Preview – Insectile

As someone who is a total snob about the hallmarks of retro games, Belle Boomerang was something of a surprise to me. Its retro difficulty actually feels in line with the challenge of classic games like Castlevania, and it seems to understand how that sort of thing leads to a satisfying experience.

Yet, despite being impressed, I probably would have overlooked Narwhalnut’s next game, Insectile. I’m not really a puzzle game sort of person. I’ll dabble occasionally and can admit to enjoying Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure, but they’re not typically what catches my eye. So, while Insectile’s mash-up of simple grid-packing puzzles with Pokémon creature collecting is novel, it doesn’t seem like the sort of thing I’d be into.

And having played the demo, that seems to be somewhat true.

STRANGE PRESERVES

Creature collecting is in vogue right now. I mean moreso. I mean in the lower budget sphere. It didn’t happen overnight, and I think it might be a side effect of the Pokémon generation getting to that age, but now it’s cropping up in a lot of places. Some have tried to essentially grab the concept somewhat directly, others have tried mixing it up. Beastieball adds turn-based volleyball action, Palworld drops it into the microprogression-laden survival framework, while Insectile here adds the aforementioned puzzle element.

You play as a little mushroom person who seems to have spontaneously appeared. You move to another screen and find a Mothman being accosted by an Insectile. You save him by calming the Insectile and stuffing it into a jar. You’re then told that the Mothman, Loma, was transformed into a Mothman and needs help returning to their mushroom man form. I guess it might be a Mothwoman. I just default to “Mothman” because I think I’m funny. Now that I think of it, how do we know Mothman’s a dude? Has anyone asked?

Insectiles are bugs that take the form of Tetris-like clusters of blocks. Not tetrominos, but I don’t know how else to describe them. The battles present you with a grid filled with bugs, and you use your Insectiles to overlap them. Each square they take up on the grid does attack damage, calms the creature, or scares them. Each turn, you keep overlapping them to deal more and more damage until they run out of HP and are defeated. You can also capture them by isolating them on the board, wearing them down a bit, then befriending them.

Oh, “tiles.” They’re clusters of tiles. Insect-tiles. I get it now. I get the name. Took me a while.

I GET IT NOW

You collect these Insectiles and can carry a certain number of them into battle, which you can increase by purchasing more jars. The strategy is to take out the opposing groups of Insectiles as quickly as possible, because after each of your turns, the remaining creatures deal damage to you.

It’s neat. It’s pretty simple, with enough room to require a bit of strategy. It’s a bit more involved than Pokémon’s rock-paper-slap fighting. Narwhalnut even managed to fit in evolutions, which is maybe not shown off very well in the demo, but the concept is there. Whether or not it can carry a whole Pokemon-sized game remains to be seen, but I can at least envision how it can grow.

The potential of the battle system is best suggested by the pair of boss fights in the demo. You get a rival, like the ones you always have in Pokémon, and then there’s a more impressive boss further in. When you get into these big fights, it puts you through multiple rounds of tile-clearing. It’s not terribly inventive, but it’s enough to raise the stakes and give a sense of danger. I never had any trouble in these battles, however. I think I used a healing item once, but otherwise, the save points that refill your health were enough to keep me going. One battle at least came close enough to disaster that I can see there’s some challenge lurking about.

SEEMS LIKE A FUN GUY

However, that ties into my major complaint about Insectile, and that’s the fact that it has no bite. There isn’t much beyond the core concept that’s compelling, and there are a few reasons for that. Or maybe mostly one.

The storytelling, in all of its facets, is extremely weak in the demo. Now, I’m not sure how far along the full version of Insectile is. The demo might just be barebones in terms of narrative because the story just hasn’t been formed yet. It may come later. I don’t know. I can only tell you that the demo doesn’t demonstrate much.

As I said earlier, the protagonist seems to have just begun existing. It’s hard to believe they had a life prior to the game, since they just kind of show up and start doing whatever they’re told without any motivation behind it. In Pokémon, it’s given to you: you want to catch Pokémon and you want to battle Pokémon. You want to be the very best, like no one ever was. You have friends who are doing the same that you’re maybe even competing with. Dudes get in the way of your goals, so you try to stop them. Maybe they’re doing bad things and you want them to knock it off. It’s nothing deep, but it carries the combat.

In Insectile, you meet Loma, and they tell you they want to “repair the relationship between Insectiles and mushrooms.” Why? What for? What’s the problem with the relationship? You just put them in jars. What are the Insectiles doing to the mushrooms that I should care about? What are the mushrooms doing to the Insectiles? The rival’s an amusing jerk, but how is he getting in the way of my goals. Why should Loma’s goal be my goal. Is it because I just started existing, and I have nothing better to do?

DELICIOUS BUGS

Insectile is conceptually interesting, but it needs something beyond that to tie it together. The dialogue is enjoyable, but it doesn’t feel like it has much purpose. It needs bite. It needs something that grabs you and makes stuffing insects into a jar feel worthwhile.

I don’t want to hammer on harder than I already am because, truly, what we have right now is just a demo. If the purpose here was to demonstrate the concept, then that’s done. It’s neat. There’s visible potential. A runway it can take off from.

When the full version comes through, I hope that there is some more force behind it. It’s cute, it’s gentle, and it’s cheerful. It could be something special. It needs a splash of soy sauce. Some umami to hook the taste buds. Make those delicious bugs extra tasty.

Or maybe it’s just not to my taste, which is always a possibility.

This preview was conducted using a pre-release version of the Steam demo. The opportunity was provided by the developer.