Bugaboo Pocket
Apr 2, 2025Apr 2, 2025
Jun 8, 2025May 1, 2025Apr 5, 2025Apr 2, 2025Jul 3, 2025Jun 5, 2025Apr 17, 2025Apr 6, 2025Apr 4, 2025Apr 4, 2025Apr 3, 2025Apr 2, 2025Apr 2, 2025Apr 2, 2025
76561198170829185
Not Recommended1 hrs played (1 hrs at review)
I really wanted to like this game, the art is gorgeous and I was very hyped up by the ads and development I saw, but it just doesn't feel finished or fleshed out.
Frankly, it feels like a mobile game. The minigames are fun, but very short, and all six that I've played are very basic and mobile game-esque. They're fun, but not terribly engaging, and quickly get repetitive. You also get locked into a cooldown after playing enough times in a row, which is incredibly frustrating when there's very, very little else to do in the game. That two minute cooldown was very irritating when I only had one bug. It does give you more to do when you unlock the ability to have more than one bug at once, but personally, I dislike having a bug I'm not looking at when the stats are as vague as they are. There are no meters, just words in the journal that tell you how the bug is feeling, and I'd much prefer to see an actual gauge to fill rather than a description. The traits don't really seem to do much, the bugs don't feel as though they have any personality at all despite having traits that can be influenced by how you raise them; they feel like stats you need to achieve for story goals, and nothing more.
I also think that the game is sorely needing some kind of indicator of the bug's age, specifically how close it is to the next life stage. When you're locked out of minigames and your bug is overstimulated and full and there's nothing to do but sit and stare at it, knowing how long you have until it ages up would go a long way. Death also feels incredibly sudden, you get a notification when you're a little ways out, but then it just happens all at once, no animation or anything, just straight to a death screen. It was pretty jarring to come back from a minigame and go straight into a death screen without any kind of transition.
The scatalogue feels very bare-bones, you start off with one piece of furniture in each of the three categories, and after buying them, no new ones are added. It's just a blank spot. You can also get a single hat, and ~5 rolls on the gacha before that locks you out too. It just feels incredibly empty and sparse. I do think that unlocking more furniture as the game progresses is the way to go, and you DO unlock more furniture as you go, but it's a crawl, and leaves the shop feeling very empty in the meantime.
The bug facts are frustrating. I don't think they should be removed, they are an integral part of the game with its edutainment angle and I do appreciate their presence; what I do not appreciate is getting a strip of text that does not unlock or provide anything for the gameplay when I complete the hardest difficult of a minigame when I could have gotten furniture or currency. It feels like I'm not really getting a prize. I think that either you should be able to get a bug fact alongside currency, or have them drop some other way, maybe by caring for your bugs.
I'll be honest, I'm an impatient man and I don't like to wait. Because of this, Bugaboo Pocket isn't really for me, when so much of the game is time gated. If there was a little more to do in the meantime, a little more life to the bugs, I don't think I would mind as much. If you're okay with a slow-paced game, then Bugaboo Pocket might be great for you! But I cannot honestly recommend it in its current state, with its current content level, and its current wait times. Indicators of how long it'll be before a bug grows up would help my frustration a lot, but as of right now, the game feels too empty and lifeless for me to want to keep playing. I know I should give it a little more of a proper chance, but even with the sale, $19 after tax is a very hefty price for what I got, and I am planning on refunding this, so I can't pour more than two hours into it. I think the game has plenty of potential, but it just doesn't feel finished.
Edit to add: I also forgot to mention, but a few more tutorials here and there would be very appreciated as well. There was no indication of what I should do when my bug gets infested with mites, and although the solution was incredibly simple (just click them to remove them), I still think there should be some form of indicator, if not a brief pop-up then maybe having the mites flash the first time they appear, to make it more obvious that they ought to be clicked. Some tooltips for the different options on bug death would be nice too, so I know what I'm about to do with my bug before I do it. The icons are pretty straightforward, but I wound up preserving my first bug in a jar when I would have preferred to pin it because I didn't know what the jar icon would do. That one's more on me for experimenting instead of just clicking the option I knew I wanted :P But also, a confirmation there for that very permanent decision would be nice.
3 votes funny
76561198170829185
Not Recommended1 hrs played (1 hrs at review)
I really wanted to like this game, the art is gorgeous and I was very hyped up by the ads and development I saw, but it just doesn't feel finished or fleshed out.
Frankly, it feels like a mobile game. The minigames are fun, but very short, and all six that I've played are very basic and mobile game-esque. They're fun, but not terribly engaging, and quickly get repetitive. You also get locked into a cooldown after playing enough times in a row, which is incredibly frustrating when there's very, very little else to do in the game. That two minute cooldown was very irritating when I only had one bug. It does give you more to do when you unlock the ability to have more than one bug at once, but personally, I dislike having a bug I'm not looking at when the stats are as vague as they are. There are no meters, just words in the journal that tell you how the bug is feeling, and I'd much prefer to see an actual gauge to fill rather than a description. The traits don't really seem to do much, the bugs don't feel as though they have any personality at all despite having traits that can be influenced by how you raise them; they feel like stats you need to achieve for story goals, and nothing more.
I also think that the game is sorely needing some kind of indicator of the bug's age, specifically how close it is to the next life stage. When you're locked out of minigames and your bug is overstimulated and full and there's nothing to do but sit and stare at it, knowing how long you have until it ages up would go a long way. Death also feels incredibly sudden, you get a notification when you're a little ways out, but then it just happens all at once, no animation or anything, just straight to a death screen. It was pretty jarring to come back from a minigame and go straight into a death screen without any kind of transition.
The scatalogue feels very bare-bones, you start off with one piece of furniture in each of the three categories, and after buying them, no new ones are added. It's just a blank spot. You can also get a single hat, and ~5 rolls on the gacha before that locks you out too. It just feels incredibly empty and sparse. I do think that unlocking more furniture as the game progresses is the way to go, and you DO unlock more furniture as you go, but it's a crawl, and leaves the shop feeling very empty in the meantime.
The bug facts are frustrating. I don't think they should be removed, they are an integral part of the game with its edutainment angle and I do appreciate their presence; what I do not appreciate is getting a strip of text that does not unlock or provide anything for the gameplay when I complete the hardest difficult of a minigame when I could have gotten furniture or currency. It feels like I'm not really getting a prize. I think that either you should be able to get a bug fact alongside currency, or have them drop some other way, maybe by caring for your bugs.
I'll be honest, I'm an impatient man and I don't like to wait. Because of this, Bugaboo Pocket isn't really for me, when so much of the game is time gated. If there was a little more to do in the meantime, a little more life to the bugs, I don't think I would mind as much. If you're okay with a slow-paced game, then Bugaboo Pocket might be great for you! But I cannot honestly recommend it in its current state, with its current content level, and its current wait times. Indicators of how long it'll be before a bug grows up would help my frustration a lot, but as of right now, the game feels too empty and lifeless for me to want to keep playing. I know I should give it a little more of a proper chance, but even with the sale, $19 after tax is a very hefty price for what I got, and I am planning on refunding this, so I can't pour more than two hours into it. I think the game has plenty of potential, but it just doesn't feel finished.
Edit to add: I also forgot to mention, but a few more tutorials here and there would be very appreciated as well. There was no indication of what I should do when my bug gets infested with mites, and although the solution was incredibly simple (just click them to remove them), I still think there should be some form of indicator, if not a brief pop-up then maybe having the mites flash the first time they appear, to make it more obvious that they ought to be clicked. Some tooltips for the different options on bug death would be nice too, so I know what I'm about to do with my bug before I do it. The icons are pretty straightforward, but I wound up preserving my first bug in a jar when I would have preferred to pin it because I didn't know what the jar icon would do. That one's more on me for experimenting instead of just clicking the option I knew I wanted :P But also, a confirmation there for that very permanent decision would be nice.
3 votes funny
76561198285551729
Recommended5 hrs played (3 hrs at review)
it has bugs in it :]
2 votes funny
76561198029114626
Not Recommended14 hrs played (14 hrs at review)
Man, I wish I could recommend this game, but it has so many issues... The biggest problem for me is that it's confusing, frustrating, and incredibly poorly designed and executed.
One of the most baffling design desicions to me is that if you leave a bug alone for a long amount of time (and I have no idea how long this is, because the game doesn't tell you) the bug will "speedrun life" when you get back to them, meaning they grow up through every stage and die within a minute or so. So you can NEVER start raising a bug, close the game down, and then come back to finish in any meaningful way. It has to be done in one sitting. If you leave a bug alive when you close the game down, you've basically doomed them.
Edit: Apparently, this doesn't happen just because you close the game down. This must mean that whatever I did in between looking at my bug and opening or closing the game was enough for my bug's peedrun to be triggered. To me, this is still insane.
That, along with multiple other bad design decisions, devalues the life of each individual bug significantly. Getting attached to any bug feels completely meaningless and it's the game's design itself proving to you that each bug is pointless.
To reach your goals, you have to go through multiple bugs to figure out what the game wants you to do. So you will end up with many dead bugs that are just learning experiences. And by learning experiences, I mean that once you fail enough, the game will spell out for you exactly what you need to do because it's often impossible to work it out yourself. One goal, how to affect your bug's sleep, I completed on accident and so I never unlocked the hints that told me exactly what to do. So now I have no idea what affects my bug's sleeping and never will unless I restart the game and make sure to fail enough first before moving on. To reach some of those goals, you basically have to mistreat or ignore your bug! To raise a studious bug, you need to fail at minigames and interact with your bug as little as possible. FUN! /sarcasm
Each bug of a certain species has the exact same favourite furniture. The tarot cards affecting your bug are basically pointless. They add next to nothing. It's incredibly easy to accidentally pet your bug wrong and make it upset with you. There's no way to customise or edit your bugs' graves or pins and you have to preserve EVERY SINGLE BUG you ever raised, even the ones that speedran life and just died without ever interacting with you. So you just have loads of dead bugs you feel nothing for filling up the spaces. Each bug has three slots for "memories". I am TEN HOURS into the game and I have yet to fill a single one of those slots. Should I have unlocked them? Who knows!? I don't even know what they are or what they mean.
The UI is clunky, unresponsive, and cumbersome to use. The minigames aren't fun. Some are basically just gambling to win and others are so easy you can reliably win every single time with no effort. There's constantly nothing to do but sit and roll your thumbs, BUT you can never leave your bug alone because you need to keep them fed and healthy and make sure you meet your goals. It's even worse when your bug sleeps. You can't play minigames, you can't interact with them, and yet you constantly have to watch over them because you need to prevent nightmares. Nightmares can happen ten times within ten seconds or not at all for minutes at the time. I don't even know what nightmares affect because the game has never told me or given any indication.
I really, really wanted to like this game. But it's poorly designed and trying to figure it out is like pulling teeth. It's constantly undermining the emotions it's trying to elicit in you and constantly at odds with itself. I am extremely disappointed...
2 votes funny
76561198046912738
Recommended6 hrs played (5 hrs at review)
giving every bug a gentle kiss on the head
2 votes funny
76561198387200810
Recommended6 hrs played
This game is very good but it could use improvements, the facts are nice and the fonts are readable and I like the trigger warning option in settings even if I never used it.
However, this game as of now is not disability friendly in terms of depth perception or hand/dexterity restraints. The game so far is fine however the minigames that are present that are the main source of income are a source of restriction;
- Forrest Forager; I struggle aligning the platforms due to my depth perception being affected by one of my medical issues, the shadow is a good help to align them but I wish there was an option to make the shadow longer to see the alignment better
- Holey Roller; this is my main issue with the game so far, its mouse based and requires you to hold down the mouse and move the circle, this causes issues with my wrists and chronic pain very easily but make no mistake I think for people without hand movement, they will have no issue. The mechanic is fun and impressive however I would suggest having the option in settings to simple switch to arrow keys on the keyboard
Other than these roadblocks that have personally made sections a challenge, at the end of the day to an extent these minigames are optional and I personally have fun with stop drop 'n roll. Great game, would recommend to players including bug lovers (especially those.) The art style is charming and I enjoy the storyline though I am not that far in, will be looking forward to collecting every bit of furniture, bug, fact and more. Especially going to have fun with the gacha, just be aware that if you are disabled or have trouble with depth perception or experience wrist pain/issues that some minigames will be a struggle. But other than those issues, it's a 9/10 and if they fix those issues then it will definitely be a 10/10 from me
2 votes funny
76561198865077005
Recommended4 hrs played (3 hrs at review)
I love this game a lot, but I have a glitch that doesn't allow me to play the game :(
Literally I'm into the tittle menu without any options besides settings and quit.
I hope this problem gets solved, but besides that? Absolute amazing!
1 votes funny
76561198057388632
Recommended9 hrs played (7 hrs at review)
raise bug, feed bug, pet bug. put a little hat on my bug. what more could i ask for
1 votes funny
76561198408786124
Not Recommended13 hrs played (13 hrs at review)
i was so excited for this game, id check every day to see if it had been release or not so obviously when it came out i got it but now after playing honestly im pretty dissapointed, this game is not worth the price tag, there just isnt enough stuff, each bug doesnt even get 3 unique games, its pretty upsetting, if it was at most £10 i would have had a different review but its not worth £16 at all
1 votes funny
76561198273246988
Recommended12 hrs played (3 hrs at review)
i played the coconut game with my little guy and lost and then they died :[
1 votes funny
76561198119580410
Recommended9 hrs played (9 hrs at review)
A bit mixed on this but leaning positive.
The invertebrates are certainly the star of the show, carrying the game with their overall adorable presentation.
I'm a bit disappointed in the fact that the game does not feature a great diving beetle as a possible pet, despite of one appearing in the game's banner. I was quite looking forward to raising one, especially since I was so fond of the species in question as a kid.
I really did not like the fact that most of the available decorations that the ?scientist? main character could choose to use in the enclosures were just straight out debris (like a broken mirror, some package waste, a toy car, a coin and etc.), instead of something more closely trying to mimic the natural habitat of the critters.
As many people have already pointed out, the minigames could have used more polish and content.
The main story felt a bit lacking. Its your basic "corporation evil because duh" plot entwined with an admittedly shallow romance story. Obviously most people are not going to be playing the title for the story anyways, so this doesn't really matter in the grand scene.
The game itself is quite slow paced, overall probably meant as something that can be running on your second screen, or in windowed mode, instead of being 100% fully focused on in the fullscreen mode.
In conclusion:
If you are a fan of "bugs" and come in with the right expectations, you will probably end up enjoying the game.
1 votes funny
76561198427399212
Recommended6 hrs played (1 hrs at review)
everytime my bug dies i take it out on my boyfriend
1 votes funny
76561199022257783
Not Recommended6 hrs played (6 hrs at review)
I really want to enjoy this game, as I've been excited about its release for about a year now, but I am slightly disappointed. I know the appeal is a Tamagotchi-style creature collector, but the reason Tamagotchis work so well is because you aren't supposed to be monitoring your Tamagotchi at all times; it's meant to be something you check in on (thus the downtime and lack of activities a Tamagotchi provides). In this game, most of it is downtime: wait for the bug to eat, wait for the bug to grow up, wait for the bug to die just to raise the exact same bug again, etc. The difference here is that this is a PC/console game, meaning it doesn't come with you on the go and alert you when needed; it's a game you must sit down and give most of your energy to in order to progress, causing a lot of sitting and waiting for your bugs to be hungry, want to play, or even die so you can finally move on in the story.
Another issue I had is the minigames. They are fun, but in some parts of the game it's required of you to not play minigames or even fail them on purpose to progress the story, thus taking away an aspect that may help remedy the boredom previously mentioned. Lots of this game is leveling a bug immediately to the stat it needs and waiting long periods of time for the bug to die, which I feel takes away from the aspect of forming bonds with these bugs how you're supposed to in a pet-oriented game like this or Tamagotchi. I love bugs deeply, but especially knowing I will have to raise the same bug twice and have the same things happen just to progress is so tedious.
I really, really wanted to love this game, and I've been excited for so long for it, but I've played for 6 hours and most of those have been sitting here and simply waiting.
1 votes funny
76561198845208323
Recommended4 hrs played
it's weevil time!
I love the art in this game, especially the background scenery during the cutscenes. The story has much more depth to it than I was expecting, which is nice, and I'm curious to see where it ends up. I do agree with the other review that a lot of the play time right now is just waiting for things to happen, but otherwise this is a very cute and relaxing game.
1 votes funny
76561198253366550
Recommended6 hrs played (1 hrs at review)
cool hat bug
bug hat cool ?
1 votes funny
76561199211988634
Recommended10 hrs played (1 hrs at review)
Super cute, factual and beyond expectations, i highly recommend if you also love bugs :)
1 votes funny
Bugaboo Pocket
Apr 2, 2025Apr 2, 2025Jun 8, 2025May 1, 2025Apr 5, 2025Apr 2, 2025Jul 3, 2025Jun 5, 2025Apr 17, 2025Apr 6, 2025Apr 4, 2025Apr 4, 2025Apr 3, 2025Apr 2, 2025Apr 2, 2025Apr 2, 2025
76561198170829185
Not Recommended1 hrs played (1 hrs at review)
I really wanted to like this game, the art is gorgeous and I was very hyped up by the ads and development I saw, but it just doesn't feel finished or fleshed out.
Frankly, it feels like a mobile game. The minigames are fun, but very short, and all six that I've played are very basic and mobile game-esque. They're fun, but not terribly engaging, and quickly get repetitive. You also get locked into a cooldown after playing enough times in a row, which is incredibly frustrating when there's very, very little else to do in the game. That two minute cooldown was very irritating when I only had one bug. It does give you more to do when you unlock the ability to have more than one bug at once, but personally, I dislike having a bug I'm not looking at when the stats are as vague as they are. There are no meters, just words in the journal that tell you how the bug is feeling, and I'd much prefer to see an actual gauge to fill rather than a description. The traits don't really seem to do much, the bugs don't feel as though they have any personality at all despite having traits that can be influenced by how you raise them; they feel like stats you need to achieve for story goals, and nothing more.
I also think that the game is sorely needing some kind of indicator of the bug's age, specifically how close it is to the next life stage. When you're locked out of minigames and your bug is overstimulated and full and there's nothing to do but sit and stare at it, knowing how long you have until it ages up would go a long way. Death also feels incredibly sudden, you get a notification when you're a little ways out, but then it just happens all at once, no animation or anything, just straight to a death screen. It was pretty jarring to come back from a minigame and go straight into a death screen without any kind of transition.
The scatalogue feels very bare-bones, you start off with one piece of furniture in each of the three categories, and after buying them, no new ones are added. It's just a blank spot. You can also get a single hat, and ~5 rolls on the gacha before that locks you out too. It just feels incredibly empty and sparse. I do think that unlocking more furniture as the game progresses is the way to go, and you DO unlock more furniture as you go, but it's a crawl, and leaves the shop feeling very empty in the meantime.
The bug facts are frustrating. I don't think they should be removed, they are an integral part of the game with its edutainment angle and I do appreciate their presence; what I do not appreciate is getting a strip of text that does not unlock or provide anything for the gameplay when I complete the hardest difficult of a minigame when I could have gotten furniture or currency. It feels like I'm not really getting a prize. I think that either you should be able to get a bug fact alongside currency, or have them drop some other way, maybe by caring for your bugs.
I'll be honest, I'm an impatient man and I don't like to wait. Because of this, Bugaboo Pocket isn't really for me, when so much of the game is time gated. If there was a little more to do in the meantime, a little more life to the bugs, I don't think I would mind as much. If you're okay with a slow-paced game, then Bugaboo Pocket might be great for you! But I cannot honestly recommend it in its current state, with its current content level, and its current wait times. Indicators of how long it'll be before a bug grows up would help my frustration a lot, but as of right now, the game feels too empty and lifeless for me to want to keep playing. I know I should give it a little more of a proper chance, but even with the sale, $19 after tax is a very hefty price for what I got, and I am planning on refunding this, so I can't pour more than two hours into it. I think the game has plenty of potential, but it just doesn't feel finished.
Edit to add: I also forgot to mention, but a few more tutorials here and there would be very appreciated as well. There was no indication of what I should do when my bug gets infested with mites, and although the solution was incredibly simple (just click them to remove them), I still think there should be some form of indicator, if not a brief pop-up then maybe having the mites flash the first time they appear, to make it more obvious that they ought to be clicked. Some tooltips for the different options on bug death would be nice too, so I know what I'm about to do with my bug before I do it. The icons are pretty straightforward, but I wound up preserving my first bug in a jar when I would have preferred to pin it because I didn't know what the jar icon would do. That one's more on me for experimenting instead of just clicking the option I knew I wanted :P But also, a confirmation there for that very permanent decision would be nice.
3 votes funny
76561198170829185
Not Recommended1 hrs played (1 hrs at review)
I really wanted to like this game, the art is gorgeous and I was very hyped up by the ads and development I saw, but it just doesn't feel finished or fleshed out.
Frankly, it feels like a mobile game. The minigames are fun, but very short, and all six that I've played are very basic and mobile game-esque. They're fun, but not terribly engaging, and quickly get repetitive. You also get locked into a cooldown after playing enough times in a row, which is incredibly frustrating when there's very, very little else to do in the game. That two minute cooldown was very irritating when I only had one bug. It does give you more to do when you unlock the ability to have more than one bug at once, but personally, I dislike having a bug I'm not looking at when the stats are as vague as they are. There are no meters, just words in the journal that tell you how the bug is feeling, and I'd much prefer to see an actual gauge to fill rather than a description. The traits don't really seem to do much, the bugs don't feel as though they have any personality at all despite having traits that can be influenced by how you raise them; they feel like stats you need to achieve for story goals, and nothing more.
I also think that the game is sorely needing some kind of indicator of the bug's age, specifically how close it is to the next life stage. When you're locked out of minigames and your bug is overstimulated and full and there's nothing to do but sit and stare at it, knowing how long you have until it ages up would go a long way. Death also feels incredibly sudden, you get a notification when you're a little ways out, but then it just happens all at once, no animation or anything, just straight to a death screen. It was pretty jarring to come back from a minigame and go straight into a death screen without any kind of transition.
The scatalogue feels very bare-bones, you start off with one piece of furniture in each of the three categories, and after buying them, no new ones are added. It's just a blank spot. You can also get a single hat, and ~5 rolls on the gacha before that locks you out too. It just feels incredibly empty and sparse. I do think that unlocking more furniture as the game progresses is the way to go, and you DO unlock more furniture as you go, but it's a crawl, and leaves the shop feeling very empty in the meantime.
The bug facts are frustrating. I don't think they should be removed, they are an integral part of the game with its edutainment angle and I do appreciate their presence; what I do not appreciate is getting a strip of text that does not unlock or provide anything for the gameplay when I complete the hardest difficult of a minigame when I could have gotten furniture or currency. It feels like I'm not really getting a prize. I think that either you should be able to get a bug fact alongside currency, or have them drop some other way, maybe by caring for your bugs.
I'll be honest, I'm an impatient man and I don't like to wait. Because of this, Bugaboo Pocket isn't really for me, when so much of the game is time gated. If there was a little more to do in the meantime, a little more life to the bugs, I don't think I would mind as much. If you're okay with a slow-paced game, then Bugaboo Pocket might be great for you! But I cannot honestly recommend it in its current state, with its current content level, and its current wait times. Indicators of how long it'll be before a bug grows up would help my frustration a lot, but as of right now, the game feels too empty and lifeless for me to want to keep playing. I know I should give it a little more of a proper chance, but even with the sale, $19 after tax is a very hefty price for what I got, and I am planning on refunding this, so I can't pour more than two hours into it. I think the game has plenty of potential, but it just doesn't feel finished.
Edit to add: I also forgot to mention, but a few more tutorials here and there would be very appreciated as well. There was no indication of what I should do when my bug gets infested with mites, and although the solution was incredibly simple (just click them to remove them), I still think there should be some form of indicator, if not a brief pop-up then maybe having the mites flash the first time they appear, to make it more obvious that they ought to be clicked. Some tooltips for the different options on bug death would be nice too, so I know what I'm about to do with my bug before I do it. The icons are pretty straightforward, but I wound up preserving my first bug in a jar when I would have preferred to pin it because I didn't know what the jar icon would do. That one's more on me for experimenting instead of just clicking the option I knew I wanted :P But also, a confirmation there for that very permanent decision would be nice.
3 votes funny
76561198285551729
Recommended5 hrs played (3 hrs at review)
it has bugs in it :]
2 votes funny
76561198029114626
Not Recommended14 hrs played (14 hrs at review)
Man, I wish I could recommend this game, but it has so many issues... The biggest problem for me is that it's confusing, frustrating, and incredibly poorly designed and executed.
One of the most baffling design desicions to me is that if you leave a bug alone for a long amount of time (and I have no idea how long this is, because the game doesn't tell you) the bug will "speedrun life" when you get back to them, meaning they grow up through every stage and die within a minute or so. So you can NEVER start raising a bug, close the game down, and then come back to finish in any meaningful way. It has to be done in one sitting. If you leave a bug alive when you close the game down, you've basically doomed them.
Edit: Apparently, this doesn't happen just because you close the game down. This must mean that whatever I did in between looking at my bug and opening or closing the game was enough for my bug's peedrun to be triggered. To me, this is still insane.
That, along with multiple other bad design decisions, devalues the life of each individual bug significantly. Getting attached to any bug feels completely meaningless and it's the game's design itself proving to you that each bug is pointless.
To reach your goals, you have to go through multiple bugs to figure out what the game wants you to do. So you will end up with many dead bugs that are just learning experiences. And by learning experiences, I mean that once you fail enough, the game will spell out for you exactly what you need to do because it's often impossible to work it out yourself. One goal, how to affect your bug's sleep, I completed on accident and so I never unlocked the hints that told me exactly what to do. So now I have no idea what affects my bug's sleeping and never will unless I restart the game and make sure to fail enough first before moving on. To reach some of those goals, you basically have to mistreat or ignore your bug! To raise a studious bug, you need to fail at minigames and interact with your bug as little as possible. FUN! /sarcasm
Each bug of a certain species has the exact same favourite furniture. The tarot cards affecting your bug are basically pointless. They add next to nothing. It's incredibly easy to accidentally pet your bug wrong and make it upset with you. There's no way to customise or edit your bugs' graves or pins and you have to preserve EVERY SINGLE BUG you ever raised, even the ones that speedran life and just died without ever interacting with you. So you just have loads of dead bugs you feel nothing for filling up the spaces. Each bug has three slots for "memories". I am TEN HOURS into the game and I have yet to fill a single one of those slots. Should I have unlocked them? Who knows!? I don't even know what they are or what they mean.
The UI is clunky, unresponsive, and cumbersome to use. The minigames aren't fun. Some are basically just gambling to win and others are so easy you can reliably win every single time with no effort. There's constantly nothing to do but sit and roll your thumbs, BUT you can never leave your bug alone because you need to keep them fed and healthy and make sure you meet your goals. It's even worse when your bug sleeps. You can't play minigames, you can't interact with them, and yet you constantly have to watch over them because you need to prevent nightmares. Nightmares can happen ten times within ten seconds or not at all for minutes at the time. I don't even know what nightmares affect because the game has never told me or given any indication.
I really, really wanted to like this game. But it's poorly designed and trying to figure it out is like pulling teeth. It's constantly undermining the emotions it's trying to elicit in you and constantly at odds with itself. I am extremely disappointed...
2 votes funny
76561198046912738
Recommended6 hrs played (5 hrs at review)
giving every bug a gentle kiss on the head
2 votes funny
76561198387200810
Recommended6 hrs played
This game is very good but it could use improvements, the facts are nice and the fonts are readable and I like the trigger warning option in settings even if I never used it.
However, this game as of now is not disability friendly in terms of depth perception or hand/dexterity restraints. The game so far is fine however the minigames that are present that are the main source of income are a source of restriction;
- Forrest Forager; I struggle aligning the platforms due to my depth perception being affected by one of my medical issues, the shadow is a good help to align them but I wish there was an option to make the shadow longer to see the alignment better
- Holey Roller; this is my main issue with the game so far, its mouse based and requires you to hold down the mouse and move the circle, this causes issues with my wrists and chronic pain very easily but make no mistake I think for people without hand movement, they will have no issue. The mechanic is fun and impressive however I would suggest having the option in settings to simple switch to arrow keys on the keyboard
Other than these roadblocks that have personally made sections a challenge, at the end of the day to an extent these minigames are optional and I personally have fun with stop drop 'n roll. Great game, would recommend to players including bug lovers (especially those.) The art style is charming and I enjoy the storyline though I am not that far in, will be looking forward to collecting every bit of furniture, bug, fact and more. Especially going to have fun with the gacha, just be aware that if you are disabled or have trouble with depth perception or experience wrist pain/issues that some minigames will be a struggle. But other than those issues, it's a 9/10 and if they fix those issues then it will definitely be a 10/10 from me
2 votes funny
76561198865077005
Recommended4 hrs played (3 hrs at review)
I love this game a lot, but I have a glitch that doesn't allow me to play the game :(
Literally I'm into the tittle menu without any options besides settings and quit.
I hope this problem gets solved, but besides that? Absolute amazing!
1 votes funny
76561198057388632
Recommended9 hrs played (7 hrs at review)
raise bug, feed bug, pet bug. put a little hat on my bug. what more could i ask for
1 votes funny
76561198408786124
Not Recommended13 hrs played (13 hrs at review)
i was so excited for this game, id check every day to see if it had been release or not so obviously when it came out i got it but now after playing honestly im pretty dissapointed, this game is not worth the price tag, there just isnt enough stuff, each bug doesnt even get 3 unique games, its pretty upsetting, if it was at most £10 i would have had a different review but its not worth £16 at all
1 votes funny
76561198273246988
Recommended12 hrs played (3 hrs at review)
i played the coconut game with my little guy and lost and then they died :[
1 votes funny
76561198119580410
Recommended9 hrs played (9 hrs at review)
A bit mixed on this but leaning positive.
The invertebrates are certainly the star of the show, carrying the game with their overall adorable presentation.
I'm a bit disappointed in the fact that the game does not feature a great diving beetle as a possible pet, despite of one appearing in the game's banner. I was quite looking forward to raising one, especially since I was so fond of the species in question as a kid.
I really did not like the fact that most of the available decorations that the ?scientist? main character could choose to use in the enclosures were just straight out debris (like a broken mirror, some package waste, a toy car, a coin and etc.), instead of something more closely trying to mimic the natural habitat of the critters.
As many people have already pointed out, the minigames could have used more polish and content.
The main story felt a bit lacking. Its your basic "corporation evil because duh" plot entwined with an admittedly shallow romance story. Obviously most people are not going to be playing the title for the story anyways, so this doesn't really matter in the grand scene.
The game itself is quite slow paced, overall probably meant as something that can be running on your second screen, or in windowed mode, instead of being 100% fully focused on in the fullscreen mode.
In conclusion:
If you are a fan of "bugs" and come in with the right expectations, you will probably end up enjoying the game.
1 votes funny
76561198427399212
Recommended6 hrs played (1 hrs at review)
everytime my bug dies i take it out on my boyfriend
1 votes funny
76561199022257783
Not Recommended6 hrs played (6 hrs at review)
I really want to enjoy this game, as I've been excited about its release for about a year now, but I am slightly disappointed. I know the appeal is a Tamagotchi-style creature collector, but the reason Tamagotchis work so well is because you aren't supposed to be monitoring your Tamagotchi at all times; it's meant to be something you check in on (thus the downtime and lack of activities a Tamagotchi provides). In this game, most of it is downtime: wait for the bug to eat, wait for the bug to grow up, wait for the bug to die just to raise the exact same bug again, etc. The difference here is that this is a PC/console game, meaning it doesn't come with you on the go and alert you when needed; it's a game you must sit down and give most of your energy to in order to progress, causing a lot of sitting and waiting for your bugs to be hungry, want to play, or even die so you can finally move on in the story.
Another issue I had is the minigames. They are fun, but in some parts of the game it's required of you to not play minigames or even fail them on purpose to progress the story, thus taking away an aspect that may help remedy the boredom previously mentioned. Lots of this game is leveling a bug immediately to the stat it needs and waiting long periods of time for the bug to die, which I feel takes away from the aspect of forming bonds with these bugs how you're supposed to in a pet-oriented game like this or Tamagotchi. I love bugs deeply, but especially knowing I will have to raise the same bug twice and have the same things happen just to progress is so tedious.
I really, really wanted to love this game, and I've been excited for so long for it, but I've played for 6 hours and most of those have been sitting here and simply waiting.
1 votes funny
76561198845208323
Recommended4 hrs played
it's weevil time!
I love the art in this game, especially the background scenery during the cutscenes. The story has much more depth to it than I was expecting, which is nice, and I'm curious to see where it ends up. I do agree with the other review that a lot of the play time right now is just waiting for things to happen, but otherwise this is a very cute and relaxing game.
1 votes funny
76561198253366550
Recommended6 hrs played (1 hrs at review)
cool hat bug
bug hat cool ?
1 votes funny
76561199211988634
Recommended10 hrs played (1 hrs at review)
Super cute, factual and beyond expectations, i highly recommend if you also love bugs :)
1 votes funny
