[Review] Little Bug - Nintendo Switch

Developed By: Buddy System
Published By: RedDeerGames
Categories: Platformer
Release Date: 11.26.21

Nyah is on her way home from school, it’s getting a bit late. She finds this dead cat, and her imagination goes wild. She can fly up in the air! She finally gets home, but being the excitable child she is, she’s not exactly warmly welcomed, even scolded. After a stern yelling, the world seems to tumble around and she wakes up far from home…all from being called a Little Bug.

Little Bug is a platformer. But you don’t jump. Imagine Bionic Commando a bit, where you can pull and swing yourself around. A guiding light of sorts lets her do this. One should be careful though, as this guiding light can only pull Nyah for so long at a time. This guiding light and Nyah also are linked that if either get in harms way, you’ll be sent back. Back to a checkpoint, a small set of candles thankfully. Objects that are blue are safe, something you’ll want to go to. Pink is danger. Hands, shooting, grasping, floating eyes dropping tears.

Throughout Nyah’s journey home, she’ll find things, just random objects to put in her lunchbox, a maximum of six. At first they’re random you’d think. But the objects all have some relation to Nyah. Once you get a seventh, you’re going to have to give one up and give it to that spirit cat. I wasn’t too sure what the point of these objects was outside of lore until I checked the page for Little Bug on Nintendo’s site and it mentions that they can lead to hidden levels and challenges. These being on the title screen. That said, collecting these is optional, and it is quite a challenge to get to them in the first place, but I like challenge and seeing a few of the objects Nyah finds is nice, especially one of those dinky LCD keychain games.

Little Bug is a bit of a dark game. But the shining light, objects, those pink hands, they all illuminate. It’s a good looking, colorful game. Despite it being a tad difficult at time, the game is almost calming or soothing. The music is probably the reason for this.

So lets get to the bad. There’s not much thankfully. First, pausing doesn’t really do much. At all. Music isn’t lowered, you’re not more safe from danger. Your guiding light can get stuck off screen if you move a tad fast in the more jagged areas and it can lead to just having to take a respawn. And finally, the game might be a tad too vague for it’s own good. I don’t mind having the environment and those objects say the story, but it wasn’t too good to not even know what those objects did in the first place.

Little Bug is an enjoyable experience, especially if you do like the non-standard platformers. I can imagine that it’d be hard to wrap one’s head around the mechanics at first, but it feels really good to get it right when you do.