It was okay. Mostly sparse high points in a sea of mids though imo. The design of the bugsnax themselves are fun and I always enjoyed the sense of discovery in seeing what kind of food/bug abomination that the designers were able to think up as well as the many goofy voices that are at play, but the actual act of catching the snax was just kinda eh. You have a pretty middling amount of options when it comes to snaxcapturin, usually revolving around the same dance of aiming some unwieldy doodad in the right spot or by luring them with a sauce ball or whatever. I was hoping that there was going to be a lot more experimentation with the world interaction but alas, the bugs were not meant to snax.

The characters and plot were very strange indeed. I definitely saw the whole "the bugsnax are actually eldrich parasites" twist coming 300 miles away because like, look at what they fucking do to you when you eat them!!!! Why the fuck would ANYONE be eating the bugsnax!!!! So the game bounces in vibe from catching goofy critters like bunger or scoopy galoopy or whatever to feed some guy named flibport shinglebottom to like this existential tragedy of clueless islanders tampering with powers above their mortal comprehension, only realizing their fate when it's too late. Each of the village residents have their own personalities and backstories usually rooted in some deeper emotional loss or trauma, but I really couldn't bring myself to care about most of them because their outwardly presenting tropey archetypes made most of the small talk really annoying to me. Wandering around town when its populated hearing every character do their normal one-note bit got very grating after a while. Also there's just something about the whole "now you have to KILL the EVIL bugsnax" bit at the end that just felt kinda cliche all things considered. If the game stuck to full goofy or full edgy or full introspective then I'd be more down to vibe with it but this game feels like it tries to put its hands in 3 different pielobites and its like naw.

It's a neat idea and I'm glad that it became the mild success that it was as smaller weirder titles like this are always appreciated, but once the game gave me the point of no return prompt I pressed on despite having laundry lists of unfinished sidequests n shit to do because I've just had my fill. Didn't even bother resetting to get the best ending where everyone lives because I couldn't figure out some of the aiming sections of the final fight. RIP to the snooping girl and the insane conspiracy sonic the hedgehog dude, their memories will live on as reminders not to consume eldritch beings and make your flesh their own. May their snax be forever bugged in peace, rest in spaghetti


also this isn't even the games fault but i just so happened to have my first ever migrane while i was playing this so that's probably going to be an inseparable correlation whenever i think back on it, thanks bunger