You Are What You Eat 

It’s gotta be tricky packaging a game to appeal to kids. In a way you just need bright colors, friendly looking and goofy characters, some poop and fart jokes…or maybe that’s all I needed. To be Frank I don’t even need bright colors as long as the poop and fart jokes are good enough. 

My favorite examples of products that work for both kids and adults are the 90’s warner bros cartoons, mainly Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs. These are cartoons that were crazy and goofy for the kids, and there were these really subtle jokes that if you were an adult, you’d catch them with just the slightest wink and a nod. So while not everybody was laughing at the same things, they were still laughing. That to me is the way it should be. I think Bugsnax tried to go for that but didn’t stick the landing, and while the setting and exploration are kid friendly, there’s some content – more specifically dialogue – that I think makes this a hard sell as primarily a kids game, which is weird because it’s rated E 10+.

But before we get into that stuff, let’s talk about the story. You play a journalist in this world that’s run by these puppet-looking people called Grumpus or just Grumps. They look like 1970’s era generic Jim Henson puppets with teeth from The Simpsons and if that sounds terrible, it gets worse. I honestly didn’t realize how horrible puppets looked with teeth until I played this – it’s not natural and like the creation of romantic comedies or X-Men 3, man was not meant to create this abomination and I won’t be surprised if it destroys us all.

You go on a trip to find Elizabert Megafig – she’s over on Snaktooth Island and has made this huge discovery of these new bugs. When you get there your ship gets wrecked and you’re stuck on the island. From there you find out Elizabert went missing, and each of the characters you meet that were part of her team are all pissed off at each other because of some major falling out they all had, and it’s basically up to you to convince them all to get over themselves, come back to their village and find out what happened to Elizabert. All of that involves doing tasks, which almost always have to do with catching and feeding the Bugsnax to them.

The story’s actually not bad and every character has a distinct personality, and I thought that was really charming. One of the characters named Wiggle is some sort of failed celebrity and insists on singing every other line of hers, and that made me want to punch her in the jaw. You ever have that friend who sings way too often or for way too long and nobody wants to be rude and tell them to shut up, so they take the resigned silence as everybody thinking they’re great? Yeah. They all need to join Wiggle on this island and stay there.

Anyways, being that this is marketed as a kid or family game, it was weird to me that the characters toss some light innuendo around and in one of the fights a couple characters have, one guy makes a comment about the other’s wife leaving him, and I thought it was all too heavy for a kid to hear. You can interview characters as well and some of that gets a little heavy-handed, especially when one of the characters really treats the Bugsnax as pets and doesn’t want them eaten, which then at least for me, coupled with Bugsnax that actually do fear being caught, made me feel guilty about catching and feeding them to the others. There’s a few more instances of stuff like this but I think you get where I’m going.

Also I could only hope that in this magical world there’s plants somewhere that would’ve sprouted bottles of bourbon or irish whiskey, but then maybe that’s just my problem and I need help.

I’m a parent myself and my child more or less fits into the age group for this game, and I monitor what she plays. Everybody parents differently but after all that, I don’t let her play the story sections without me around because the dialogue is juuuuust on that borderline where I feel like I need to watch it in order to stop and explain why they’re saying or doing whatever. The innuendo is different, she’s not going to get those remarks and I’m glad for that, but as someone who did catch it, I thought it was totally unneccesary for a kids game. Again, none of this happens often, but it was just enough to keep me guarded.

So how’s the game itself play? Actually pretty well. It’s played in first person, and had a Slime Rancher and Pokemon Snap vibe to it. Being that it’s first person, it took me a few minutes to see these things and not want to reduce them to piles of gore with a shotgun, but once that subsided, I saw that each Bugsnak is this mini puzzle where you learn how to catch them. After scanning them and logging their info, you get this idea of their likes and dislikes, their path they travel in, and all of this contributes in how to catch them. You don’t take damage or die so the reward really is in exploring and learning about these creatures in order to catch them. You get different traps and tools as you progress through the game that’ll help you do this, and there’s times where you rely on just one tool or you’ll combine some to catch them, and the feeling is pretty satisfying.

The Bugsnax themselves are basically creepy-crawly versions of different foods, everything from fruits to vegetables, to crazier ones like sandwiches or pizza. Like there’s flying lollipops, snails with shells that are giant cinnamon buns, a crab made of apples that’s called – what for it – a “crapple”, so you can tell the writers had a lot of fun being creative with this. There’s also plants that sprout ketchup, chocolate, ranch dressing and more. You use these in your slingshot to catch the Bugsnax, but of course while I’m playing this I’m thinking to myself, “what if this was real?” and we know the answer to that. Plants that grow chocolate or ranch dressing would’ve lead to humanity getting the “diabeetus” and dying out. Also I could only hope that in this magical world there’s plants somewhere that would’ve sprouted bottles of bourbon or irish whiskey, but then maybe that’s just my problem and I need help.

So as I said before, you collect these things and then feed them to the different characters. I have to talk about what happens because it is horrifying and weird and I don’t know why it’s here. When you feed a bugsnak to a character, you’ll get to choose which limb it affects, and then that part will change to the food they ate. You’ll be giving them popcorn for noses or popsicle sticks for legs, things like that. I fed a bugsnak called a Weenyworm to a character and gave her a hot dog for each arm, which is just ripe for so many dirty jokes that I don’t even know where to start. It also makes me wish Harry Carey was around so he could see someone actually turn into a ballpark hotdog. So each of these characters looks normal in the beginning, then after a few hours’ worth of you feeding them they look like this idiot (show filbo). Look at how stupid that looks. He was already a terrible character to begin with. How does anybody take you seriously with strawberries for hands?

Regarding sound the music is pretty chill, and the Bugsnax for better or worse have a lot of life to them. They do the Pokemon thing where they say their name a lot, but instead of only communicating that way, these things just do it constantly and the voices can get pretty irritating if you’re around them long enough. Also the voice acting for these can get pretty bad, like they’re these adults doing childlike toddler-toy quality voices for some of these. And those I had *no* problem feeding to the Grumps. All the dialogue is fully voiced, which Wiggle and her ridiculous singing notwithstanding, I thought was a really nice touch. One critique I have of that, though, is that a lot of the characters sounded too much like this was done in a studio, which is noticeable when you’re talking to them outdoors. Like the voices are *too* clear and crisp, if that makes sense. It’s nitpicky but something I wanted to bring up.

One last thing I want to note is that I did play this on the PS5, and the haptic feedback on the DualSense has to be mentioned, because it’s really cool. The buttons have different feelings and textures based on the tools you use, and doing simple things like walking through water can be felt through the controller, which helped add more immersion to the game. Snapping a picture thorough the scanner felt like you were pushing the button on a camera.

So to wrap up what became a much longer review than I planned for, there’s fun to be had with Bugsnax’s relaxing catch-em-all gameplay and exploration, and there’s an actual story to discover and play through as well. Just be sure that you’re playing this with your child instead of letting them mess around with it by themselves. And really you should be anyways, otherwise that’s how you walk in on them playing DOOM Eternal or even worse, Fortnite. Or, you could let them play the totally awesome and free Astrobot Explorer if you’ve got this on the PS5.