The bugnax that has affected me the most is the weenie worm. A weenie worm is like a hot dog (with bread) that goes around and around with a voice that sounds like a song, "weenie worm. Weenie, weenie worm," over and over again, embedding that voice in my head, waiting for me to capture it and feed it to the grampus (a more or less hairy human whose body parts become the bugnax they eat).

What on earth kind of grampus would want a bugnax instead of a leg or an arm or a nose? Almost all of them. Grampus loves to turn into Bugsnacks. It is genuinely a bit disconcerting that the characters in Bugsnacks are so eager to replace parts of their bodies with sentient snacks. Despite appearances, the Glanplas is no Justin Roiland-esque screaming monster. They are normal humans, albeit with pea-like, snaggle-toothed teeth. In fact, they're cute and even cut into the human experience (when they're not turned into weenie worms.) I wasn't interested in the actual bugsnax catching in Bugsnax, but the way they work amidst Grampus's anxiety is sweetly free and was as comfortably sweet as a sprinkle pedi.

As you might guess, bugsnax are literally bug-like treats: grapesquitos, pinantulas, sandpedes, and so on. Some are a clever play on words. There are regional variations on the can-shaped soddies: "Mt Sodies" on the mountaintops, "Dr Sodies" in the garden, and "La Sodieux" at sea. There are other awkward variants that don't make much sense, such as banoppers (banana grasshoppers living in trees) and inheritos (inchworm burritos living underground).

You play as an unnamed journalist who has been asked to investigate by the dashing adventurer Lizbert Megafig, the discoverer of these bugnaxes. However, when you arrive on Lizbert's island, she and her partner Egabel are missing and the settlement they built is in ruins. Except for the unfortunate Mayor Filbo, who has asked for your help in finding Lizbert and Egabel.

In a little over ten hours, you find the townsfolk scattered in the shadows of forests, on beaches, on desert mesas, in alpine forests, and on volcanic peaks. Of course, none of them will return to town right away: first you must capture and feed certain bugnax so that they can achieve their goal.

There are various tools for capturing bugznax, but all of them have very limited use cases, so bugznax is often just a matching game. We use a trapping device for this kind of bugznax, but not this one. We use a grappling hook for this side of the bugznax, but not for this side of the bugznax. We shoot peanut butter at this bugnax to make it fall, and we shoot ketchup at that bugnax over there to make it run into an ally and stun it. The closest I came to being creative was when I was able to use a portable spring-loaded launcher to throw down a flaming bowl of rice from the side of a cliff, lure the bowl into a pond by spraying hot sauce all over the ground with a slingshot, extinguish the flames and pick it up. It was like herding cats with clown props; it was more awkward than satisfying.

Part of the fun of system-driven games is testing their logical integrity, or, as in "Spelunky 2," where an explosive mishap may lead to a shocking discovery, or at least comedy, when the developer contingency plans for your most outlandish ideas Or discover that "Bugsnax" includes one...which it doesn't. If water and ice put out fires, ranch dressing shouldn't put out fires. No, the sauce only attracts or attracts Bugsnax. If you launch Bugsnax into a flying Bugsnax, can you knock it out of the sky? What about grappling hooks? It can only be used in special cases. How do you break an egg? Fire, for some reason. Everything must be done in a certain way.

There were a few times when I felt that bugs (software stuff) might have gotten in the way, but bugnax hunting is a sloppy business, so sometimes certain things work and sometimes they don't, and it was hard to say why.

The saving grace is that you don't have to catch that many bugnax. After the main quest, all you have to do is trap the bugnax that Grand-Place asks you to feed them. This was because I knew how to do that just by looking at them, and I knew it would be fiddly and pointless. But it was fun to walk around and listen to their strange voices. The bugnax all spoke their own names like Pokémon, some sounded like children, others like they were barely speaking a word. Their voices raise the chemicals in my blood. Weenie... Weenie worm.

Grampus characters are not so mysterious, appearing in obvious archetypes: the over-the-top pop star, the gossipy teen, the salesman. But there are surprises in them. Snowpie is a brusque scientist who thinks you might be part of the "glampluminati" and likes to give hugs. Bugsnacks is well structured, with regular town parties to break up the exploration and advance the plot.

Since the main characters, Lizbert and Eggabel, are missing, their story unfolds in a video diary. Freida Wolff's performance as Eggabelle is outstanding, and there are moments when the character of Eggabelle, an egg-shaped furry creature who is obsessed with eating bugs that are also snacks, is truly heartbreaking. Wolf benefited from the fact that Eggabel was the most well-observed character and a powder keg of self-doubt. (Side note: the story may get a little too dark at the end for young children. The tragic consequences of failing a glitchy task near the end nearly drove me away from the whole thing, but I let it go so I could retry the ending.)

The environments are not as well observed as the characters. They are generic, as if they were references to forests or deserts in other games, not the places themselves, which are both compact and sparse. Some desert areas are so barren that one would think that they have been cut off from the map and have become part of the background. On the other hand, the music and sound effects have a soothing effect, especially the deeply textured tones that signal the end of the quest, which seem to reorganize your brain waves.

Bugsnax works fine technically, and while a mouse and keyboard are better than a controller, both are usable. I wish I had enjoyed it more, but its hilarious grumps-body horror has changed me more than a little.