Highlights
- Video games offer a unique perspective by allowing players to experience the world through a bug's eyes, showcasing their fight for survival and fantastical interpretations.
- Titles like Sonic Heroes and Mister Mosquito provide engaging gameplay as players navigate through obstacles using the unique abilities of insect characters.
- BirdGut and Bugdom offer charming and visually appealing experiences, with quirky storylines and colorful environments that capture the essence of being an insect.
In the words of A Bug’s Life’s Hopper, “It’s a bug-eat-bug world out there.” Insects are everywhere. They play a vital role in the ecosystem, being a source of food for other creatures and pollinating plants to help continue their life cycle. Sometimes, these insects do not get the reputation they deserve.
8 Most Adorable Insects In Games
If insects in real life were as adorable as these game characters, then people would be far more welcoming to them.
Fortunately, several video games allow people to take a look at the world through a bug’s eyes. Many of these offer more fantastical interpretations of the insect experience, and others more accurately depict their brutal fight for survival. Here are some titles that will have one scurrying on six legs.
Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling has been left out since it is quite well-known, but it's a great RPG for anyone searching for a Paper Mario -style title.
1 Sonic Heroes
Charmy Bee
Sonic Heroes
- Platform(s)
- GameCube , PC , PS2 , Xbox (Original)
- Developer(s)
- Sega
- Released
- January 5, 2004
- Genre(s)
- Platformer , Racing , Fighting , Action-Adventure
Sonic the Hedgehog is known for running at ridiculous speeds. That doesn’t mean he has to do it alone, though. Sonic Heroes, released for the 6th generation of consoles, has Sonic and friends running through levels in teams of three, using each character’s unique abilities to overcome obstacles.
The main campaign is divided into four teams. One is Team Chaotix, composed of Espio the Chameleon, Vector the Crocodile, and Charmy Bee. Charmy is the flying type, allowing him to lift his allies to higher-up places and hover for a short period. He can also lob his allies at targets.
2 Glyph
Mech-Scarab
Glyph is a momentum-based platformer that asks what would happen if a Metroid game was built entirely around Samus’s morph ball mode. The title sees the character hopping, gliding, and climbing across structures of a ruined civilization to obtain gems and reach the portal at the end.
The game’s rolling protagonist takes the form of a mechanical scarab beetle, which can momentarily unroll to flutter across short distances. Throughout the game, new creature forms can be unlocked, allowing it to take the form of other insects and creatures.
3 Mister Mosquito
Mister Mosquito
The PlayStation 2 is famous partly for its experimental titles. Included among these ranks is Mister Mosquito. It is played from the perspective of a lone mosquito who invades the home of a typical Japanese family.
Gameplay requires landing on hot spots of the humans and sucking enough blood to pass the level. The humans will be going about their days doing run-of-the-mill activities. Mister Mosquito has to avoid being detected, though, or the humans will attack him. At this point, he will have to hit certain points on the attacking humans to calm them. Even if it is not the best game on the platform, it is one of the more memorable.
4 BirdGut
Bee
BirdGut is a 2D platformer with a charmingly hand-drawn art style and a quirky sense of humor. The central protagonist gets eaten by a bird, whose innards are a brainwashing facility to program other victims into keeping the guttural machine going.
BirdGut’s lead character is a bee that was born as less than ideal, according to the colony’s standards. The nursery guards unceremoniously kick out the bee before the queen can notice it. However, what the bees see as imperfection actually makes the game’s reluctant hero able to avoid being brainwashed. The rebel insects hiding out in the bird-wearing tin-foil hats have dubbed them “the Hatless One,” whom they believe will destroy the dystopia inside the bird’s gut.
5 IndependANT
Ant
IndependANT
- Platform(s)
- PC
- Released
- April 25, 2023
- Developer
- Young Horses
- Genre(s)
- Action-Adventure , Platformer
IndependANT is a free game from the development team that brought the world OctoDad. This title follows a different multi-appendaged creature in the form of an ant roaming around a household, acquiring food for his colony.
IndependANT does a good job of making one feel like an insect. Being within the average human-sized environment is a surreal experience, like the kind one would get from playing the tiny robot of Chibi-Robo. The ants even have their own culture, calling Cheerios ringalings and revering the Great Giants, which are most likely humans.
6 Bugdom
Rollie McFly
Anyone who grew up on Macintosh computers in the late 90s and early 2000s will have fond memories of Bugdom. This title, developed by Pangea Software, was a pack-in for several Mac systems of the time. It follows the pillbug Rollie McFly on a quest to fight against a tyrannical tribe of fire ants.
An open-source port of Bugdom was released in late December 2020 by Iliyas Jorio for modern systems, with the approval of Pangea Software. The game holds up well even to this day. The visuals are bright and colorful, and it has a neat little lens flare effect from the sunlight. The gameplay consists of exploring environments, finding keys, and rescuing abducted ladybugs while being attacked by flying bugs with boxing gloves and ants that throw spears.
7 A Bug’s Life
Flik The Ant
A Bug's Life
- Platform(s)
- Nintendo 64 , PC , PS1
- Released
- November 18, 1998
- Developer(s)
- Traveller's Tales
- Genre(s)
- Platformer
A Bug’s Life is the video game adaptation of the Disney/Pixar Film of the same name, the follow-up to Pixar’s groundbreaking Toy Story. Pixar’s underrated sophomore effort follows Flik, a misfit ant who goes on a quest to recruit warrior bugs to protect his ant colony from a predatory swarm of grasshoppers.
Skyrim: Where To Find Every Insect in a Jar
The Insect in a Jar is a type of collectible in Skyrim, though no one is exactly sure of their purpose. Here's where to find all eight.
Traveller’s Tales did an excellent job of putting players in the fantastical, yet familiar, world of the film. Rival insects are always around to get in the way. Flik can roam through the tunnels of his ant colony, glide on a dandelion seed, and explore an insect city made of discarded boxes from humans. Now imagine exploring these environments in Disney Dreamlight Valley!
Honorable Mention – Deadly Creatures
Technically, the dual protagonists of Deadly Creatures are arachnids, but they still give a harrowing perspective of the fight for survival among some of nature’s smallest creatures. This Wii-exclusive title switches perspectives between a tarantula and a scorpion, as they explore environments and hunt foes against the backdrop of a story about two treasure hunters, voiced by Billy Bob Thorton and Dennis Hopper.
Each creature has its unique abilities. The tarantula can climb up walls and spit webs at enemies. It can even swing across rooms at certain points. The dual protagonists will even come up against some fierce bosses, such as a rattlesnake early on.