Bizarrely, grumpuses love turning
into bugsnax. And they aren’t Justin
Roiland-style shrieking monsters.
They’re regular people, albeit
bean-like and snaggletoothed.
They’re cute, actually, and when they
aren’t becoming snack
foods, they even edge
past wackiness and
sentimentality and slice
into human experience.
I didn’t care for the
actual bugsnax
catching in Bugsnax,
but working through
the grumpuses’
insecurities was sweet – like a
sweetiefly or a sprinklepede, perhaps.
As you may have guessed, the
bugsnax are literally bug-like
snacks: grapeskeetos, pineantulas,
sandopedes, and so on. You play
as a nameless journalist who has
been summoned to investigate these
bugsnax by their discoverer, dashing
adventurer Lizbert Megafig. Except,
when you arrive at Lizbert’s island,
she and her partner Eggabell are
both missing, and the settlement
they established is in ruins. The
grumpuses who followed them
there have scattered to the island’s
conveniently distinct biomes to do
their own things – all except hapless
mayor Filbo, who enlists your help to
reunite the town and find Lizbert and
Eggabell. It’s all up to you now.
Over the course of seven-to-ten
hours, you’ll locate the scattered
townsfolk in a forest glade, on the
beach, among desert mesas, in an
alpine forest, and on the peak of a
volcanic mountain. Of course, none of
them will come back to town straight
away: you have to capture and feed
them certain bugsnax to help them
fulfil their objectives first.There are a variety of bugsnax-
catching tools, but they all have very
limited use cases, so Bugsnax is often
just a matching game. Use the trap
device on these kinds of bugsnax, but
not these. Use the grappling hook on
this one, but not that
one. Shoot peanut
butter on this bugnax
to make it fall, and
ketchup on that one to
make its friend ram
into it and knock it out.
The closest I got to
doing something
creative was when I
used my portable spring-loaded
launcher to hurl a flaming bowl of
noodles off the side of a cliff and then
lured it into a pond with hot sauce,
extinguishing its flames so that Icould pick it up. It was more
awkward than satisfying, like herding
a cat with clown props. There were
also a few times I felt I might’ve been
hindered by bugs (the software kind),
but bugsnax hunting is such a sloppy
business that it was hard to tell.
The consolation is that you don’t
have to catch all that many bugsnax.
Following the main quests, you only
need to trap whatever bugsnax the
grumpuses ask you to feed them. I
didn’t bother much with optional
snax, because the characters are the
highlight of Bugsnax, not the hunting.MONSTER MUNCH
The leads, Lizbert and Eggabell, are
missing, so their story plays out in
video diaries. Fryda Wolff’s
performance as Eggabell is the
highlight – at moments I really ached
for the character, an egg-shaped fur
creature who is obsessed with eating
bugs that are also snacks. Wolff
benefits from Eggabell being the
best-observed character, a powder
keg of self-doubt. Also great are
Snorpy, a standoffish scientist who
likes to give hugs, and his buff
boyfriend Chandlo, who likes lifting
and seeking spiritual peace. The
mystery’s resolution doesn’t
disappoint, either. And reveals the
cast’s obsession with eating and
becoming bugsnax isn’t just wacky
for the sake of wackiness.
I wish Bugsnax was more fun,
but its cheerful grumpus body horror
did change me, ever so slightly, and
£18 is a fair price for its weird, grisly
story (at the end, it might be a bit
dark for little kids). I suspect it’s
better shared with someone who
can laugh with you than played
alone at a monitor, having your sense
of self eroded by the repetition of the
words “weeny, weenyworm”.NEED TO KNOW
WHAT IS IT?
A singleplayer
adventure on an island
populated with
snack-based bugs
EXPECT TO PAY
£18
DEVELOPER
Young Horses
PUBLISHER
Young Horses
REVIEWED ON
Windows 10, Intel Core
i5-9600K, 16GB RAM,
Nvidia RTX 2070 Super
MULTIPLAYER
No
LINK
bugsnax.com60
Bugsnax is a weird little
story with loveable
characters, but the
actual bug hunting isn’t
all that much fun.VERDICTAs you may
have guessed,
the bugsnax are
literally bug-
like snacksT
he bugsnax that affected me most is the weenyworm. A
weenyworm is a hot dog (with bun) that squiggles around in a
circle saying “weenyworm” in a sing-songy voice I’d describe
as ‘nasal’ if that didn’t imply a nose, which weenyworms don’t
have. “Weeny... weenyworm,” it says again and again as it
circles, waiting for me to capture it and feed it to a grumpus – a furry
person, more or less, whose body parts turn into the bugsnax they eat.ANOTHER BUG-HUNT
Hunting BUGSNAX isn’t as much fun as hanging
out with its cast of grumpuses. By Tyler Wilde
GROAN
Bugsnax’s bug-snack combos aren’t all hits.
Here are some of the best and worstSANDOPEDE
They can chain into
a multi-segment
sub sandopede.SPRINKLEPEDE
Now you’re just
sticking ‘pede’
on words.COCOMITE
Sounds kind of like
‘coconut’, but it’s a
mite. Sure.HUNNABEE
A honey bee is
already a thing, so
is this wordplay?BUFFALOCUST
A buffalo wing
locust that dives
into hot sauce.TACOROACH
Only works if you
pronounce
‘cockroach’ funny.NOT BAD BIT OF A STRETCH NOT BADBIT OF A STRETCH NOT BAD BIT OF A STRETCHBugsnax
REVIEW