I’ve been thinking about that Bugsnax so much so that it feels like you’ve eaten one of the suspiciously addictive critters. It’s been a week since I finished the game and I still get caught muttering “bunger bunger bunger” as I spend the day. To satiate my hunger for more Bugsnax without consuming any trouble, I decided to send an email to Kevin Zuhn, senior creative director and writer of Bugsnax, some of my hot questions.
(This interview has been edited slightly for clarity.)
Kotaku: Can you tell me what your vision was for bugsnax? How did you come up with this idea? How was your design process?
Kevin Zuhn: The initial seed came from an old drawing I made in college of a wad mixed with a caterpillar (the Wafflepillar), which I turned into a throw on collecting insects made from food. This was combined with [gameplay designer] John Murphy’s presentation on muppets that are mutated by what they eat and [CFO, programmer, webmaster] Devon Scott-Tunkin’s launch on the bananas they were shouting, and by the end of our launch process it had become Bugsnax!
When we set out to create our own creatures, we made a big list of iconic foods (burgers, fries, cake) and iconic insects (ants, dragonflies, scorpions) and looked for ways to connect them. We wanted to make sure we had a wide variety of flavors, temperatures, body shapes, skills, and so on. Sometimes we created a bugsnak based on a very strong visual design, sometimes to satisfy a mechanical need and sometimes just for the sake of it. the joke! It could be said that our design process was a controlled chaos.
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Kotaku: Did you hire professionals to express the bugsnax? For some reason, I have a great fantasy that bugsnax are expressed by normal people who don’t act out loud and work for your studio and you just push everyone to a booth and say “give me your best impression of bugnsax ”and the best were chosen.
Zuhn: I wish any of us at Young Horses had the talent to get it, but bugsnax are expressed by professionals. The good people of Brightskull called Robbie Daymond [the voice of Sailor Moon’s Tuxedo Mask] and Cristina Valenzuela [Sailor Mars from the same show], and were assigned approximately six bugsnax each. In the recording booth, our voice director, Michael Csurics, told them, “You’re a hot dog, you crawl like a worm, you’re only able to say your own name which is Weenyworm. How does that sound? “and they improvised funny voices until we found one we liked. The scripts were the funniest in the world, because the whole page just said” Scoopy Banoopy “over and over again. The whole process was that the bananas started finished and I loved every step.
Kotaku: Grumpuses are also unique characters. They all have desires, fears, and insecurities, which makes them extraordinarily complex as the NPCs go. What was your thought process for them?
Zuhn: We wanted Bugsnax being an overall story, so my first goal was to define what role each character played in Snaxburg society. I started with very broad archetypes: the mayor, the farmer, the archaeologist. Once we fixed them, the next question was why each of them wanted bugsnax. What is the hole in your life that they are trying to fill? I wanted to make sure that each of them had a different answer, so that they had different perspectives on what bugsnax are and what is important in life. This helped me to concretize more details about how they act.
From here my favorite part: what do they think of each other? I drew great graphs that followed who would be friends, couples or enemies and why. How does the problem of your life affect your relationships, good and bad? With all these questions answered, I was able to create missions and scenes in the game around the main sources of conflict of the characters. I wanted to make sure all of this felt fundamental and organic, because absolutely the rest of the game is ridiculous.
Kotaku: If you did an internal survey to find out who everyone’s favorite bugsnak would be, what would it be (and why is it Bunger)? Similarly, do you have a favorite Grumpus?
If I do an internal survey, I will get ten different answers. The Young Horses never agree on anything. My personal favorite is actually Preying Picantis, but Bunger has a special shelf in the heart. There’s just something magnetic about Tom Taylorson’s performance as a dog. As for my favorite grumpus, this one is Chandlo Funkbun (because he’s by far the most fun to write).
(Kotaku: Bunger all day. But I also love the cheeky Sweetiefly.) Were there any bugsnax that were cut from the final product?
Zuhn: Oh, a lot! We had elaborate bugsnak concept pages and had a system to vote for our favorites. Everything below the voting threshold was reduced. Among the victims are a grilled cheese crab, a bacon fly, a spaghetti and meatball snail and even the original waffle There are dozens of more unused designs, some of which are even they prototyped, but any bugs that actually received a full 3D model treatment remained until the end.
Kotaku: One bugsnax that confused me was the Paletoss. I didn’t understand his name until I realized, “Duh! He is supposed to be one palette! ”Do you have anything you can share about how you came up with the names of your snail?
Zuhn: They are palettes that throw you: Paletoss!
Every few months, the young horses would get together for a name storm meeting, where we would bugsnak to bugsnak throwing names until we found one we could agree on. At best, we would make a solid pun by merging the error name with the appetizer name (Fryder, Scorpenyo, Buffalocust). If we couldn’t do that, we would try to use its taste or behavior (Paletoss, Sweetiefly). And if all else fails, we would simply distort the words into simple nonsense (Scoopy Banoopy).
The end result of this is that I have an Excel spreadsheet full of hundreds of failed bugsnax names, each more crazy and desperate than the last.
Kotaku: So the “good” ending of the game implies that Snorpy was right all the time. Will we get to face Grumpunati in DLC or sequels? (Are there plans for a DLC or sequel?)
Zuhn: You’ll have to take what Snorpy says with a big grain of salt, because, like all the characters in this story, he’s only half right. We’re still figuring out what exactly we want to do after launch, but we definitely haven’t finished working Bugsnax yet. I know I would like to leave this plot line hanging forever.
Kotaku: You always meant by Bugsnax to get as dark as he does, or was it something that just happened? If you’ve been catching bugsnax and feeding them to your friends (something they encourage you to do), you’re gearing up for a pretty macabre ending.
Zuhn: Absolutely! We knew from the beginning that bugsnax were dangerous parasites and, in their early designs, were not very pretty. At some point there was an even worse ending, where the Grumpuses turn into snake-hungry zombies that eat you and then you. Tan in any case, the game became lighter and slower over time.
I wonder what an ending is essentially The Walking Bugsnax would have worked with the sweet and sugary theme of the game “It’s Bugsnax!”Perhaps Young Horses would have chosen a more appropriate sound, similar to death metal? Imagine a version of “It’s Bugsnax!” made by Babymetal. Actually, that sounds pretty bad.