The second you combine bugs and idle games, I’m sold. Staring at sprites of tiny creepy-crawlies is rapidly becoming one of my favourite pastimes, which probably explains why Bugaboo Pocket has rapidly risen to the top of my list of best indie games this year. It seems like I’m not the only one who has a particular love for beasties big and small though, as bug-themed idle games are all the rage right now. If it saves me from getting grass-stained knees while flipping logs and trying to find real life insects, then I’m keen to check them all out, too.
Bugtopia is my latest step into the world of insect games. Rather than having you care for your bugs like a Tamagotchi, just like in my beloved Bugaboo Pocket, in Bugtopia you basically just watch over a tank. As time passes you make money, and the more bugs you have in your tank, the more money you make. It’s easy enough to just leave running in the background. However, the cash you make comes in painstakingly slowly to begin with, which definitely feels like it’s stunting your progress to start.
If you want to buy a new bug, you can expect a serious wait before you can afford to do so. The only loophole I found around this is through selling my matured bugs, which feels morally wrong. I’ve just spent precious time (a mere fraction of a minute) raising them, why do I now have to sell them to afford more? It doesn’t sit well with me. So, yes, I sat for hours and hours with the game running in the background in a desperate attempt to earn enough money to purchase a new pet before realising I didn’t really have a choice: I did have to sell my bugs if I wanted to make any sort of progress.
I hate to admit it, but it’s worth doing when you can finally afford new creatures. Unlocking a new bug gave me the same satisfaction as coming across a new Pokémon, which is helped by the fact you don’t know what the next bug you’ll unlock is. Once you’ve bought enough, a new one will just pop up in the shop. Bugtopia guarantees this feeling lasts, too, as the game is home to a pretty incredible 300 insects and even little fish for you to collect and log in a journal. There are even different colour variants for certain critters for that ultimate shiny-hunting satisfaction.
Things do get easier when you start unlocking more expensive bugs too, which makes this initial grind worth it. Even though the initial investment takes huge chunks out of the coins you’ve so desperately saved, when you’ve raised your bug to full maturity you can sell it for far more than you’ve bought it for. Or, if you don’t want to sell them like me, you can let them exist in your tank and watch the cash roll in as time ticks by.
You can even mash your bugs together in breeding boxes later down the line to create new species, or potentially rare ones if you’re lucky. Spoiler alert, I was not. The only downside to this is that the breeding box costs $50, which, when you’re making a fraction of a cent each minute at the beginning, is a significant investment. I knew rarer bugs would have a higher return when selling them, as wrong as that still felt, but the initial cost definitely stung. As I rightly guessed though, when you get going, it starts to feel like you’re rolling in the cash and things don’t feel so expensive anymore.
Unlike a Tamagotchi, or a lot of desktop pets for that matter, you don’t necessarily need to worry about individual requirements for every bug you rehome either to make the experience a lot more laid back. This is particularly helpful when you’re breeding rarer species as I don’t doubt these would have some pretty high standards if there was the added challenge of creating the perfect environment for them to thrive in.
Luckily, they’re quite happy to just sit and do their own thing which is exactly what I want from an idle game. Especially one which sort of needs to be left alone for you to make money if you don’t want to keep raising and selling your new friends. Otherwise it’s goodbye to whatever focus I had on a task and hello to playing god over my bug haven. Which definitely didn’t happen anyway. Promise.
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