Leaderboard for updated standings.

Bad Caterpillar was developed Fun Infused Games
Point of Sale: Steam

$1.99 said it looks more like a Bad Tardigrade in the making of this review.

Seriously, Kris, port this fucking thing to Switch already.