The levels are tied together by a brief (but humorous) story which revolves around Maal, the protagonist, and his quest to discover the true nature of the threat to his homeland. Level objectives range from defeating all foes, to destroying a certain key enemy or enemy object, to simply escaping the area with one or more units. Some battles feature more than two sides, with a third side hostile to one or both of the other two sides. After a level is completed, the player is awarded a medal based on his or her performance. The performance score is calculated based on friendly loses, enemy loses, and the total amount of clock time taken (encouraging quick play). Players can replay any previous level at any time in order to attempt to earn a better medal. "Band of Bugs" includes five multiplayer modes, including Elimination, Capture, Escape, Mission, and Spider Hunter. Spider Hunter is a join-and-leave continuous game for up to 8 players, and the other modes support up to 4 players over Xbox Live or 2 players in local multiplayer on one Xbox. One of the highlights of the title is that it includes a full-featured level editor. In fact, the very same level editor was used to create all of the campaign levels in the game. Additionally, "Band of Bugs" is the first Xbox Live Arcade game to allow players to share user created maps. After playing a game against an opponent on a unique map, a "Save Map" option is presented which allows the map to be stored for later use. Each map is stamped with the Gamertag of the user who first created it, so that the original author can always be identified. At their most basic, maps consist of squares of different terrain positioned at different heights. Some terrain types slow unit movement, while other terrain squares damage those who enter them. Water tiles are also available, which, while having no effect on flying units, will cause ground units to drown. The team working on "Band of Bugs" varied from three to four individuals at the start, up to around a dozen individuals (some of whom were part-time) at its peak. The development of the game required roughly 10 months, which was partially because the engine was based on the "Outpost Kaloki X" engine. During an interview, the development team emphasized their commitment to Xbox Live Arcade and focusing on gameplay over graphics or cutscenes. As such, the title uses under 50 MB of storage space, despite Microsoft raising the limit for later Xbox Live Arcade titles to 150 MB.