Bugaboo Pocket

I should start by saying I am the target audience for this game. I'm an entomology student with a passion for outreach, so any game that gets people thinking about and appreciating bugs is an automatic win in my book. The game is short, sweet, and relaxing. The story and all the little bits of flavor text are touching and carry with them all this intimate context of the player character's life before the game. I came to really resonate with the story (though, again, target audience). The thought and care put into the little details are really what makes this game special. Also the art is stunning My critiques are overall fairly minor. The pacing can get slow at times, with lots of waiting, but I found myself leaning in to it. I also found the controls for the minigames a little finicky at points, though part of that is just an issue of gaming on a laptop. Some of them worked really well with my laptop's touchscreen however. I also wish resources were linked to follow up on some of the bug facts to learn more, but getting access to sources, especially scholarly ones, is a pain, so I'm not sure how feasible this would be. Also I wish I could place the pin myself when pinning the bugs. I've spent far too long pinning bugs for a grade to not get irked by the improper pin placement for some of the species.

Oh, this game is truly wonderful. I never had those tamagotchi games growing up, so this was a new thing for me. The most I had to compare to was taking care of puffles in Club Penguin. There's a bit of DNA there, since you feed your pet, but also furnish their room and play minigames with them? But maybe all of these are just normal tamagotchi things! What I found in Bugaboo Pocket is a gentle, touching experience that lets you choose what kinds of relationships you want to forge with the bugs. But I felt encouraged to take care of each one - when I did fail to take care of one of their needs I wanted to learn from my mistakes. That's a game in and of itself, just getting to know each bug's preferences and what you have to do to best care for them, but it's very chill about it. I really like the story being told through Silvia and EZ's letters and the cutscenes that show up after you make substantial progress. But it's also nice that I don't feel too pushed to go after every goal. They're just there. I'm having a lot of fun messing around in the minigames and petting my bugs for doing a good job. You're spoiled for variety with the minigames, but the gameplay loop is smart and ensures it's not all about them. The game's also got a good sense of humor in the moments where it counts, and that adds a lot to its personality.

i really really like bugs and i was really excited for this game to come out, but i honestly just cant get myself to play it anymore. theres a lot of waiting around, and the game loop isnt really that fun. that being said, the art is really amazing, and the games are fun .. just not for me i think

Got this on sale for about 13 euros, have been loving the game so far BUT THE ONLY BIG PET PEEVE I have with this game is that it keeps crashing and corrupting my save file, so each time i have to start a new game which gets really annoying. SO if you do still want to buy this game, remember to save often-

it's okay. definitely needs some work. extremely time consuming with almost no incentive. trying to get items is difficult, the mechanics and systems aren't really explained and i had to google pretty much everything and there were basically no answers bc no one can figure it out or at least no one is posting about it in the discussions. so much potential but a mostly good game if gotten on sale.

Bought it during the summer sale at 11,70E and honestly, even with the discount I wouldn't say that it's worth it. I was hoping that the raising bugs and restoring the ecosystem gameplay would've been a bit more in depth, but there's hardly anything there. You wait around for the bug to hatch, feed it every once in a while (which works identically for each bug with just the food items being different), maybe play some minigames, and if the bug allows it, you can pet it (which it won't half the time 'cause larvae are often stated to be too small and pupae hate being touched). Progressing the story means raising a bug with a specific stat in mind, which is generally pretty easy if you figure out the mechanic, other than that you're really just kinda waiting for the bug to die so it'll fill the requirement. I'd also like to point out that "3 minigames per bug" does not mean 27 different minigames, several games are shared between bugs, just re-flavored a little bit like different artwork or the pachinko going up instead of down. The story didn't really land for me either since it feels like it's trying to hard to be an emotional one, without actually doing the job of building up the characters or setting very much. It felt a bit like sitting down to watch a movie 2/3rds of the way through. In the end, I finished it. By the time I was really hitting the "Wait, is this all there is?" feeling, I was almost three hours in and past the refund window, so I figured I'd at least see where it was going. Can't really say it was worth it. So yeah, I can't really recommend it at this price, much less the full price. There just isn't enough to the game to be worth it.

I really like this game! It's adorable and fun, and the pixel art is pretty, and the story is actually quite interesting! It's even given me, someone who already liked bugs, a bit of a different perspective on them and a new fondness for bugs I previously overlooked. Though there are a few bugs (haha) like hanging on the loading screen, bugs not following food, and the main menu has a 50% chance to send you to heaven. Nothing has really destroyed my experience, but it is inconvenient, so I'd like to see them fixed. If you like bugs, or you want to like them, I'd recommend this game!

I feel like they spent most of their time and effort on beautiful pixel art and forgot to actually build a game around it.