Bugsnax: The Isle of Bigsnax Review - Secret Menu

I find it interesting how much The Isle of Bigsnax mimics the entirety of Bugsnax itself. On the surface, it's just another area of Snaktooth Island, the game's original setting, to explore--even if this one is technically not on Snaktooth itself. When I'd finished exploring and completed all of the new missions, my initial thought was "that's it?" However, much like Snaktooth itself there is more than meets the eye in this update, What seems like fast food quickly becomes a multi-course return trip to the world of Bugsnax, including a brief taste of future additions to the menu. The longer you eat, the better this meal gets, but you will need to have patience in order to get to the good parts.

The Isle of Bigsnax itself is called Broken Tooth, though calling it "the isle of big snax" is a perfect descriptor. The inhabitants of Broken Tooth are all massive Bugsnax, grown to mammoth proportions, and you're again trying to capture them all, although they're impossible to trap through the normal means employed in the base game. Two of the 11 unique Bugsnax to this island--the Bunger Royale and the Deviled Eggler--are retreads of previous 'snax; the rest are brand new to the Bugsnax ranks. There's Spaghider, a spaghetti spider with a meatball for an abdomen; Cheddorb, a rolling cheese ball with googly eyes; and Millimochi, a slithering set of mochi balls that follows you around as you try to complete tasks, among others.

To capture these new creatures you'll have to resort to other means: Shrink Spice. Canisters of this spice are scattered throughout the island, and picking one up starts a 30-second countdown. At the end of that countdown the canister explodes, and any Bugsnak in its vicinity shrinks, allowing players to use normal traps to catch it. I like the idea of an added obstacle, and I like the idea of Shrink Spice. It's only found in specific places around Broken Tooth, and you can only carry one jar at a time. This isn't something like, say, the sauces in the Sauce Slinger where you can carry 20 at a time and reload whenever you see a plant. Shrink Spice is more precious, more finite, and therefore more important. Limiting the resource like this was a good idea, as it makes the resource seem crucial to success, and finding it near a big Bugsnak you haven't caught before is much more impactful. If you were able to throw it around on demand like Ketchup or the other sauces that are used in the base game, this new biome would have been much too easy.