When you think of horror, what comes to mind?
Maybe the word conjures up thoughts of the classics, films like Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and The Exorcist that have been long-standing examples of horror done right. Or maybe you’re always in the mood for a zombie invasion storyline and the term makes you think of TV shows like The Walking Dead or more modern films like Train to Busan. Perhaps movies aren’t your thing at all, and the word makes you think of books by Stephen King and manga by Junji Ito.
Or just maybe, you like your horror a bit more immersive, so the genre makes you think of video games. There are plenty of great horror games out there, after all; series such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill are hits with lovers of action and horror alike, and in recent years, there have been more than a few notable horror titles, such as Five Nights at Freddie’s, Dead by Daylight, and Silver Chains.
However, horror isn’t just paranormal activity and hack-n-slash. Sometimes, it doesn’t even seem like horror on the surface because of how slow the burn of the story is. And this is the category that the game Bugsnax falls into.
Originally released in 2020 for Playstation and PC, Bugsnax has just recently made its way onto the Switch in April 2022. It follows a nameless journalist as they embark on a journey to Snaktooth Island, home of strange hybrids of bugs and food called bugsnax. Upon arriving, they are tasked with a number of important tasks to do, each of which leads them closer to uncovering the truth behind the disappearance of former Snaxburg leader, Lizbert, and solving the mystery of the island and its strange creatures.
Upon first inspection, Bugsnax seems like a rather calm, cute game. The creatures of the island are adorable with their big eyes and fun designs (especially playful burger-like Bunger and cake-spider hybrid Daddy Cakelegs) and they often scuttle away when you get close. It makes you let your guard down; they’re more scared of you than you are of them, right?
The humanoid characters aren’t exactly threatening, either. The townsfolk are a muppet-esque people known as Grumpuses, who look like they should be singing about the alphabet on Sesame Street, even if some of their personalities are a bit rough. They’re all a little silly, and despite their drama, everything still usually comes off as lighthearted.
There’s not even anything strange about the environment at first. Things are actually quite nice; the areas of Garden Grove and Flavor Falls are lush, the sandy beaches of Simmering Springs look enticing, and even the desert Scorched Gorge is nice in its own right.
You might be asking yourself where the horror in this game is supposed to be. And that’s where we get into what truly makes Bugsnax a pinnacle of horror gaming.
Bugsnax isn’t gory. You won’t see a drop of blood in your adventure. But you will see limbs being replaced by food as the citizens of Snaxburg chow down on bugsnax. You’ll see a number of skeletons of ancient civilizations, and the cave paintings these ancient Grumpuses left behind. As you move throughout the game, things unravel slowly. People start telling you their theories about why the bugsnax exist, you start seeing how the bugsnax affect the people eating them, and you find out more and more about Lizbert. Each bit is a piece to the puzzle, but it can be hard to pay attention to all these clues between random missions and running around trying to catch all the cute creatures to donate to the barn in Snaxburg.
This is ultimately what makes Bugsnax a fantastic horror game. It’s full of misdirection. It’s not about jump scares or giving you the scares outright; it wants to distract you, to make you leave the puzzle unfinished until the very end when the whole picture is revealed. It covers everything with a layer of fuzz. It’s cute and cuddly all around until you get to that very last moment where you realize you fell for the ruse, just like the Grumpuses. Only you’re too late at the end of it all, and the parasitic bugsnax have already begun to take over. All you can do is hope you’ve done enough to grant you escape.
Believe it or not, Bugsnax is also a pretty stellar example of good body horror. Body horror is all about testing the limits of what makes humans human. Or, in this case, Grumpuses Grumpus. Each time you feed a bugsnax to a villager, a part of their body changes to that food they ate. The more they eat, the less they look like a Grumpus; one character’s goal is to be completely transformed into bugsnax, so they can conduct regeneration experiments on themselves. Once you’ve made that whole transformation, though, are you even a person anymore?
The body horror of the game is also shown in the fate of Lizbert. When you do finally find her, she’s underground in a cave that breeds bugsnax, and you find out she’s been forcibly turned into a giant blob of bugsnax. She explains that the whole island is made of these creatures and that they slowly take over anyone that consumes them. Her partner, Eggabell, decides to meld with the food monster that is now Lizbert in order to buy the journalist time to save the others.
But did you do enough to save everyone?
This is the question the game leaves you with, and that’s where an element of psychological horror comes in. There’s something terrifying about making decisions. You can choose to help everyone, but you can also choose to help only a few, or even no one at all. However, you don’t know how your choices will affect the ending of the game. It could be because of you that everyone perishes. Maybe you were the cause of all this in the first place. After all, had you not come to investigate, no one would have known about these people, or about bugsnax, until the next unfortunate souls tried to stake claim to the island. This is something that’s meant to hang in your thoughts after the game ends, and it makes you realize that the whole time, Bugsnax truly was a horror game.
Though it’s unconventional for the genre, Bugsnax is one of those games that’s poised to be somewhat of a genre-defining title in terms of horror. It’s unique in its presentation of horror, using a cute and cuddly polish to misguide players to make the ending truly a terrifying twist. The plot is something that simmers so slowly throughout the gameplay, and it makes the horror far more unsettling as it sets in. It’s a fascinating example of the versatility and flexibility of the horror genre and how it keeps evolving creatively. Bugsnax is hopefully the first in a long line of unconventional horror games that will leave people in awe at their amazing and unique execution.