There are parts of the desert area that are so barren, you'd think you clipped off the map and ended up in part of the background. They're generic-as if they were based on forests and deserts from other videogames, rather than the places themselves-and manage to be both compact and sparse. The environments aren't as well-observed as the characters. (Side note: The story might get a bit too dark at the end for little kids, and the tragic result of failing a glitchy-feeling task near the end almost put me off of the whole thing, but it lets you retry the ending, so I've let it go.) Wolff benefits from Eggabell being the best-observed character, a powder keg of self-doubt. Fryda Wolff's performance as Eggabell is the highlight-at moments I really ached for the character, who mind you is an egg-shaped fur creature who is obsessed with eating bugs that are also snacks. The leads, Lizbert and Eggabell, are missing, so their story plays out in video diaries. I wish Bugsnax were more fun, but its cheerful grumpus body horror did change me, ever so slightly. Bugsnax is well-structured, too, with regular town parties that break up the questing and advance the plot. Snorpy, a standoffish scientist who thinks you might be part of the "grumpluminati," is fond of giving hugs, and his buff boyfriend Chandlo has a genuine desire for self-actualization. The grumpus characters aren't as mysterious, coming in obvious archetypes: The overdramatic pop star, the gossipy teen, the salesman, and so on. Their voices elevate a chemical in my blood that I can't identify. The bugsnax all speak their own names like Pokémon, and some sound childlike, but others barely sound like they're speaking a language at all. I did enjoy hearing all of their uncanny voices as I wandered around, though. There were many I never attempted to snag, because I could tell how to do it just by looking at them, and I knew it would be fiddly and pointless. Following the main quests, you only need to trap whatever bugsnax the grumpuses ask you to feed them, and that's not nearly all of them. The consolation is that you don't have to catch all that many bugsnax. (Image credit: Young Horses) Friends along the way 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-certain things worked sometimes and not others, and I couldn't say why. Everything must be done in the prescribed way. How do you crack an egg? Fire, for some reason. What about the grappling hook? You can only use that in special cases. If I launch a bugsnax into a flying one, can I knock it out of the sky? No. If water and ice put out fire, shouldn't ranch dressing? No, sauces can only attract or repel bugsnax. Part of the joy of systems-driven games is testing their logical consistency, or discovering that the developer included a contingency plan for your most harebrained ideas, as in Spelunky 2, where an explosive mishap might lead to a shocking discovery, or at least comedy. It was more awkward than satisfying, like herding a cat with clown props. The closest I got to doing something creative was when I used a portable spring-loaded launcher to hurl a flaming bowl of noodles off the side of a cliff and then used the slingshot to splatter hot sauce all over the ground to lure the bowl into a pond, extinguishing its flames so that I could pick it up. 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. Use the grappling hook on this one, but not that one. Use the trap device on these kinds of bugsnax, but not these. There are a variety of bugsnax-catching tools, but they all have very limited use cases, so Bugsnax is often just a matching game. At moments I really ached for the character, who mind you is an egg-shaped fur creature who is obsessed with eating bugs that are also snacks.
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