Sinking my teeth into Bugsnax
These days, most of us could use a vacation from our daily lives. I spent mine exploring among the residents of Snaktooth Island. Bugsnax is a charming, often bizarre, and only sometimes frustrating game about community, perseverance, and catching critters made of food. Part mystery, part adventure, and part puzzle game, Bugsnax begs the question: what if we really are what we eat? Then it turns someone’s arm into strawberries.
The main thrust of the plot is fairly simple – you play a journalist who travels to the remote Snaktooth Island at the behest of a famed (?) explorer. Upon arriving, you find that your presumed host has gone missing and that the residents have scattered. It’s up to you to interview the people on the island, solve the mystery, and apparently feed them all. Without giving too much away, the optional side quests each delve into the personalities of the residents and help them come to terms with various aspects of their lives. At its core, Bugsnax is a story game about interpersonal relationships and the things that can strain them.
The titular bugsnax come in a dizzying array of types with their own individual quirks. It’s up to you to figure out how to catch them using the small arsenal of gadgets you acquire. And, of course, feed them to people once they’ve been caught. Through the use of a journal, the game helped me manage my need to collect everything by showing me how many snax were in an area, how many I’d scanned, and which I’d actually managed to capture. If you really gotta catch em all, this one might keep you busy for a little while. My only complaint is that there were a lot of repetitive bugsnax which were renamed, palette-swapped versions of each other. I can appreciate that there are regular, white, and flaming variants of cheese poof snacks in real life, but I don’t feel like it’s interesting enough in game.
All that being said, the cute factor of the design keeps the game interesting from moment to moment for not only the bugsnax, but also the island residents. The voice acting is top-notch and helps make characters shine. I’d normally be a bit more critical of the clear use of heavy-handed character archetypes (the reluctant leader, the sage-bro, the stubborn farmer, etc.) but I really enjoyed the way that the story examines the flaws in each. I genuinely wanted to finish every side quest before the climax of the story.
If you’re hungry for a story game sandwiched between a cutesy-critter-collector and a puzzle-adventure, this may hit the sweet spot for you. It works equally well for the story seeker as it does for the mad scientist that wants to rearrange everyone’s limbs. It’s not a long game, but it was definitely enjoyable. The truth about the island is probably weirder than you’d imagine.
Bugsnax is available on Playstation and on PC through the Epic store starting November 12th.
