WORLD.EXECUTE(052725);

may 27 2025 : bug fables (moonsprout games)

okay. i just finished the game bug fables and cried so hard at the fact that the main story ended i have to write my entire analysis post of the game now while these feelings are still fresh or else i'm genuinely afraid that i won't be able to capture the sheer amount of emotion that this game caused me to have. i actually feel like, so bittersweet about it. i'm so crazily attached to the main characters and the world i don't even know how to describe it. more on this later.

first: i'm going to briefly cover some things about gameplay. i'm not a game critic & i don't play many video games in general, so forgive me for this portion being so short or if my takes here are amateur compared to those who've played more rpgs than i have.

i generally liked the gameplay "loop" that i noticed more and more as i was playing. there were "dungeon" bits at the ends of each chapter, split up by free-roaming bits to finish sidequests, gather items, and generally roam around the land of bugaria as you'd like. the free-roaming bits (and the map in general) i thought were suuuuuper super well done. you unlock more and more fast-travel options as the game progresses, making it easier for you to backtrack to places you'd missed or people you wanted to visit... and the map didn't feel too compact or too spread out, either. there was a sense of "scale" & you got a feel for some weird empathetic sense of "in-game time" passing as the three main characters wandered from place to place, if that makes sense? as in: it was easy to immerse yourself in the sense that "yes this is a large network of kingdoms/areas that the characters have to traverse," but the time it ACTUALLY TOOK to travel between those areas wasn't super annoying.

the dungeon bits were... somewhat odd. generally, i think the field moves the characters had to traverse the dungeons were unique and well thought-out. i liked how leif's ice rain -- which was mandatory to get to some optional minibosses -- was locked behind at least starting leif's request (which is a huge part of his story & super important for a player to really experience), and how kabbu's ramming attack to break apart boulder piles was tied specifically to his backstory/anger about his past (as will be discussed later).

i didn't particularly enjoy how they were actively... implemented into the dungeons themselves, though. the platforming/perspective didn't work that well together, making it frustrating to get through certain mandatory puzzles (e.g. the honey factory electric platforms, the rubber prison spinning gym springshrooms). and i really disliked the stealth sections. i dislike stealth sections in most games, to be completely fair, but i found the constant restarting to figure out where to even go in the large web of stealth-section rooms to be really annoying (particularly in the bandit hideout).

thankfully, the dungeons don't make up most of the game -- the traveling, talking to people, and "in-between area" portions were way more prevalent. additionally, i think the battle system more than makes up for what the dungeons themselves lack. it clearly drew a lot from paper mario (it wears its inspiration on its sleeve), but i feel like the character-switching system, the fact that we're limited to three characters (each with a clearly-defined niche), with an "action economy" to take into account and a more-developed medal system to strategize using... it takes the paper mario formula and makes it a lot MORE than just "paper mario battles." it was so much fun to think through my medals before major boss battles & then decimate my enemies (as leif would put it) by stacking attack on vi and seeing just how much damage i could do in one go.

i really liked how there was very little "power-scaling," too. you never really got the sense that you were fully immune to danger in any fight you decided to take because your characters consistently maintain such low health, have virtually zero defense, and rarely have their "base" attack improved. it makes the medals crucial to having good battle turns while also ensuring that you don't feel super, unrealistically overpowered to the point where you can just totally ignore & throw blocks on attacks done by early-game enemies.

the power balancing was just really well done throughout, particularly on hard mode! i imagine going through the game without having had that medal turned on would've made me feel differently, but as of my first playthrough, i do think that hard mode is the best way to experience the power balance/challenge as it was "intended to be," so to speak. it's a good degree of challenge, but not overwhelming challenge... particularly once you develop your last attack + last attack + last wind + power exchange + power exchange + poison attacker + empower + favorite-one-boost vi strategy to its peak form.

second: let me go into my actual thoughts on the setting/plot. i LOVE the land of bugaria. i truly truly love it. it was just... auuuuuuugh. let me try to be coherent.

the setting itself is done fantastically. you play as bugs in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where (presumably) some kind of nuclear cataclysm wiped humans out while also mutating/"awakening" bugs to a sort of human-like state, with many bugs losing their flight & other insect-like features in exchange for hands, sentience, language, technology, and so on. you LIVE among the remnants of human civilization. your house is a fucking juice box. the first shop you visit is in a cardboard box. the lost sands -- the obligatory desert area -- is in a FUCKING sandbox and the characters COMMENT on the "strange walls" that seem to surround it. THE RUBBER PRISON IS A TIRE. DO YOU HEAR ME. THE ANTS BUILT A PRISON FLOATING IN THE MIDDLE OF A PUDDLE NEXT TO A CAN ISLAND INSIDE THE REMNANTS OF THE RUBBER RIM OF A TIRE. DO YOU UNDERSTAND.

anyway. crucially -- what makes this setting WORK -- is the fact that YOU DO NOT FEEL. ANY OF THIS. everything is done in a very "toonish," fun, colorful art style. all of the human junk has been entirely repurposed into bug buildings and bug toys and is mixed in among more "natural" scenery, forests & caves & grasslands & deserts. the "truth" of the world is completely minimized by the fact that the bug-made junk looks WAY cooler than human-made trash: the honey factory being super advanced, roach technology being empowered by magic crystals, the termite kingdom's neon lights. and the characters SO RARELY comment on it because to them... they're bugs! this is their world! you are never made to feel your size. it's such a believable, immersive setting because the "mask" of absurdity that's imposed on you is never lifted & you're so rarely asked to STOP suspending your disbelief.

this makes the crazy, crazy system of bug kingdoms & family hierarchies & general bug lore super, super easy to accept as a result. there's just enough ties to general fun facts most people playing the game would know about bugs -- the bees all being sisters, the ant kingdom castle being built on an anthill, the wasps generally being ornery and aggressive towards "intruders" -- that it's sooooo easy to think "yep, if bugs were human, they'd create a society that looked like this." it's as i'm saying: everything is just absurd ENOUGH. everything is just fantastical ENOUGH that the darker, more insane aspects of the setting get totally overlooked and you sort of take the world as it's fed to you.

i think it really deepens the impact of the last chapter of the game & of the plot as a whole. the overarching plot itself is nothing to write home about -- i think it's a fun adventure, but it's not doing anything necessarily groundbreaking in terms of "stories told through the rpg medium." the three characters collect artifacts for a queen that seems to have hidden intentions with the treasure those artifacts unlock, only for a bigger bad to steal the artifacts, the queen's truly PURE intentions to shine through, and then the main heroes beat up the bigger bad and realize that the ultimate treasure was their character growth/friendship all along and it's better for the treasure to have been destroyed anyway.

whatever. standard "greed/hunger for power corrupts" plot. i had no issues with the pacing... the first three chapters are somewhat slow/just generally fun to play through & get to know the characters, and then the final four chapters go by QUICK as the stakes ramp up, which was fine to me. no chapter was particularly longer or shorter than the others (except for chapter seven because, well, that's just a "final boss" chapter really). i didn't think any portion of the story was necessarily rushed, either: things are pretty well-paced out, particularly if you take time to do all the sidequests (which the game heavily encourages you to do -- see leif's ice rain for just one example, as mentioned above).

what saves this plot from FEELING generic is (i) the setting, and (ii) the characters. i'll be elaborating on the latter point in the last section of this (already super long) essay, but as to the first point specifically: you actively FEEL the stakes ramp up through the game because of how the setting evolves throughout!

the first three chapters are slow because they're setting up your suspension of disbelief: it's a generic magical cave, a generic magical/autumn-themed grassland, a fun little desert section & a techno-factory where the bees make honey. chapter four is when the sand castle hits -- and you're like "okay, the watcher is sort of freaky-looking, also why is everything a roach construct now and what were the roaches doing and why is leif acting like this." chapter five is an actively-hostile grassland/swampland where kabbu talks about his friends dying and you're like "whoa, bugs can DIE?" chapter six's forsaken lands are SOOOOO excellently foreboding: the music is oppressive, the amount of weird human junk in the background suddenly exacerbates the dystopian setting we're in, the colors have been sucked out of the world entirely. and then chapter seven actively -- for the first time in a game where the point is to make you think that bugs are, essentially, human -- makes you feel your size.

it sets an excellent tone: you get used to the fun, fantasy-filled World Of Bugs and the more "unnaturally" human the bugs & the setting get, the higher the tension gets. it makes the deadlands feel genuinely menacing/like you're in real danger because the Human Junk has never taken precedence until that very point. that, plus how unique each of the settings are (and again, the liveliness of every single character in them), makes each chapter feel memorable... totally overriding what, at first glance, seems to be an otherwise-generic overarching plotline.

and thus we get to our third point (what i've been building up to all this time): the characters. i genuinely cannot express enough just how much vi, kabbu & leif mean to me. maybe i'm still just really emotional from having completed the ending credits sequence but thinking about them/listening to snakemouth den's theme -- the theme of the first dungeon in the game -- literally makes me so nostalgic i want to cry all over again.

the shining point of this game is, truly, its character writing. every single character in this game not only has a unique design (which is crazy!), they all FEEL unique. you do sidequests for EVERYONE. you get to know EVERYONE. if you allow yourself to 100% the game and really immerse yourself in the role of team snakemouth, you genuinely exit the game with a sense of having been through everything with or even as team snakemouth. i was reading the credits and every time an npc bug was mentioned, i remembered their damn name and what they looked like and what the hell vi, kabbu & leif did for them. nobody feels like a "repeat," no sidequest feels "unnecessary" (even though there's so many literal fetch quests!) because of the sheer UNIQUENESS of the dialogue, every character had THEIR OWN THING going on and it made what was already a super well put-together setting feel like it was teeming with life and personality.

and that's really just the side characters! the main trio is just... unbelievable. they seem super, super tropey initially: kabbu is the kind-hearted paladin, vi is the bad-mouthed rogue, leif is the emotionless ice mage. they have an excellent dynamic together, even from when they first meet, that's very quippy and conversational: their dialogue feels natural, and ALL of it is fun to read. you can spy every single room! each of them has unique dialogue for every single enemy! i could read a lifetime's worth of just these three talking and never get sick of it. they are just so, so much fun together.

their development as a team is so naturally-done and so subtle that you barely even feel it happening until the very, very end. it hit me like a fucking truck when i realized on the bridge to the giant's lair, right at the end of the rubber prison, just how much these three end up TRUSTING each other. as said above: their dialogue already starts off very natural. but as the setting gets more dangerous, as they travel together and spend more in-game "time" together and as the plot progresses, you can FEEL the spy logs themselves getting more... friendly? intimate, if that's the right word to use? they go from general teasing and comments on what's in the room to... more teasing & jokes, yes, but in a way where you can TELL how much the three really care for each other. they start off a bit stiff, a bit held-back, but by the end of the game they're actively "breaking" the characters they established: kabbu letting leif/vi break the rules when he thinks it's funny or giving in to/returning their constant teasing, vi going tactfully quiet or attempting vague comfort when leif/kabbu are upset by something they inspect in the environment, leif's emotionless facade giving way to him actually having more written laughter & more comedically-dramatic bits.

these more "subtle" pieces of character-building in more minor text are then added on to by the slow ramp-up in moments that ACTIVELY affirm their trust in each other towards the latter half of the game... while also developing their characters beyond the tropes that you might otherwise expect. vi and kabbu being so worried about leif after the dune scorpion struck them! vi's request, leif's request are all done mid-game & late-game, respectively, while kabbu's request is only available postgame! kabbu telling the team how happy he is that he can spend more time with them after the fight with the beast, leif LITERALLY saying "of course we'll get through everything together" in response! the way they keep telling each other to stay on their guard, that they'll protect each other, that they won't let any harm come to each other as long as they stay together!

kabbu is the kind-hearted paladin, but he has crazy survivor's guilt and is incredibly traumatized/fearful of losing the people he cares about. he gets pissed off when people try to stop him from doing what he thinks is best for them, and is willing to bend his morals from time to time if he thinks that it'll be for the greater good... because what ultimately matters to him is that innocent people, that the people he loves, are safe. he learns to let go of his "heroic" idols/the past and trust in his own strength, continuing to protect his friends without being overbearing because he can trust that they'll be strong enough to protect themselves as well.

vi is the bad-mouthed rogue, but it stems from her constant insecurity about being seen as weak or childish for wanting to pursue her own freedom in a community that seems to very-strictly value "people taking on specific roles." she's greedy, rude, and recklessly independent... but she doesn't have ill intent, she just hates being seen as dependent. she learns to apologize & to take responsibility rather than shoving blame off onto "what the bee kingdom did to her," while allowing herself to rely on her friends because she realizes that there's nothing shameful in doing so & they won't look down on her for it at all.

leif is the emotionless ice mage, but he's been through a literal ship-of-theseus scenario: he's really a blank clone that's had the memories of a dead bug foisted onto them, fully BELIEVED for a period of time that they WERE that dead bug, only to have the rug pulled from under them when they realized that they never truly lived the life that they remember living. they're coping with both the grief of being pulled "out of time" from their memories and the crisis of being a "fake person" unsuspectingly supplanted onto a "real person." he ultimately accepts that it doesn't matter whether or not he's the "real" leif: what matters is that he has their memories & personality, that they still love everyone in the "real" leif's life the same way he would, and that he's developed NEW memories & experiences with people that THEY UNIQUELY love. together -- old life plus new life -- they can carry on his will and continue to care for exactly what leif would've cared about in the first place while being cared for, in return, by exactly who would've cared about BOTH old leif & new leif as a whole. "i'm not leif exactly, but we're still leif."

do you see the themes here. do you see how all of them learn to rely on each other and trust each other in a way that matches up perfectly with how their character arcs NATURALLY flow in the first place. do you see how much they love each other. guys. do you understand just how much the members of team snakemouth love each other. guys. do you understand how much they've been through together and how much they've learned about each other and how much their initial masks have been broken down since their initial quippy/conversational dialogue to the point where they feel like they can trust each other more than anything. i'm going to be fucking sick.

you as a player go through a 50+ hour journey with these three insane main characters watching them grow to love each other so fucking much. they insult and make fun of each other but they'd also take a bullet for each other without hesitation. they go on this insane journey together and it all feels SO REAL because of how well-written their characters & their development was. i literally can't stress it enough. it's so wonderful. it's so full of heart. it's such a joy to get to know them.

and then you go back and you listen to this damn snakemouth den theme and you remember the beginning of their journey when they met for the first time and neither you nor they knew what they'd eventually go through together. and then you go through the ending sequence and talk to all the bugs you helped in various sidequests and listen to them thank you for everything team snakemouth did to help them and you think about how much they care not just for each other, but for the world that you too have grown so attached to. and then you watch the damn credits and the three of them walk through every setting in the game and finally end by returning home, to the fucking explorer's association where their journey started in the first place. and then you sit there on the "the end" screen. and then you cry really hard. and then you write a 3365 word essay about how good of a game bug fables was.

my favorite songs off the soundtrack (other than snakemouth den as mentioned prior):