I bought bugsnax on a meme-fueled whim mostly. It had looked intriguing to me, as I like simple creature collection games and loved the way Young Horses took a creative approach at control schemes in Octodad. That, and having Kero Kero Bonito make the promo track for it helped. The basic aesthetic of food creatures is always an idea I've liked, so with all these elements I knew it would be a safe bet to purchase, and at a little bit of a discount via the epic store since I don't sub to ps+

I have to say I didn't not imagine being as charmed as I was with it.

First off, the character designs are all great. Mostly in terms of the snax themselves, as if you just generally like muppety things, you'll like the main NPCs. Some of the details are a bit odd, like when you start Existenzing the creatures into the other characters, but it gives, especially over time, a lot of flexibility on how you can tweak it to make more aesthetically pleasing friends.

The gameplay is chill, and can be decently fun. Not terribly exciting through most of it, but sometimes it would have some peaks to give you something over the casual laid-back semi-puzzles of the main game, and some of the tools they give you, while not very clear at times on how to use them optimally to catch snax(some felt like no matter how many I caught I wasn't figuring it out and it just eventually happened to catch em), were themselves fun to play around with.

The writing is definitely the strongest part of the game. I did not imagine these goofily named muppets to be genuinely compelling characters with some depth. It didn't go extremely deep or anything, but in subverting that expectation of mine it went a lot further than I initially expected, and the plot didn't spiral into something extremely grand, but did widen quite a bit with an interesting twist to it, betraying its cutesy style a bit. This had been happening throughout the game, from things like partner separation, agoraphobia, existential crises(from nearly every character), cannibalism, mysticism, etc. It is a fun, child-friendly game full of primarily adult themes(not in the horny way) and is a bit wistful in its own way, mostly with characters chasing a dream. It's weirdly one of the most compelling games I've played in terms of its themes of chasing identity, fleeing society, transforming oneself metaphorically and physically. To some degree it's a bit of Great Gatsby through the lens of Harlan Ellison if he were to create a kid's show.

the music is also not quite fitting, but very good. It is some of the most enjoyable BGM in a game I've played this year.