Everybody's Talkin' bout Bugsnax

February 6, 2021 10:11 AM

As Cyberpunk 2077's house of cards glitched into pieces immediately upon release, video game enthusiasts were nevertheless treated to one colorful, diverse, queer as hell videogame about body modification and the ethics of consumerism: and it's Bugsnax.

The Queer Paradise of Bugsnax:

This is frequent in wholesome games which feature queer characters, whether the queerness is as foundational as it is in If Found… or not. There’s always some throwaway line about problems with parents or at school or with old friends, always some issue or trauma which can be traced back to the character’s queerness. And I get it. Many of the real-life issues and traumas actual queer people have can also be traced back to queerness, and games want to be realistic and grounded, and relatable. But Bugsnax is a game where taking a bite out of a cheeseburger gives you curly fries for teeth. It doesn’t need to be realistic. It can just put the himbo with the mad scientist and tell you “they’re gay” and be done with it.
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Bugsnax inverts that, not only by giving us an uncompromisingly queer character, but by giving us four, and folding them right into the heart of the story. It challenges the notion of how queerness should exist in games, closely connects wholesomeness to queerness, and fights against the idea that queerness has no place in village life.

Bugsnax lets you become a walking shish kebab, a living french fry, or a vegetarian buffet, but it also lets you be something much more unusual: a queer person in a video game without trauma.

(editorial note: the above quote mentions "four" queer characters, but mad scientist Floofty Fizzlebean is consistently referred to using nonbinary pronouns.)

Bugsnax review – a delightfully weird journey that stumbles over its desire to be something more:

There’s the story of a community there, one that had a lot more impact on me than my search for a missing adventurer. The grumpuses you meet are pretty well-rounded characters, each with their own relationship to the bugsnax phenomenon and more importantly, the other inhabitants of the island.

There’s genuinely no grumpus I don’t like, their names akin to someone sticking a few words into a jar and giving it a good shake, their personalities overdrawn to the point of caricature, but lovingly so. Gramble Gigglefunny for example, is a highly anxious individual with a genuine love for bugsnax and a twangy accent reminiscent of the American south. Cromdo Face is full on Brooklyn car salesman in both voice and demeanour.

The voice acting is stellar, with actors delivering peak performances, making them a joy to listen to. I also would never have expected this game to be an absolute a go-to for a portrayal of healthy same-sex relationships and respect for the nonbinary. Grumpuses are clearly far ahead of us.

Bugsnax Is Junk Food Pokémon Snap For The Chronically Depressed… And It’s Awesome:

You’ll meet someone having a crisis of faith in their religion. You’ll meet someone who feels like they have no choice but to turn to a life of crime. You’ll meet someone who tries their best to be a leader but is paralyzed by the weight of the burden of leadership. You’ll meet someone who feels like they are slowly growing apart from their significant other, simply due to the inexorable passage of time combined with the slow buildup of small grievances that never get resolved. You’ll deal with mental health issues, grief over dead loved ones, and general feelings of hopelessness and despair.
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You can help all these people with Bugsnax. Just chomp one down and your body will transform into part snack, and that sure does make you feel better. But the whole time you find yourself asking if this is alright. The Bugsnax themselves feel strangely unnatural, and the strange reliance on them feels like they are almost a drug allegory.

Bugsnax Review:

Also worth mentioning is that Bugsnax is weirdly disturbing.
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When I first saw this mechanic in action I was viscerally unsettled, and that feeling never quite went away. Each new snak brings a troubling texture or color pattern, as well. I wasn’t prepared for strawberry hair or oreo teeth — although the cinnamon bun ears are great. By feeding characters a variety of different foods players can transform them into bizarre assemblages that can get difficult to look at without feeling ill.

Bugsnax leans heavily on the unique nature of its titular creatures, and it succeeds by doing so. They’re cute, they’re creepy, and their existence makes no logical sense whatsoever. Armed with a bit of design this indelible, the developers could have phoned in the rest and raked in the merchandising money. Instead, they fully committed to delivering a narrative worthy of the creatures starring in it.

all bunger voice clips:

Bunger! Bunger! Bunger! Bunger? Bunger!

posted by one for the books (13 comments total)

I was really interested in this game. But I've read that the strategies you use to catch the critters are really limited—even though there's around 100 different critters to catch (including many re skins). So by the middle of the game you basically have it all figured out and then you're just doing the same few things over and over. Plus, loading screens on PS4 are reportedly really long.

I'm gonna wait for a deep sale and then hope for a sequel with better fleshed out, deeper gameplay. I love bizarre games like this. I didn't know about the queer angle... good to hear! Thanks for the post.
posted by SoberHighland at 10:58 AM on February 6, 2021

I have no patience for most games. I made music for a few game companies, and while I'm proud of the work, the know-it-all programmers and playboy corporate types turned me away from "game culture", whatever that might have been from 2009-2012 or so.

After a horrific breakup with SO of 12 years, I found myself moved in with a close friend, all my stuff in boxes, and this was February of 2020 -- we had no idea what was about to happen, the PRIMARIES were the news story, lol! Anyway he'd bought a PS4 to keep the bar tabs low and so I watched for a moment while he played what's likely to induce eye-rolling for gamers but was totally new to me: "Detroit: Become Human". You see, I hadn't really "checked in" with games for 15 years, the companies I worked for made Facebook games and they were really sort of simplistic.

The voice acting had real actors, I noticed; the story was worth following, if you tried. Alright!

My friend handed me the controller for one sequence and said "just make decisions, you'll figure it out". And off I was, with no warning, with no context even for what's happening in the game -- all I knew was that now I was three beers into a six-pack and it's my job to -- wait, help a child escape from her abusive father ?

My pulse was racing, I was sweating, I was angry, I was scared, and something activated in my brain that said, figure out how to save this person, figure out how to hold the controller, figure out how to read faster -- the mechanic is quick life/death questions on a timer -- and WIN, because *this is important*.

I was ANGRY when it was over (I did it, I guess) -- I said "I don't want to play anything like that ever again".

Of course now I think about it and it's incredible. Games have actually become the interactive narratives that people *said* they were when I was younger. Back then DOOM had a story, technically, and I guess MYST did, and maybe some of the adventure games had something really involving, but I wouldn't know.

What I DO know is that it wasn't fair to reject the "gamer culture". They really are on to something special and powerful. Having yourself affirmed in a game, positively, when society can be so violently anti-queer, is such a beautiful thing. I worked on the first Japanese interactive romance novel with a same-sex storyline: I couldn't believe it was so LATE. We have so much catching up to do.
posted by justinethanmathews at 11:00 AM on February 6, 2021 [5 favorites]

There must be some kind of “queer couples in games” x net sales/active annual users data out there. I am, of course, far too lazy to google this, but it would be fascinating to see.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:06 AM on February 6, 2021

There's a lot of birds whose names are based on the sounds they make (eg, 'chickadee' and 'towhee'). I think from now on I'll introduce these as 'birds who just wander around saying their own names repeatedly.'
posted by kaibutsu at 11:22 AM on February 6, 2021 [7 favorites]

Video games really are for everyone. I would challenge anyone who thinks games just aren't "for them" to keep looking. There's so many amazing designers and creators out there and they're making way more diverse stuff than violent shooters and predatory free-to-play mobile games.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 11:47 AM on February 6, 2021 [4 favorites]

I got to enjoy Bugsnax by hanging with one of my kids while he played. Not far into the game, you have a quest to find a person who has left the village and bring them back to their partner; the two of them then have a conversation about how even though how they have different interests and need to spend some time some apart, they can still love each other and be together. I was like, "Wait...did those two just have a mature conversation about their relationship?" And the game kept being surprising.

My kid was not bored by the bug hunting—I asked him at one point. He's 16.
posted by Orlop at 4:52 PM on February 6, 2021

There’s always some throwaway line about problems with parents or at school or with old friends, always some issue or trauma which can be traced back to the character’s queerness.

I think Mae from Night in the Woods is super traumatized and also incidentally queer, so that's one
posted by taquito sunrise at 8:00 PM on February 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

It doesn't surprise me that this is from the folks who made Octodad, it got surprisingly "real," too, in parts. (Like at the end, when Octodad's children ask how they came to be since they're human... and dad is not.)

It also didn't surprise me when I watched the trailer and heard the voice of Roger Craig Smith. Is there a video game this guy isn't doing voice acting for?

Octodad was a treasure, so I honestly kind of expect this to be a treasure as well.

It's firmly a bummer it's only available on the PC through the EPIC Store. I can't bring myself to feel okay spending money with that company.
posted by deadaluspark at 8:41 AM on February 7, 2021

All we are saying...
Is give bugs a chance
posted by Windopaene at 2:11 PM on February 7, 2021

Octodad: Dadliest Catch is a game in the terrrible controls/meme/stream genres. Yet somehow, it's actually really good and has a much better story than one would expect. This game is much more interesting to me given that it was developed by Young Horses.
posted by jclarkin at 7:44 AM on February 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

Octodad, it got surprisingly "real," too, in parts.

See also Stardew Valley
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 7:57 AM on February 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

Just about the only thing I know about Bugsnax is one of their advertising pullquotes.
posted by ckape at 9:29 PM on February 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

How Bugsnax became a source of wholesome queer representation

I'd have led with this article if I could, but it only just came out yesterday. Direct commentary from the developers on the subject.
posted by one for the books at 8:38 AM on February 18, 2021 [1 favorite]