What you never wanted to know about Lady Bug

• Play Lady Bug online
• Lady Bug and how it began
• Opponents of Lady Bug
• Points and Bonus Points
• Vegetables
• Swinging doors
• Skulls
• Timer
• Start
• Strategy
• Hi Score List
• Can I put the game on my site?
• Can I play the game with a joystick?
•  Diese Seite in Deutsch

Lady Bug and how it began

The maze game "Lady Bug" was brought into the Arcade consoles of taverns and gamehalls in 1981 by the company UNIVERSAL. It was one of the more successful successors of the famous Pacman. The goal of the game is to get as many points as possible by eating all dots, hearts and letters in the maze while avoiding other hostile insects. The official record for the Arcade-version is holding Dwayne Richard (Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada) with 1.081.370 points since September 2005.

You start the game with three beetles (lifes).

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Opponents of Lady Bug

The Lady Bug is obstructed in its task by four hunting insects, which escape one after the other from their nest in the center of the maze. The first eight levels each level are appearing four insects of a new kind, from the ninth level on the four insects are a mix of the former kinds.

The behavior of the hostile insects seems to be hardly purposeful at the beginning; they run around without hunting the Lady Bug. Up to the fifth level they persecute the poor Lady Bug, if it comes very close to them; afterwards they can follow it from nearly any distance. But the game always contain elements of chance.

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Points und Bonus Points

The bonus flowers dispersed in the maze change the color in certain intervals of time; half a second they are red, around three seconds they are yellow and 20 seconds long they are blue.

If you eat bonus flowers in the red phase, you get 800 points; if it is a letter, which you can find in the word " SPECIAL", this letter turns red in the left top corner. The same happens by eating a letter in yellow: it lights up the corresponding letter in the word "EXTRA" and increases your points by 300. An eaten bonus in the color blue increases the score by 100. In the blue phase it is meaningful to digest the flowers with a heart, because then a point multiplier will come into effect, indicated by the blue section in the upper right corner of the screen. The first blue heart doubles all point values you get later on, the second triples them and the third quintuples them.

If all letters of "EXTRA" are illuminated, the current level is terminated immediately and you get an extra life (an extra Lady Bug) with an interlude of a birthday ceremony.
The word "SPECIAL" gets you a free game (three more ladybugs in this version; in the Arcade version you get a free game), terminates the level and lets the ladybird participate on a wedding ceremony.

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Vegetables

An additional source of points are the level-specific, exotic vegetables, which appear in the central area of the maze, when all of the "bad" insects had left it. You get 1,000 points for the cucumber on level one, increasing by 500 points per level, up to a maximum value of 9,500 for the horseradish on level 18 onwards.

The consumption of the vegetable has the additional effect, that the enemies are frozen for the duration of a melody and the ladybug can eat now a few flowers, which are hard to get, when the opponents are on the move.

If the maze is cleared of all flowers, you get to the next level.

Revolving doors

Apart from these characteristics the game owns a further one, which distinguishes it from its forerunner the well-known Pacman: this are 20 green doors, with whose assistance Lady Bug can change the maze. The "bad" ones cannot turn the doors. Skillful changing of the doors is for Lady Bug the only possibility of escaping from its hunters; because its speed remains constant over all levels, while those of its enemies increases noticeably. Quickly flip a door as you pass it when a bug is behind you and as long as the bug is not too close, its route will be blocked and it will then have to find an alternative route to you. If the bug is too close it will go through the door behind you and there may be no escape.

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Skulls

The skulls, from which you find two at the beginning of the game (increasing up to six til the 18. level) are fatal for both, the Lady Bug and its persecutors. The player looses a life (a Lady Bug), if it runs on a skull, and removes all other skulls in that level.

The other insects are turned back into their nest in the center and return only with the next circulation of the timer.

Timer

The timer is an interrupted white strip, which runs around the maze. When the Lady Bug enters the maze, the elements of this strip change its color in a clockwise direction: they become green, beginning at "12 o'clock", whereby a certain tone is to be heard. If all elements of the strip are green, the first enemy leaves its nest and the next circulation begins: all elements become white again gradually.
The speed of the timer increases with progressive levels.

Start

In order to start the game, click in the first screen on "Play". You get to the Highscore list. Here you can click on "Enter" or press the "Enter" - key (you also can wait a few seconds). Then a picture will appear, which shows all information of the following level: the kind of vegetable, its value, the number of skulls and hearts (always three) as well as the three letters selected by coincidence (the left one from the letter-set S,P,C,I,L, the central from X,T,R and the right one from E and A).
After a few seconds you will be passed on automatically to the game. The Lady Bug now starts its way into the maze. Arriving there it will wait for the fact that you move it with the ARROW KEYS.
You can flip the green doors by hitting them left or right from their center.

The game can be paused and continued with the key "P" and be terminated with the "Q" - or "ESC" - key.

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Strategy

The best strategy is to eat the flowers first which are distributed around the nest; because these are difficult to reach, when a few harming insects are running around. The next idea ist to eat all the hearts in their blue phase to start the multiplier. Each flower then counts 50 instead of 10 points, a red letter 4000 instead of 800 points.
A further point is to get the vegetables as soon as they appear, especially if there are still skulls in the maze: if an enemy runs on a skull after Lady Bug ate the vegetable, a further vitamin and point donor appears, when the last enemy leaves the nest again.

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Highscore List

If you should finally loose your last Lady Bug despite all caution and skill and you've got more than 10.000 points, you will get to a "desk", where you can enter your nickname with the help of Lady Bug.

Steer the Lady Bug via the desired signs. You can use nine letters, numbers and signs to write your name. To delete the last sign walk over "CL" and to end the procedure walk over "END". With "END" your name will be stored in the database and shown in the HI SCORES at the beginning of the game.
In the game you'll find the names of the nine best scorers of the day. Every day at 23:59:59 o'clock in the last timezone of the world the battle of daily highest score starts again.

I wish "MUCH FUN" or as UNIVERSAL did: "GOOD LUCK"!

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Can I put the game on my site?

Yes, you can!
Because I am interested of winning new fans for this wonderful game, I am glad, if somebody wants to present the game on his/her site. Although I would like to exclude all these commercial or ad-financed game-sites, I see no way to do so (but I hate them anyway).
For the correct display of the game a xml-file is necessary and I wish, everybody would use it, because of the better look of the game. In that xml-file you can change the name UNIVERSAL to names you like, but please, use this file!
In the moment, I am offering two versions of the game (as zip-files, with instructions for installing): one version, which needs no database (only the xml-file) and one version, which needs a database and PHP. This version stores the highscores, the nicknames and the level, a player reached. The game presents the TOP TEN of the day (like the version on my site).

Game with XML-file; no database needed (zip) / Game with PHP; database needed (zip)

When you present the game on your site, I would be glad about a short mail. Thanks and have fun!

Can I play the game with a joystick?

Adobe/Macromedia Flash itself has no functionality (how much I know), to play games with a joystick. But an internet search let me find two tools, which may be helpful: they should translate joystick events to keyevents. (JoyToKey und Joystickevent to Keyevent) Because I don't own a joystick, I cannot test these programs. So I would be glad, if anybody could tell me, if the tools are working with the this game. Thanks a lot!

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