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From left to right: Leif, Vi, and Kabbu
Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling is a Role-Playing Game heavily inspired by the Paper Mario series, with similar battle mechanics and artstyle. It was developed by Panamanian studio Moonsprout Games, published by DANGEN Entertainment, released in November 2019 on PC and consoles at May 28, 2020.

Hidden within the foliage of nature lies a small but prosperous land — Bugaria. Insects from all over the world travel to it in search of the treasure scattered across it. The most sought after of these relics is the Everlasting Sapling, as eating just one of its leaves can grant unmeasurable power, even immortality.

In search of this Ancient Artifact, Queen Elizant II, ruler of the Ant Kingdom, hires Team Snakemouth, a brave team of explorers — originally the duo of Vi, a young honeybee seeking a life of adventure away from the comformity of her hive, and Kabbu, a rainbow scarab beetle from the northern lands, who soon join with the mysterious Leif, a geometer moth with ice-based magic and no memory of his past, in their first expedition — to find the various artifacts that lead to the Sapling. But the wicked Wasp King, dictator of the Wasp Kingdom, also seeks the sapling so he may use its power to conquer Bugaria.

And so, the race to find the Sapling begins, as Team Snakemouth must travel across many different environments, work together to clear puzzles, defeat strong enemies, and help the general bug populace.

Please move all character-specific tropes to the Character page.


Bug Fables contains examples of:

  • Abandoned Laboratory: Upper Snakemouth is an abandoned, creepy laboratory, where the roaches did their horrific experiments - that are still around and try to attack you.
  • Ability Required to Proceed: Several areas are blocked off by the need to use skills the party does not have, in addition to some of them having story checks:
    • The area that leads to the Forsaken Lands is accessed as early as Chapter 2 — it is part of the same tunnel that leads to the Golden Path. A large pile of rubble blocks the half that leads to the Forsaken Lands, and needs Kabbu's horn dash ability to break through, which he doesn't learn until late in Chapter 5. Even if the Forsaken Lands are entered before Chapter 6, the party cannot go very far without needing Vi's Fly, which she only does because Queen Elizant II orders her to. Elizant is not with the party before Chapter 6, so Vi just refuses to carry Kabbu any farther in to the area.
    • Certain bridge and platform cranks only work when they are constantly activated by something, which is what Vi's Beemerang Hold can be used on. The Devourer's arena is one such location, as it is passed on the way to the Golden Settlement, but it cannot be entered until after backtracking with the Hold ability.
    • Various beds of thorny vines appear, including one in the entrance to Chomper Caves, and cannot be crossed until Leif learns to make Bubble Shields in Chapter 3. Because this move is learned during a Plot Tunnel that does not end until the chapter is beaten, is also means those areas cannot be accessed until Heavy Drone B-33 is destroyed.
    • The entrance to Stream Mountain can be found in Chapter 3, but Team Snakemouth needs Kabbu's Dig ability to go under an obstacle and get in.
    • Leif's Icicle ability is used to make bridges across rivers. Because it is learned in an optional area, it is never required to beat the main game, but it is used to access certain locations like Seedling Haven without the Fly ability, and it is needed to battle the Peacock Spider.
  • Accordion to Most Sailors: The musical theme of Bugaria Pier uses an accordion as the main instrument.
  • Action Commands: An important part of the battle system is to time button presses in order to give a boost to defense or attack.
  • Actually Four Mooks: A single enemy on the field could represent a battle with up to four foes.
  • Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: The prices for staying in an inn rises gradually over the course of the game: From 3 berries per bug in the Ant Kingdom to 4 berries in Defiant Root to 5 berries in Termite Kingdom.
    Vi: 15 berries!? Why is it so expensive!?
    Leif: Maybe there's higher demand?
    Kabbu: At least we've made good savings during our journeys, so...
    Vi: Just 'cuz we're richer doesn't mean we should be spending more!!!
  • Aerith and Bob: The names of the characters tend to vary between fantasy-grounded names (Vi, Kabbu, Zasp, Mothiva, Bomby, Samira, Fabri, etc.), corruptions of real names (Elizant bloodline), and fairly mundane and realistic names (Chuck, Janet, Ann, Alex, Kenny, Rebecca, etc.).
  • After Boss Recovery: Averted. In almost every case, the party will not have their HP or TP healed after a boss unless they happen to rank up at the same time and any yellow healing crystals that you find before the boss will revert to the blue save-only crystals. As such, there are only a couple of instances in which the game will quietly heal the team such as after the obligatory battle against Dead Lander Alpha, Beta and Gamma before entering the fridge in the Giant's Lair.
  • After the End: The Day of Awakening for bugs is heavily implied to also have been the day of reckoning for the "Giants" whose relics dot Bugaria. That said, when the group finally enters the Giant's Lair, despite massive disrepair and whatever the hell that's living there that is very clearly not human being there, this is still only one house, leaving it unclear if the story is simply set in the yard of an abandoned home or if humanity has truly disappeared. The final Ant Kingdom lore book offers up several possibilities, which even in universe are considered unclear and possibly just myth.
  • All Deserts Have Cacti: The desert area, the Lost Sands, is littered with cacti and has a ravine filled with it that spans from the south end to the north end, even though it's a sandbox. There is even a cactus version of the Seedlings found here.
  • All in a Row: How the party walks. Switching leaders swaps their positions too.
  • All There in the Manual: A lot of the details of the setting are only explained in the lost Ant Kingdom lore books, which can be collected and read in-game.
  • All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The Wasp King and his cohorts invade the Ant Kingdom to steal the artifacts to find the Everlasting Sapling, twice.
  • Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: When the Wasp King transforms into the Everlasting King, the entire room becomes cloaked in green, and a bright green ring of fiery energy from the Everlasting Sapling surrounds the battlefield.
  • Ambidextrous Sprite: Much like its inspiration, the character models literally flip over when changing direction, swapping anything asymmetrical like eye scars (Alex and Zasp) and Artificial Limbs (Anna and Engira).
  • Amicable Ants: While all ants in the game are NPCs, nearly all of them are friendly with Team Snakemouth, with the only real exceptions being the Optional Boss Monsieur Scarlet and the Zombiants in Snakemouth Den. The Ant Kingdom serves as both the game's First Town and Hub Level, and the ant queen, Elizant, is the Big Good who commandeers the explorers' quest to find the Everlasting Sapling and save Bugaria. Other friendly ants include Gen and Eri, a pair of sisters who assist the main characters on some of their missions, and Amber, the NPC who provides the game's item storage service.
  • Animals Lack Attributes: They’re insects, after all. If you don’t know insectoid social conventions, you’ll generally need to wait for someone to use a pronoun. Most of the time this can be found out by inspecting the NPC in question.
  • Anthropomorphic Transformation: The "Day of Awakening" granted insects plus a few spiders human sapience and lifespans alongside a number of other human features.
    • All became bipedal, losing a pair of legs in the process, with the exception of the spiders.
    • All who had ocelli lost them with the exception of the Mantises.
    • Mantises gained fingers in place of their scythe-arms.
    • Many lost their mandibles and have a simple human looking mouth. Some butterflies, moths and mosquitoes retain their proboscis. Strangely, a few mosquitoes have both a mouth and a proboscis.
    • When Zasp gets indigestion during the Eating Contest, he clutches his midsection like a human would, implying the organs are in there and not inside the abdomen.
  • Anti-Climax: One of the side missions involves the repair drones in the Honey Factory going haywire, and the recommended method of rebooting their program is Percussive Maintenance. They do not fight back at all. After all, there's no reason to install weapons on repair drones, right? Even the characters lampshade how disappointingly easy this sidequest was.
  • Anti-Grinding: Leveling up decreases the amount of EXP you gain from enemies, until weaker encounters will only give one point for all enemies together. They will, however, still drop berries.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • Water, thorns, electric floors, and Non-Lethal Bottomless Pits don’t carry a penalty for falling into them, which helps a lot during some of the trickier platforming sections.
    • Items and Berries which bounce away into the aforementioned hazards will generally be thrown back, or you can chase after them, causing the game to load both of you back on the edge.
    • The team’s inspection dialogue is generally more direct with hints in some puzzle rooms than in Paper Mario.
    • Once you complete the game, to spare the frustrations of accidentally initiating the fight with flame-powered Roach Constructs in the oven section, they will become instantly defeatable with "Bug Me Not!" medal if you reached the maximum rank.
    • Every boss or miniboss can be refought in some way, most of which through the B.O.S.S. system, preventing Spy entries and Hard Mode achievements from being permanently loseable.
    • The 1.1 patch made travelling the vast Lost Sands more convenient by giving a non-attack version of Kabbu's dash right before entering it.
    • In all Escort missions, the NPC will not follow you if you go in a wrong direction towards their goal. This spares you from the pain of searching vast areas for certain missions.
    • Many of the more arduous tasks towards 100% Completion can be skipped by paying more berries. For instance, almost all recipes can be bought near the end of the game, and you don't need to play the Termacade at all if you're only interested in the rare medals and other unique items.
    • In some events where there is no golden Save Crystal or Venus Bud around, the game may silently heal Team Snakemouth after a scripted battle, to keep them from being at low health and/or TP for what comes after or to avoid having to take a detour to a healing location. One instance of this is the Dead Lander ambush in Chapter 7 right outside of the fridge, so as to prevent the player from being stuck in the Giant's Lair at low health.
    • Rotating bridges will "snap" to a position after a short while, so that the player does not have to be perfect with spinning their cranks.
  • Arrange Mode: Naming your file "MYSTERY?" causes all of the overworld medals to get shuffled around between their locations, also acting as a minor Video Game Randomizer.
  • Artistic License – Biology:
    • Invoked with flight and water. Most sentient insect species have lost the ability to fly, save for bees, which prevents characters from simply flying to wherever they want to. Likewise, water isn't nearly as lethal to bugs as it is in real life because instant death pits aren't fun.
    • Most available food items make sense in-universe, as they are things that insects like (leaves or aphid dew, as well as sweet human-made food). However, the Hustle Berry (a coffee bean) and the hot Drink (a cup of coffee) play this trope straight: Coffee is absolutely poisonous for all kinds of bugs. In the game, it gives you an extra turn and has no bad effects whatsoever.
  • Artifact of Doom: The Wasp King's crown is revealed by a roach in the post-game to be the Ancient Crown, created by the ancient roaches. It's the source of the Wasp King's powers of mind control and fire. Said roach considering what the Wasp King did wonders if the crown should have been properly sealed away instead of discarded in a way it fell into the wrong hands.
  • Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance:
    • Leif apparently wore his blue and gold wings like a robe even before he became a mage. He tells Kabbu in an optional conversation that he got the style from his father.
    • The six main Miner Ants all look like they were born solely to tunnel to the one place that the Queen has ordered them to tunnel to at the start of the game.
    • In a weird inversion, several species of insect that mimic bees show up in the game, and they are almost always obsessed with Bee culture or eager to get to know bees. Hawk, Professor Honeycomb’s assistant, is a hawk moth that even Vi mistakes for a Bee.
  • Audience-Alienating Ending: In-Universe, the final book the group finds for Reeves for the quest Awful's Beauty is what he himself considers too awful, even for him, because while the book did start off amazing at first, as he puts it: "IT WAS ALL A DREAM! AND THEN A ROCK CRUSHES THE MAIN CHARACTER!!!"
  • Awesome, but Impractical: The group eventually gains access to dual and triple skills. While powerful in their own right, it uses up both or all their turns, on top of each one having their own set up that allows them to dish out just as much damage by themselves, meaning it's frequently better to have each one use one of their own skills rather than a dual or triple skills.
  • Bait-and-Switch:
    • The leadup to the Chapter 2 boss has a lot of Foreshadowing that the goddess Venus is really a Venus flytrap and is using Aria to feed her sacrifices. Her name, the flytraps around the rest of the level, the fact that no one has seen her face, the emphasis placed on "feeding her", etc. In reality, she's named "Venus" because of her Theme Naming of the Roman gods with her unseen siblings, and that while she is a sentient plant, she isn't a flytrap. She's actually more like an orchid, the stuff about feeding her is because she actually really likes non-bug food, is actually Good All Along, and only attacks because she wants to reprimand Vi for her bratty behavior in Snakemouth Den.
    • The game at first paints a very different picture of the Hive than we eventually get, through Vi's dialogue and a couple of Bee Kingdom NPCs. The player is given the impression that it's a very elitist dystopia with a Hive Mind mentality and strict social castes, and Vi was basically an outcast for wanting to be the first bee explorer, facing merciless bullying until finally just barely escaping. It's actually a friendly, welcoming Kingdom with a kind and progressive monarch, and most bees don't want to leave just because it's such a nice place to live. Most of the real teasing came from Vi's older sister, Jaune, which made her oversensitive to the other bees' relatively mild comments, leading to her telling her sister that she drew like a weevil, telling her boss to shove it, and ended up running away.
    • For the first half of the game, there's no clear overarching Big Bad, but the best candidate seems to be Queen Elizant II. Her personality comes across as that of an authoritarian bully, her bodyguard Zaryant is incredibly antagonistic, she refuses to explain why she wants the Everlasting Sapling, her castle and fashion sense are eerie, and she's allowed several alliances with other kingdoms to fall apart while banning almost all ladybugs from her kingdom for a crime only a few have committed. More than a few bugs openly distrust and despise her such as Leif, the console boxart shows her face/mask in the back in a manner similar to how the main antagonist would usually be shown in boxart, and even when the Wasp King invades the Ant Kingdom he can come off as a Red Herring due to what's hyped up to be the final battle being in the fifth chapter of a seven chapter story. But as it turns out, the Wasp King truly is the villain of the story and Elizant isn't evil so much as she an insecure, inexperienced queen trying too hard to live up to her beloved mother's example.
    • In a similar vein, during the Lockdown of the Bee Factory, it all looks like Mothiva and Zasp are the culprits behind the alert, especially because they just vanished not too long before the lockdown started. But it turns out differently again: The Wasp King is behind the attack, and Mothiva and Zasp went ahead into the factory because they genuinely wanted to help, albeit for Mothiva's selfish reasons.
  • Bait-and-Switch Boss:
    • Near the end of the Wild Swamplands, it looks as though Team Snakemouth has to fight against an army of Leafbugs. Then the Beast, the actual boss of the area, arrives and scares them off.
    • The last match of the Termite Coliseum looks to be a rematch with the Primal Weevil fought shortly before. It gets knocked away by Mothiva and Zasp, who take over as the actual third round. The Primal Weevil is the third fight on any repeat runs through the Coliseum however.
  • Bait-and-Switch Character Intro: Mothiva's first proper meeting with Team Snakemouth has her arrive with Zasp into the Golden Hills entrance when Team Snakemouth installs the big crank that is required to operate the lift into the hole. Initially, she compliments Team Snakemouth, praising them on their hard work...and then starts insisting that they allow her to finish the mission, even trying to bribe them with exposurenote , and when they refuse, she reveals her disdain for them threatening to overshadow her popularity and initiates a fight. This establishes her as a Glory Hound and a massive jerk beneath the facade she puts on public.
  • Barrier Warrior: Another of the spells that Leif learns to manifest is a barrier that can make himself or one of his allies completely invulnerable for a turn of battle.
  • Battle Boomerang: Vi wields a boomerang. She can use it both in combat and the overworld.
  • BGM Override: Used in all areas of the Giant's Lair. Even the chase music that plays when spotted continues into battle.
  • Big Bad: The Wasp King is the Evil Overlord of the militaristic Wasp Kingdom who seeks the Everlasting Sapling so he can become immortal and conquer Bugaria. The post-game reveals that he isn't even a wasp, but a wasp-mimic fly named Hoaxe who usurped the rightful Queen.
  • Bleak Level: While this game is typically cheerful, there are several areas that are not:
  • Bonus Dungeon:
    • The Snakemouth Lab is totally optional, but doing it unlocks Leif's useful Ice Rain ability. It's also fairly challenging, especially if you do it as soon as you unlock it.
    • The Cave of Trials is a run through 50 waves of enemies that becomes available after Chapter 3. Almost every enemy in the game is present, but ones that had not been encountered will only appear as shadows.
    • Chomper Cave and Stream Mountain are short optional areas that are part of sidequests. The former has unique Chomper Brutes not seen anywhere else and is a part of recruitng the secret fourth party member, while the latter throws enemies not normally seen until Chapter 6 early and is tied to one of the five Bounty Bosses.
  • Boring, but Practical:
    • There is a quite extensive set of recipes in game based on cooking with different food items found in the world and by enemy drops... most of which are outclassed by Drowsy Cakes, which can be bought from a merchant right next to an Ant tunnel for 10 berries, partway through Chapter 2. Drowsy Cakes restores 7 HP and 7 TP at the cost of putting a party member to sleep note , which can be avoided with two Sleep Resistance medals that can be obtained early on for cheap and cost only 2 Medal Points. They also have no downside at all outside of battles.
    • Crisbee Donuts are extremely easy to make compared to their counterpart the Tangy Carpaccio, with both ingredients available right next to the baker and costing a total of only 8 berries. Though they don't restore HP, they render almost all other TP-restoring items obsolete as early as chapter 3.
    • Out of all the combination attacks, Fly Drop is rather unspectacular since Vi simply lifts Kabbu into the air and drops him onto the enemy. But its ridiculous damage output and comparatively low TP usage make it a lot more practical than most, if not all of its flashy alternatives.
    • Frigid Coffin, one of Leif's earliest skills, remains useful throughout the game due to its low cost and high rate of freezing.
    • Icefall, Leif's starting skill, remains the most effective Area of Effect attack throughout the game. Though it takes some careful timing to hit all enemies, it can hit fliers and has a chance to inflict freezing, potentially neutralizing large portions of the enemy force.
  • Boss Rush: The B.O.S.S. program in the Bee Kingdom Hive allows for fighting previous bosses, individually or as a rush, of either mini-bosses or major bosses. Bosses that can be refought are not included, such as the Primal Weevil. It also has an "EX" mode that makes the bosses even stronger than the Hard Mode medal would.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: The majority of the Wasps are actually being controlled by the Wasp King with the powers of the Ancient Crown to mindlessly obey him. In the post-game, many of them, especially General Ultimax (A.K.A. General Fuff), are rather apologetic about the topic.
  • Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Vi's spy notes on the chapter 4 boss.
    Vi: Why can't we ever just grab the artifact? There's always gotta be a creepy, giant, or creepy giant monster!
  • Broken Bridge: There are a few locations initially blocked off by fallen rocks or some other sort of obstacle. The game begins just after a rainstorm caused rocks to fall around the Ant Kingdom's border, blocking off the kingdom proper until after Chapter 1 is beaten.
  • Bubblegloop Swamp: The Wild Swamplands, where Kabbu passed through to get to Bugaria, is a hostile stretch of overgrown marsh home to aggressive wildlife, animated plants and hostile tribes, and navigating it requires finding ways to cross extensive stretches of open water.
  • Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": What's usually called Magic Points is called TP, or "Teamwork Points" here. Levels are called Ranks, and with it Level Ups are Rank Ups. EXP, while still abbreviated as EXP, is "Exploration Points."
  • Cardboard Prison: The cells in the Bandits' Hideout are likely good enough for most hostage situations except for the fact that they're built on soft soil which doesn't take into account the digging abilities of beetles like Kabbu. Averted with Rubber Prison however, which has numerous metal gates, electrified floor panels and spiky barriers, and cannons in the cafeteria supposedly for quelling food fights or riots! Oh, and it is also situated in the middle of a lake, which acts as a significant detriment to any attempted escapes given that most bugs are no longer able to fly.
  • Cartoony Eyes: Zig-Zagged. Some bugs (usually mantises) have white (or colored) eyes with black pupils, most have large Monochromatic Eyes, and a few have teeny dots, but all kinds have eyelids and sometimes eyelashes. The only character to explicitly have realistic compound eyes is Fry. This is justified as part of the in-universe evolution.
  • Cash Gate: If Team Snakemouth wants to access Metal Island before Chapter 6, they have to pay up 300 berries for a ferry ride, though there isn't all that much to do on it before that point anyway. You do get access to a way to purchase Tangy Berries earlier on if you do, as well as not needing to pay in order to unlock the tunnel between it and the Ant Kingdom. Beating all the card masters lowers the price from 300 to a much more reasonable 80 berries.
  • Cast of Snowflakes: Each and every non-military NPC is unique, representing many species of insects and each having at least a paragraph of character development.
  • Cave Behind the Falls: The giant waterfall on Peacock Island hides an elaborate cave system with a Bounty Boss behind it. There is another waterfall in the Bugaria Outskirts that hides a secret as well.
  • Censored for Comedy: Cooking a Mistake will result in a Big Mistake, which is so horrible that its icon is censored out.
  • Cel Shading: 3D objects in the game are rendered with flat colors and outlines to keep with the storybook aesthetic. The outlines can be turned off in the settings menu.
  • Cerebus Syndrome: The game starts off as rather lighthearted around the beginning portion (even having a fun-sounding battle theme to boot), but once you encounter the Wasp King for the first time after Chapter 4, the game's tone starts to shift to a serious one, including even changing the background music for the battle theme (conveniently called "Team, It's Getting Serious!") to indicate this change (something that's also present during Upper Snakemouth as well). Come Chapter 7, and the tone shifts to a far more sinister and serious one as you enter the Giant's Lair, where no battle theme is present and instead uses whatever is currently playing in the background, whether if it's this very foreboding piece, a horrific sounding theme that plays whenever you're spotted by Dead Lander Omega, or the same theme that played when Ant Kingdom got under attack the first time by the Wasps, all which are far more serious sounding than both battle themes..
  • Chain of Deals: What the side quest to obtain red paint for Vi's sister Jaune entails.
  • Challenge Run: While there is no conventional New Game Plus feature, there are a number of codes that can be input on the file select screen for various kinds of additional challenge. For added difficulty, these can be combined together and added onto with the existing difficulty-increasing medals.
  • Cockroaches Will Rule the Earth: The game is heavily implied to take place in some sort of post-apocalyptic world inhabited primarily by sapient, slightly mutated bugs, although the actual observable setting is mostly restricted to an abandoned, but somehow well-preserved backyard. Ironically, the cockroaches themselves were also subject to this, being the first advanced bug civilization that somehow wiped themselves out long ago in the lore... or so it seems.
  • Cooking Mechanics: The game has three chefs you can hand ingredients to in order to cook bug-based dishes with various effects. Each chef also has their own specialty item only they can cook.
  • Container Maze: A few rooms in the Honey Factory are this, secret exits and hidden areas behind crates included. There are even fully functional cranes that can be operated by the Beemerang.
  • Critical Status Buff: The party can obtain medals that grant attack and defense buffs if the user is poisoned, at low health, or in similar trouble.
  • Crown of Power: The gold crown Wasp King wears on his head is an ancient Roach artifact that allows him to use the magic of flame and brainwash wasps to blindly and unquestionably serve his will.
  • Cyberpunk: The Termite Kingdom has a very strong feel of it, considering that the area is technologically advanced compared to the rest of Bugaria, yet also has a dystopian feel to it too.
  • Damsel in Distress: Parodied in the Bugaria Theater: Chubee plays a princess that was kidnapped by the "evil prince" (a burglar) and the heroes (Team Snakemouth) have to save her. Subverted, as in the final scene it's her who kicks the prince's butt.
  • Darkest Hour: When the Wasp King invades the Ant Kingdom (again), he brings everyone in the queen's throne room to their knees, including Queen Elizant II. To stop him from killing all of her subjects, Elizant surrenders and gives him the artifacts.
  • Deadly Euphemism: When Queen Elizant I is discussed, her ultimate fate is referred to as having fallen into a "hard-earned sleep." Subverted, in that she isn't dead.
  • Death Mountain: Visually, the Forsaken Lands resemble this setting though it acts like the Lost Woods. It's a foggy, rocky wasteland filled with high cliffs and dangerous creatures.
  • Decade Dissonance: The cities of the Ants and the Termites are but a mere boat ride apart from one another. And yet the Termite Kingdom is a highly technical society with automatic conveyor belts, electric cash registers and elevators and submarines, whereas the Ant Kingdom is a lot more set back in terms of technology.
  • Deconstruction: What happens when social insects gain sapience and human lifespans? Some of them (namely Vi and one of the termite soldiers) begin to resent the idea that they were born into their role of being a worker/soldier and would be stuck with that "job" for life. Bugkind in general are also shown to be terrorized by creatures humans would regard as pests at the worst, such as spiders or centipedes. From their point of view, those are giant monsters.
  • Defector from Decadence: Vi originally hailed from the Bee Kingdom, but left in order to be an adventurer.
  • Desires Prison Life: In the Playable Epilogue, the party can revisit Rubber Prison and talk to a cricket bandit who admits the only reason he turned to crime was because he thought it would be the easiest way to get decent food without trying. But because the Ant Kingdom treats its criminals well, he's surprised to find that he got what he wanted in prison.
  • Developer's Foresight:
    • Riz when approached in the Far Grasslands will give the option to initiate the fight or leave. However, if you first enter the Fishing Village after getting the submarine and then exit to the Far Grasslands, Riz will be shocked by Team Snakemouth, assume they're poachers who'd harmed his family, and automatically starts his boss fight. His dialogue afterward is altered to reflect this.
    • Each party member has their own unique things to say on the Spy entry for each enemy. On bosses where a party member doesn't participate in the fight, they have something to say about the enemy in retrospect.
    • There’s a Captain at Bugaria Pier who exists as an expensive method of getting to Metal Island before you get the submarine and can travel on the water freely, at which point it gets destroyed later in the game. The team’s Spy dialogue for the heartbroken Captain will change depending on whether or not they rode his boat.
    • If you use the Abombination item on an Abomihoney or Ahoneynation, they get healed instead. Because you cannot fight unstable honey with more unstable honey.
    • At the beginning of Chapter 2, you're railroaded into making some food via the game's Item Crafting system. While most options to combine items give the same cutscene, there's unique dialogue if the items you combine would make a Mistake note  or Big Mistakenote , where the party eats it purely out of desperation (though Vi remarks she'll eat something from her Secret Stash later).
    • If you attempt to visit Patton before Queen Elizant temporarily joins your party, their house will be boarded up, so you can't gain access to his services until after she joins you, then leaves later on.
  • Disc-One Final Dungeon: The Wasp Kingdom is built up as the final area. When reaching the Wasp King's throne room at the end of Chapter 5, it turns out he's not there, and was just setting up a trap so that he could drill back in to the Ant Kingdom.
  • A Dog Named "Dog": Originally, Vi, Kabbu, and Leif were named Bee, Beetle, and Moth respectively, which was reflected in the earliest demo. That was changed later on, likely due to how awkward it was to have them in live a world where other bugs had proper names.
  • Door to Before:
    • Once the tram in the Honey Factory is fixed it can be used to get back to the beginning, after the party had to fight and solve puzzles to get to the end of it.
    • An ability gained in the Wild Swamplands allows the players to return back to the beginning of the Wild Swamplands (although it also requires the use of a 2nd ability that has to be optionally unlocked in another dungeon).
    • Once the team makes it to Roach Village, a lift opens up that allows the team to return to the edge of the Dead Lands that they started from
  • Easter Egg:
    • Attempting to use the Bug Ranger Plushie as incorrect prompt in some places triggers unique dialogues. For instance, if the plushie is used as an offering on Venus' pedestal, she will get amazed by their offering, only for Kabbu to demand to take it back in panic, irritating her and kickstarting the usual "wrong choice punishment" fight with her bud. And on the empty plinth in the Lost Sands, Leif will try to put the plushie on the plinth, but Kabbu will freak out because sand is getting all over it.
    • In the Bee Kingdom Hive, there is a telescope that offers a view of Bugaria from the tree. Looking to the right, a giant shadow can barely be seen moving back and forth through the tall grass. This is Dead Lander Omega.
    • Upper Snakemouth has a secret room accessed by Flying and digging through a barely-visible crack in the wall. It has several monitors, one showing Venus and the other two showing similar flower-deities named Mars and Pluto, with all three of them being read as "stable." Once in a while, one of the inactive monitors will light up for a split second, showing Leif.
    • If the Cave of Trials is completed with a Tangy Berry in the fourth inventory slot and/or four Tangy Berries in the inventory, the Roach hologram will freak out and spawn a glitchy hologram of Tanjerin called TANGYBUG, a hidden superboss. Defeating it gives a trophy in Team Snakemouth's house and tells the player the PUSHROCK secret code.
  • Elaborate Underground Base: The Bandit Hideout spreads through a huge area below the surface of the Lost Sands, all the way to the well in Defiant Root.
  • Eldritch Abomination: The Dead Landers; the beasts that reside in the house on the outskirts of Bugaria. They look like stitched together creatures made of other bugs. Then there is the Dead Lander Omega; a giant (relative to bugs) thing with glowing eyes and boney purple hands that stalks you in the background throughout the house.
  • Eldritch Location: It may just be an abandoned house, but to the bugs, the Giant's Lair is an otherworldly, frightening hellhole. It's oppressively dark, a strange fog permeates the air, the floor and walls are dark red for some reason, Venus can't send her buds any further past the entrance, horrific monsters unlike anything bugkind has ever seen stalk its halls, and the fridge and stove translate into a sudden icy mountain and a constantly burning plateau respectively, that both serve as a jarring contrast to the rest of the Lair. Even when it's not observed from the lens of a bug, there's something unnervingly off about the whole place.
  • Empty Levels: Level ups give very small gains per level, most of which don't even add up to being able to take an additional hit on the characters or grant enough team points to use an additional skill before resting. Leveling up lets you choose between granting one hit point to each character in the party, but almost enemy in the game does at least two points of damage; granting three team points to the party's pool, although most skills beyond the starting ones take 4+; or granting three medal points to the party's pool, but all of the good badges with some notable exceptions have a cost of 3+.
  • Escape Rope: The Ant Compass allows the party to return to the Ant Mines, the central travel hub of the game.
  • Eternal Engine: The Honey Factory mixes this theme with Hornet Hole. The area is normally the bees' main production center, but a mechanical malfunction sends its defensive procedures into overdrive and traps the player party, two other adventurer groups and the factory's staff inside by locking the factory down. The players need to rescue other characters and reopen the factory while navigating a complex system of moving platforms that become electrified as part of the defense system and dodging the swarms of bee-shaped robots and mechanical turrets that defend the complex.
  • Evolving Title Screen: The title screen starts as pan through an empty Ant Kingdom Plaza. As more chapters are cleared, more characters are added, starting with Team Snakemouth once Chapter 1 is beaten, then Acolyte Aria after Chpater 2, H.B. and Crow after Chapter 3, and so on.
  • Expy: As the game draws heavy inspiration from the original Paper Mario 64, many characters have strong resemblances from that game. One of the most obvious ones is General Ultimax, which is even called out by name:
    Vi: "General Guy turned out to be a pushover."
  • Extra Turn: If you successfully attack an enemy on the overworld and start the fight, the first character in line will have an extra turn. There are also some items that give a character an extra turn, like the Hot Drinknote .
  • Fantastic Caste System: All of the species that make up the four main kingdoms of Bugaria have some sort of castes, at least when it comes to soldiers and guards. It ranges between the fairly relaxed and cosmopolitan Ant Kingdom, where the Queen's guard Zaryant is the only notable soldier born to the role, to maintaining a military caste but letting others do as they'd like in the Bee Kingdom as well as the Wasp Kingdom before the Wasp King took over, and strict worker, scientist, and soldier castes in the Termite Kingdom. However, it's also averted for species that don't have queens, which reproduce in ordinary families.
  • Fantastic Livestock: Aphids are a stand-in for cows and chickens in the game's Mouse World, and are commonly farmed for their eggs and for honeydew that serves as a substitute for milk. Wooly aphids are also shorn like sheep, and cochineals are raised for their dye.
  • Fantastic Racism:
    • Ladybugs have a somewhat contentious relationship with the Ant and Bee Kingdoms due to a recent raid on Golden Settlement’s aphid farms by a score of ladybugs. However, most ordinary citizens you meet in the game consider the restrictive laws passed in the aftermath to be an overreaction, and are generally sympathetic to the ladybugs.
    • In the Defiant Root, you can meet a lone blue dragonfly named Dran, who laments that almost everyone distrusts him due to him being a dragonfly, because most dragonflies encountered in the game are thieves. He even says he would've been locked up in a prison if he wasn't blue.
    • Due to their own technological superiority, Termites on the whole tend to consider Ant society less socially and intellectually developed than their own. Plus the whole "isolationist society that blows up any ships that approach their port" thing.
  • Fate Worse than Death: The Wasp King turns into a regular tree after losing control of the Everlasting Seed. It's kept there as a warning so that others know the danger of vying for the sapling's power.
  • Fight Woosh: Leaves will fill the screen and slide away when a battle begins or when a save file is selected. The color and type of the leaves depend on the area. If the party is hit on the overworld, the leaves will be bright red. In Honey Factory and Wasp Kingdom Hive, the screen is filled with honeycombs instead.
  • Fighter, Mage, Thief: Kabbu is the most offense-focused member of the team, Leif has Ice magical abilities, and Vi is focused on rewards while also providing support, such as using a satchel of spare healing items.
  • Fighting Your Friend: A more humorous example where Kali controls Kabbu using her pheromones and forces him to fight alongside her against Vi and Leif after Vi accidentally breaking one of her prized vases. If re-fought using B.O.S.S., Kabbu will not look back fondly on this fight.
  • Final Dungeon Preview: The telescope in the Bee Hive gives you an overview over the entire game world. In the background you can see a clearly human-made house, which is the "Giant's Lair" where the final chapter takes place.
  • Fish out of Temporal Water: Leif had been trapped in Snakemouth Den for decades, which in bug years is long enough to outlive an entire generation.
  • Fission Mailed: When you fight the beast in the Wild Swamplands, it will knock down Team Snakemouth with a series of bites that deal 99 damage each, even if you used the Bubble Shield skill. If Kabbu is already knocked down, he will get back up and continue fighting with increased attack power.
  • Forced Tutorial: At the beginning of the game is a required training battle against Maki where the player can only select the action they are told about. This is unskippable even in runs that involve use of a secret code, which would logically require knowledge of the game from a prior playthrough.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • There is a lot of early references to later plot points, such as brief references to Kabbu's past having had tragedy as well as Leif's tendency to refer to himself as "we", both of which get explored later on in the game.
    • In the Spy notes for the Zombiant, Leif is the only one to recognize it as cordyceps fungus animating an ant corpse.
    • One of Leif's skills (the second one he learns) is called Frigid Coffin. In a sense, Leif is a coffin; he's a cordyceps fungus inside the long dead corpse of the real Leif.
    • Kabbu's first skill is Taunt, which draws in enemy attacks for the round. Kabbu has lingering Survivor's Guilt for being the only one of his travelling party that made it to Bugaria after encountering the Beast; likely, he's subconsciously trying to sacrifice himself to ease this pain.
    • One of Vi's early skills is Secret Stash, which is described as her using her own supplies for the skill, implying she has her own funds separate from the party's. Which she uses to buy the expensive toy from Metal Island needed to trade for the red paint Jaune needs.
    • When Venus first encounters the party through a bud, she doesn't realize Leif is present with Kabbu and Vi. After her boss battle, she admits she still can't sense Leif's presence.
    • Leif in the Hive gets signaled out during a security check, and Professor H.B. mentions something odd inside Leif aside from crystal fragments.
    • Using Help on Wayde the Innkeeper in Defiant Root before talking with Tynn has the group comment on how sad they look, with Kabbu (normally the one to jump at the chance to help another bug) solemnly telling them they shouldn't interfere, which catches Vi off guard. Note that the signpost outside and their dialogue heavily implies Wayde is dealing with the loss of his partner, something Kabbu is revealed to be very familiar with.
    • In the Wasp Kingdom Hive, the party can enter the hangar featuring two tanks, and there is also an empty place for another one, whose absence is noted by characters in the help dialogue. Since all of those tanks are Drill Tanks, it foreshadows that the Wasps are attacking the Ant Kingdom through underground, as noted in the Ant Mines in Chapter 6. Also, said tank, now refitted for combat, ends up becoming the boss of said chapter.
    • Half of an old Roach statue is on a rock next to the open fridge in the Dead Lands. A subtle clue that the Roaches didn't just hide the Sapling there, but stayed to protect it.
    • One of the Roaches in the Dead Lands town refers to the Wasp King as the "Wasp" King, in quotes. As revealed in the postgame, he's not actually a wasp.
  • Forest of Perpetual Autumn: Golden Path and Golden Hills are set in perpetual autumn, due to Venus' influence. As a result, the Golden Settlement farms always provide harvest, providing food and dyes to Bugaria.
  • Four-Legged Insect: Simultaneously played straight and averted. All insects in the game, both NPCs and non-sapient "lesser bug" enemies, have four limbs total (not counting wings.) Arachnids, however, always have the proper eight limbs.
  • Frothy Mugs of Water: The "Berry Juice" is suggested to be intoxicating judging from the places you get it and those who drink it; Celia and Levi are implied to have had a hangover during the festival, the border guard is Drowning Her Sorrows with Berry Juice in the Defiant Root bar in Chapter 6, and the bar musician Tristan is clearly wasted the one time you can talk to him.
  • Fun with Acronyms: Professor HB's boss rematch room is called the B.O.S.S., a.k.a. the Battery Operated Super Simulator.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation:
    • While the help dialogue will sometimes update in response to certain situations, like Snakemouth Den after Chapter 1, it does not do so at other points. One example of this can be found with a certain NPC in Defiant Root. After Kali tries to kill the team after Vi accidentally destroys her vase, the help dialogue remains unchanged.
    • The ant giving you the Ant Compass mentions that it will take the team to various tunnels leading back to the Ant Mines, accessible using Kabbu's Dig ability which can be used on any diggable surface. While it's a convenient tool, the game allows you to use it in areas where it wouldn't really make sense realistically. This includes the Bee Kingdom Hive (which is hanging from a tree high above the ground), Metal Island, Rubber Prison, and Peacock Island (since they're located on a lake and the team is averse to water since they can't exactly swim).
    • Leif enters a Heroic BSoD after seeing his "wife" Muse for the first time in years and can't bring himself to approach her, yet he doesn't react any differently to her son Tod.
    • The Wasp King manages to bypass the wall of fire in the Giant's Lair supposedly because his fire magic makes him immune, but when you fight him, he's vulnerable to the burn status effect.
  • Game Within a Game: You can play two arcade-style games, Mite Knight and Flower Journey, in the Termacade in the Ant Kingdom.
  • Get on the Boat: There is the ferry to Metal Island, which is the only way to get there - and it costs a hefty 300 berries. Though there is a way to lower the price to 90 berries by winning against all four Card Masters of Bugaria. Also, later in the game, you get access to the other boat in the game in Termite Kingdom, which lets you go there for free. It's also the only way to reach the final areas of the game.
  • Giant Medical Syringe: When Team Snakemouth accepts Patton's services to reassign their stats, he pulls out a massive syringe out of his tiny bag to extract the team's stats, and then the scene irises out right before he literally starts Playing with Syringes. In the aftermath, Team Snakemouth clearly appears to be in pain from his experimentation.
  • Green Hill Zone: The Bugaria Outskirts, the obligatory plain area with weak enemies and nice scenery.
  • Green Rocks: The Ancient Crystals that appeared everywhere after the Day of Awakening. They’re used as expensive lighting all across the kingdom, and they also function as save points, with the in-universe explanation being that they literally store a record of nearby consciousnesses. Several machines exist that can read this data. There are gold variants that save and heal, and a red variant that only heals. There’s a giant one underneath Bugaria that prevents it from becoming a Dead Land, and the soil and plant life is laced with shards, which causes some plants to become animate, like Seedlings and Venus. Honey made from Bugarian flower nectar will also come to life if it gets too hot or in accumulations larger than the Honey Drop item. The Roaches used them as a power source for their robots and Cordyceps experiments. A large one in the Giant's lair has been supplying the appliances with electricity for years. It’s also apparently well documented that bugs with Ancient Crystal shards in their body will develop magical powers as a side effect.
  • Group-Identifying Feature: All members of the Bandit faction wear hoods with their distinct insignias, which are upside-down emblems of the Ant Kingdom, representing their leader's resentment towards the Ant Queen.
  • Growling Gut: When this happens to both Leif and Kabbu at the end of Chapter 1, it prompts Vi to take them to the local chef which serves as a way to introduce the player to the game's in-depth cooking mechanics.
  • Hailfire Peaks:
    • The Honey Factory is a dungeon combining the elements of Hornet Hole (being a honey-making factory connected to the beehive, complete with robotic bees) and Eternal Engine (being an industrial factory level inhabited by Murderous Malfunctioning Machines and full of electric traps).
    • The Ancient Castle, a dungeon featuring both sand and ice elements.
    • The Giant's Lair/Dead Lands is mainly a dark, alien setting, but it has an ice section in the fridge and a fire section on the stove.
  • Happily Married:
    • Queen Layra and King Hector are a loving couple who respect each other for the most part, which is reflected in their stained glass murals. They do bicker a bit while dealing with Elizant, but there's no love lost between the two.
    • Despite Cricketly's fiery temperament and Huscada's shyness, husband and wife alike are loving and supportive of one another.
  • Hard Mode Perks:
    • The very first medal the party gains acts as a Hard Mode switch that can be toggled at any time. Enemies are stronger when it's enabled, having more HP and some unique attacks, but they also give more experience points and drop items more frequently. Additionally, beating bossesnote  while it's active, it rewards the team with medals when they return to town. While achievements for beating bosses on Hard Mode can be done later on as part of H.B.'s simulated Boss Rush, these do not grant medals unique to beating a given boss, but these medals can be bought from the travelling caravan on normal mode after defeating the boss the first time.
    • There's also two additional medals that have similar effects. Harder Hits makes enemies all have one additional attack, and they drop more money in return, while EXP Booster drops the party's attack by one in exchange for increasing EXP earned in battles.
  • Healing Boss: Multiple bosses can restore their own health in various ways.
    • When fighting Zasp and Mothiva, should Zasp fall first, and Mothiva would revive him for small amount of health, thus requiring the player to beat Mothiva first.
    • Venus' Guardian can summon a Venus' Bud in its last phase to have it heal itself.
    • Ahoneynation's attacks summon miniature Abomihoneys that, if not defeated quickly, will fuse together with the boss, restoring its health in an equal amount of Abomihoneys' health.
    • Monsieus Scarlet, one of the first Optional Bosses in the game, can heal himself by draining the party members' health with his attacks, thus requiring the player to ensure that their total damage per turn would outbeat Scarlet's healing.
    • Kali can heal brainwashed Kabbu for a small amount of health, and should he fall first, she will revive him with some healing dust, thus ensuring that the battle would end only if Kali herself would be defeated.
    • The Watcher can restore its own health as one of its pre-attack support moves. It can also turn itself into a sand whirlpool and constantly drain the party member's health until it gets successfully repelled.
    • Cenn and Pisci can heal themselves each other for a small amount of health with Crunchy Leaves. Cross and Poi can heal themselves in a similar manner with Succulent Platters, also giving a short regeneration effect to the one who got healed.
    • Mother Chomper and the Beast can restore their own health by biting party members, restoring an amount of health slightly lower than their inflicted damage.
    • Before attacking, Carmina always uses a Wheel of Decisions for some random effect, given the luck-based mechanics of her boss fight. One of the outcomes is her healing herself for a small amount of health.
    • Devourer, one of the game's Bounty bosses, can heal itself by swallowing a party member alive, continuously damaging it for 3 turns, each time restoring its own health equal to that of an inflicted damage.
    • False Monarch, another Bounty boss, can heal itself in a similar way to Ahoneynation, summoning Mothflies that, if not defeated, would end up fusing back with it, restoring amount of health equal to Mothflies' health.
    • Wasp King can heal himself for a small amount of health with Spicy Fries and Burly Chips, increasing his attack or defense respectively, depending on an item used. His One-Winged Angel form, the Everlasting King, constantly has his health restored when he's rooted to the ground, also being able to use the attack that can leech away a party member's health until they break free. Also, whenever his health drops down to 10 HP, he would heal himself for a massive amount of health, initiating the next phase of battle, being able to do so two times before his final defeat.
    • Two post-game Superbosses, Team Maki and Team Slacker, can also heal themselves, with Team Maki having Yin as a Support Party Member who can heal her allies and Kina being able to heal Maki with MiteBurger, also giving him a regeneration boost. Team Slacker can also heal and give a regeneration boost to each other with MiteBurgers, and can also restore the entire team's health for a massive amount with Queen's Dinner, and if one team member falls, the remaining member would revive them with a Magic Seed.
  • A Homeowner Is You: Team Snakemouth can purchase a house in the Ant Kingdom for a rather low price of 150 berries. It enables them to heal for free, and lets them reach the rooftop of the Ant Kingdom Inn, where Charge Up medal can be found. There is also a pet bed, which allows them to change Chompy's ribbons without going all the way back to the Bee Kingdom.
  • Hopeless Boss Fight: Wouldn't be an RPG without them.
    • The first encounter with the Spider in Snakemouth Den, when you fight it only as Kabbu. It uses its webbing to get up above the ground, where he can't attack it, making the fight impossible.
    • Also, when you battle The Wasp King for the first time, who uses fire magic to defeat Team Snakemouth. And no, using Leif's Bubble Shield skill doesn't work.
  • Hornet Hole: While the beehive itself is simply a peaceful town and the bees are friendly NPCs, the Honey Factory crosses this theme with Eternal Engine. The environmental hazards include large pits and moats filled with honey, and the enemies consist of robotic bee drones, honey-shooting turrets, and globs of living honey.
  • Hub Under Attack: The Ant Kingdom serves as the game's main Hub City, connecting to most areas in the game and serving as the place where Team Snakemouth receives the new main game missions. In the transition between the fourth and the fifth chapters, the Ant Kingdom gets attacked by the Wasp Kingdom troopers, led by the Wasp King. Zig-zagged between the fifth and the sixth chapter: The wasp queen Vanessa and General Ultimax heavily hint at another invasion of the Ant Kingdom, which makes Team Snakemouth race back to it - only to see that the hub is as peaceful as ever. The Wasp King instead used a drill to attack the Anthill Palace directly and eventually steals the artifacts from the Queen.
  • Hub World: Upon reaching a new town, worker ants dig a passage between it and the cavern under the Ant Kingdom's hive.
  • An Ice Person: Leif, who can wield ice magic. The Watcher and other Roach constructs are also capable of weaponizing ice.
  • Idiosyncratic Combo Levels: When a character lands a successful multi-hit attack, these pop up, with the best level being "Unbeelievable".
  • Immune to Fire:
    • Downplayed with the Flame Brooch bestowed upon Team Snakemouth by Queen Vanessa in the penultimate chapter. It provides protection against flames, thus giving them the chance to fight the Wasp King without facing instant defeat, but it doesn't make them completely immune to flames; instead, it simply makes them survivable enough to prevent them from being One-Hit KO by an attack.
    • In the final chapter, Wasp King activates a malfunctioning stove and, thanks to his crown giving him power over flames, manages to pass through flame pillars unharmed. At least, that's what we were told, since in his boss fight, he shows no sign of immunity to Burn status effect in either of his forms.
  • In-Game Banking Services: The Ant Bank offers 2% interestnote  on deposited berries for every 30 minutes of play time. Depositing 500 berries for the first time will upgrade you to the bank's Platinum Card membership and double the interest. Up to 10,000 berries can be deposited in total.
  • Insect Gender-Bender: The game tends to avoid this with its portrayals of social insect hierarchies... save for male bees and wasps. Bee and wasp drones don't have stingers in real life, but drones like Zasp, Reeves, and Crisbee all have them. Similarly, the Wasp Kingdom's military seems to be mostly male-dominated. While the stinger issue can likely be explained as both a quirk developed through the "Day of Awakening" as well as an out-of-universe way to make the Wasp King's status as a fake wasp more noticeable, the same can't be said about all the male soldier wasps.
  • Instant-Win Condition: In Spy Cards, the final boss' card has the effect "Win this round," which does exactly as said. Playing it wins the given round. The only downside is that it requires nine TP to summon, meaning it cannot be used for the first several turns until the TP limit hits that point.
  • Interface Spoiler: Three minor examples.
    • The false wall in Defiant Root's well has no collision with Vi's Beemerang, even though the rest of the well does. It's unlikely that you’ll notice it unless you’re looking for it, though.
    • You're have to go out of your way to do it, but after fighting The Wasp King for the first time, you can choose to listen to that particular theme in Ant Kingdom. The theme name? The Usurper. Why would the Wasp King be called The Usurper?
    • The first two encounters with the Spider are Hopeless Boss Fights, and the Spider cannot be Spied during either of them. The battle with the Wasp King between Chapters 4 and 5 also has Spy disabled, which a suspicious player can figure means that this will not be a regular fight. Having Spy Specs equipped during the battle also reveals that he has a whopping 999 health, an even stronger giveaway that this will be a hopeless fight.
  • Interspecies Romance: There's quite a number of characters who are romancing despite being of two different species of bugs, thus indicating that a romance between two different bug species does not seem to be considered unusual in-universe.
    • Cricketly and Huscada (a cicada) are a married couple.
    • Anna (an ant) and Ven (a butterfly) of Defiant Root are affianced.
    • Reed (a beetle) and Artia (a bee) are dating.
    • Zasp the wasp is in love with Mothiva the moth.
  • Irony: The Roach scientists in Snakemouth Labs threw away a cordyceps experiment as a failure, as their aim was to achieve eternal life without the Sapling. Said failed experiment eventually made its way to the corpse of a dead moth and assimilated his memories and personality to where the cordyceps believed it was Leif.
  • Jungle Japes: The Far Grasslands are a field of thick, lush grasses that serve as a bug-sized version of this trope. Passage through them requires navigating a maze of tangled vegetation, and native enemies are mostly ferocious wild bugs and animated plants.
  • "Just Frame" Bonus: Blocking exactly when an attack hits reduces damage more than a a regular block. Using the code FRAMEONE, given by Shades after collecting all Crystal Berries and purchasing all rare medals from Shades, makes it so that only super blocks prevent any damage.
  • The Lad-ette: Vi tends to be a tad rough-and-tumble compared to other bees, particularly if loot is involved (to Kabbu's chagrin).
  • Lady Land: A lighter version of this trope, but most of the bees and all but one of the ants in the game are female. Case of Truth in Television given that bee hives and anthills in real life are almost entirely comprised of females. Oddly, the wasps subvert this, as most are identified as male.
  • Leaked Experience: Instead of characters having individual Experience Points, there's a shared Exploration Points counter that gives the whole party a boost when filled up.
  • Leitmotif: The Everlasting Sapling theme, which shows up in a number of songs, including the title, the introduction, both final boss themes, and, oddly enough, the inn theme.
  • Lethal Joke Item:
    • The "Mighty Pebble" medal grants Kabbu the ability to throw a pebble at one enemy, dealing exactly 1HP of damage, never more. It's never capped though, and ignores enemy defense. In the final boss fight against The Everlasting King, this can be abused to kill the boss before it ever gets the chance to heal. No other attack is able to do this, as his health is otherwise capped at 10HP before his healing cycles.
    • The Weak Stomach medal, whose effect is poisoning the wearer when they consume a healing item. By itself, it's a detriment, but the game also has plenty of other medals which makes you stronger when poisoned, making Weak Stomach a very easy way to activate their effects. One late game medal also makes poison do healing instead of damage, completely nullifying the downside of Weak Stomach.
  • Level Limiter: The "RUIGEE" cheat makes enemies no longer give out experience points. Instead, an NPC will sell the player upgrades for money.
  • Level-Up Fill-Up: Every level up fully restores HP and TP of all the three characters.
  • Lily-Pad Platform: Later on, there are these in the Far Grasslands, and they're a justified example since as bugs the party is light enough to hop around on them.
  • Live Item: The Abomihoney is both a consumable (but not recommendable) item as well as an enemy later.
  • A Lizard Named "Liz": Many bugs have names that relate to their species, Vi the Bee and Kabbu ("Kabuto") the Beetle being the most prominent examples. You also have Zasp (wasp), Mothiva (moth), Elizant (ant), and Eetl (Beetle), just to name a few. Some also have rather normal names that double as this, like Queen Bianca the Bee and ants named Ann and Amber.
  • Logical Weakness:
    • It makes sense for plant & fungal enemies to take extra damage from Leif's ice magic, since they can't handle the cold in real life.
    • Vi, Kabbu, and Leif are all crippled by The Wasp King, since Fire is deadly to all insects. Also, fire based enemies deal more damage, and the Burn status effect saps more HP than Poison.
  • Long Game: The Roach Elder’s musings in the postgame very lightly imply that she is beginning to suspect that the Ancient Roaches sealed the Everlasting Sapling in the Dead Lands with the hope that it would eventually wilt and lose power, to keep potential abusers weak enough to defeat.
  • Lore Codex: The game keeps track of several things that the player runs into, including spied enemies, discovered recipes, and major areas and plot events, which are stored in the in-game logbook for the player's reference.
  • Lost Forever: Defied by the designers, who take a philosophy of "nothing is ever permanently lost" to heart.
  • Low-Level Run: invoked Using the code RUIGEE, given by Eetl after completing all quests makes it so enemies do not give EXP, and more MP needs to be purchased from Eetl with berries.
  • Macro Zone: Justified as everyone in the game are bugs, as the entirety of Bugaria looks like it's a human's backyard, while the Giant's Lair seems to take place in an abandoned kitchen and dining room.
  • Man-Eating Plant: Normal flytraps, walking, semi-sentient ones known as Chompers, and a massive pitcher plant called The Devourer. One special Chomper in particular can be an Optional Party Member.
  • Marathon Level: Chapter 6 crams a lot of different locations and story developments in order to set up the final confrontation with the Wasp King in the last chapter. The player has to traverse through the maze-like Forsaken Lands, fight in the Termite Colosseum (including a final duel with Mothiva and Zasp), navigate the Metal Lake and then finally retake the Wasp-controlled Rubber Prison, which contains the entry point for the Giants' Lair.
  • Matriarchy: All insect kingdoms are ruled by Queens, and they're mostly shown to be The High Queen or, in Elizant II's case, very complex characters. Elizant II's mother and predecessor, Elizant I, was very much adored by all of bugkind. This is Truth in Television as insects are heavily matriarchal. The only exception is the Termite Kingdom, ruled by the Termite King and Queen, but that's also derived from real-life termites who do have a king and queen.
  • Metal Slime: Golden Seedlings. They rarely appear during encounters with other Seedlings (the chance is higher in the Seedling Haven). They drop a hefty amount of experience and the Tangy Berry, a very good TP recovery item that is used in several recipes. However, they have high Defense (unlike most enemies, their Defense divides damage instead of subtracting from it, meaning attacks will only deal 1 damage each), will more often than not run away if they aren't finished off quickly, and if they don't run off, they still deal about 10 damage with their attacks (which is a lot, considering the max HP any character might have is less than 20-30).
  • Mimic Species: The game makes references to real-life mimicry in the insect kingdom.
    • The Mantidfly looks very similar to the Wasp Scouts encountered earlier in the game. If scanned by Vi and Kabbu, they fall for it and assume they're the latter. Only Leif manages to see through the charade and refer to it by its proper name.
    • The Mimic Spider masquerades as sentient ants in the Forsaken Lands, using its forelegs to look like antennae. Get too close and they show their true, spidery form. Vi and Kabbu really don't like getting surprised like that.
    • Various characters are actually mimic species that hang around the areas where they'd fit right in, most of them bees, such as Hawk the hawk moth. The Big Bad, Hoaxe the Wasp King, isn't even a wasp, but a fly mimic, and is a usurper of the throne.
  • Mini-Dungeon:
    • The Chomper Caves are a hidden area consisting of only a few rooms and a boss fight at the end. It is the only optional area besides the more story-heavy Upper Snakemouth to have a unique enemy never encountered in the main path, the Chomper Brutes.
    • Prior to entering the Ancient Castle in Chapter 4, Team Snakemouth has to navigate the Bandit's Hideout, a smaller dungeon that begins with a stealth sequence and ends with a miniboss fight against their leader.
    • Stream Mountain is an optional part of the Lost Sands with water puzzles and enemies normally not encountered until two chapters after it becomes available. While the top is harmless and only holds an item needed for a sidequest, the bottom houses one of the five Bounty boss fights.
  • Minigame Zone: The Termacade contains two minigames that use an exclusive form of currency, Flower Journey and Mite Knight. Playing the minigames is optional even to get all Medals, as it is possible to simply spend Berries and convert them to the arcade's tokens and buy them from there.
  • Mole Monster: Arrow Worms, who spend the entire battle burrowed, lunging at party members from the underground to attack. Because they are always underground, they must be unearthed to become targetable, either by Leif's base attack or attacks that can hit burrowed enemies such as Kabbu's Under Strike.
  • Mouse World: All of Bugaria consists of a small backyard with slightly overgrown grass doubling as whole forests, a sandbox being a scalding desert, and a pond serving as an enormous lake. Human trash is also repurposed as entire buildings and structures, like the Rubber Prison (a discarded tire).
  • My Species Doth Protest Too Much:
    • Despite spiders being portrayed as nightmarish beasts to bugkind in this world, there are two notable exceptions; a friendly spider in the Forsaken Lands who possesses at least rudimentary literacy skills who will buy items for twice their usual price and a Spider Sorcerer in the Far Grasslands who possesses the same level of sentience as the rest of bug kind. Neither of these spiders bare any ill will towards the party, though the Spider Sorcerer is initially annoyed about the party crashing into his basement.
    • Similarly, despite the Wasp Kingdom being the game's leading hostile faction, you meet several friendly wasps hanging around Bugaria, the most prominent one being Zasp of Team Mothiva.
  • Myth Prologue: The game opens up explaining the story behind Queen Elizant I and the foundation of the Explorer's Association, and how she went to a "deep sleep" and was succeeded by her daughter. It then cuts to the present, revealing that this was Kabbu telling Maki what he heard about the Ant Kingdom from the North.
  • New Super Power: Leif does not recall having any magical talent before Vi and Kabbu resuscitate him in Snakemouth Den, but uses his new abilities to help as best as he can.
  • New World Tease: The Far Grasslands can be entered as soon as chapter 3 when competing a quest allows you to enter it, but you won't be able to explore beyond two rooms until chapter 5.
  • No Man Should Have This Power: This is the position of Elizant II in the final chapter; she believes that the Everlasting Sapling should be destroyed so its power can't be misused.
  • Noob Cave: Snakemouth Den is the first area Kabbu and Vi head to once they start their team, and despite the game painting it as The Dreaded, it's actually full of some of the easiest enemies (besides Seedlings, which you fight on the way to the cave). It introduces you to Leif, various puzzles involving the basic abilities of all three characters, and particular enemies that need various tactics to take on but are very manageable otherwise. You're even not allowed to go back afterwards as the area is locked until Kabbu decides to use his Dig ability. Beating Chapter 4 will even let you explore another portion of the dungeon, which is not noob friendly at all.
  • No-Gear Level: The Bandit Hideout sequence, after you're captured and stripped of your items. It also becomes a stealth mission, even if Kabbu and Leif could still plausibly fight (being a physical attacker with his natural horn and a magic user respectively) while Vi remains unable to act (since all of her techniques involve items and needs her currently stolen Beemerang to attack). Getting caught merely sends you back to your cell.
  • No OSHA Compliance: The Rubber Prison, which was meant to serve as a high security prison for the worst criminals, but seems just as dangerous for the guards, especially with the thorns covering most of the floors.
  • Not So Extinct: The cockroaches. Team Snakemouth stumbles upon a surviving cockroach population in the Dead Lands, and one of the lore books indicates that there may be other roaches far beyond Bugaria.
  • Not So Invincible After All: In the final chapter, the Everlasting Sapling turns out to have wilted from being locked in the dark for years, though the fact that it still some green left after who knows how many years stuck in a box with no sunlight, air, or fertilizer is still pretty impressive. And then the Wasp King finishes it off after eating one of its leaves.
  • NPC Roadblock: When the Ant Kingdom is invaded by the Wasps in-between Chapters 4 and 5, all the paths that lead to the Bugaria Outskirts are blocked by NPCs standing there, taking up just enough width to prevent the party from moving past them.
  • Odd Friendship: Minor characters Seb and Madeleine are a cicada butler and his cicada killer wasp mistress, but they get along well and are very committed to each other's happiness.
  • Oh, My Gods!: Bugs (mostly from the Golden Settlement) typically refer to Venus when exclaiming. Even she gets in on it when you have a picnic with her.
    Venus: Oh my self!
  • One-Time Dungeon:
    • Played straight with the Wasp Kingdom Hive. After Chapter 5, the stealth section is inaccessable, although the only thing that can be missed is a Dark Cherry.
    • Subverted with Snakemouth Den. After Chapter 1, it gets gated off under Queen Elizant II's orders, as there is no longer any reason for bugs to travel there with the Ancient Mask being recovered. After learning Kabbu's Dig ability in Chapter 4, it is possible to go underneath the barrier set up there and return, which is needed for a few sidequests. This is also how Upper Snakemouth is accessed.
  • Opposites Attract: King Hector is a foul-tempered hothead while his wife Queen Layra is far more calm and reasonable. But at the end of the day they're a loving couple, with Layra even telling Hector that their relationship works because of how different they are from each other.
  • Optional Boss: There are five Bounty Bosses you can take from side quests that are a major step up in difficulty compared to the storyline bosses. There is also the Mother Chomper, encountered in an optional dungeon, the Broodmother in the power plant, multiple criminals and hostile bugs fought in sidequests, and a fight against Team Maki in the Playable Epilogue as the final challenge in the game. Patch 1.1 adds a fight against Team Slacker, who are even more powerful than Team Maki. It also adds a fight with a glitchy hologram of Tanjerin called TANGYBUG, who uses a combination of attacks from other bosses and can only be fought in the Cave of Trials with the inventory being a certain way.
  • Optional Party Member: By going to an optional out of the way area and beating an Optional Boss, then taking the reward from it to one of the scientists in the hive, it's possible to gain a baby Mother Chomper as a fourth party member. While her options are limited to just attack and do nothing, she doesn't take any damage from attacks, making her a straight increase in damage output for the group.
  • Our Founder: The Ant Kingdom has one of these. In a variation though, it's not of the queen, but a clumsy common ant now called "The First Settler", who got lost while the queen and the rest of her convoy had gone to a different direction. Instead of leaving that ant behind, she led everyone to find the lost ant, found them, saw this spot as fitting, and Kingdom was soon founded there. In her humbleness, she had a statue of that ant erected as the founder monument.
  • Overhead Interaction Indicator: NPCs who give the player quests or are involved in the progression for some quests will feature a speech bubble with an exclamation mark above their heads.
  • Parasite Zombie:
    • Snakemouth Den features Zombiants, which are (presumably dead) ants infected with cordyceps. This is Truth in Television, as cordyceps are parasitic fungi that can control ants once they've infected them.
    • Later on you can return to Snakemouth Den and discover the Snakemouth Labs, a place where cockroaches experimented to try and find another source of eternal life. These experiments used cordyceps and crystals, and led to the creation of the Zombiants, Zombees, Zombeetles, Zommoth, and one "failure" that ended up becoming Leif.
  • Pals with Jesus: By the end of Chapter 2, the party is casual friends with Venus, local plant god of Bugaria. She even assists them (and only them) with their quest by healing them in exchange for berries, and can even give the a discount later.
  • Patchwork Map: The whole of Bugaria could be contained within a small backyard, yet it features an Autumn-esque bountiful settlement, an incredibly hot desert in a sandbox, a lifeless wasteland with few plants, and a humid, thick jungle and swamp in close proximity to each other. The Autumn area is at least explained in that it's caused by Venus' magic.
  • Peninsula of Power Leveling:
    • As soon as you receive Leif's protection skill in chapter 3, you can enter the Chomper Cave to the east of Golden Settlement. It features the strong Chomper Brutes who easily give you 20 exploration points with the hard mode medal equipped by the time you meet them first. If you add the Hard Hits medal, you will receive a full 40 berries every time you defeat one of them - and Venus is just around the corner to heal you for only 8 after every battle. You can easily amass multiple levels and hundreds of berries in as much as half an hour.
    • After obtaining Kabbu's Dig skill in the middle of Chapter 4, you gain access to the optional Stream Mountain area, which houses enemies that you'd normally encounter in the sixth chapter. Around the point you encounter them, the Water Strider and Diver Spider enemies yield about 10 exploration points while the Belostoss yield about 20. All of the enemies have rather predictable and easily dodgeable attack patterns, and even though the Belostoss are tough and bulky, they're rather easy to slowly chip away. You can easily earn a couple of ranks just by doing so to the point where the enemies in the Ancient Castle yield none, making it easy to just steamroll through them with the "Bug Me Not" medal.
  • Percussive Maintenance:
    • In the "Helpers Needed at Once!" sidequest, Malbee requests Team Snakemouth's help to deal with malfunctioning Menders, asking to reset their systems. As she explains, they need to be whacked multiple times to be rebooted, which makes Kabbu worried that it'll hurt their feelings (despite both Leif and Malbee assuring that they don't have any).
    • In Chapter 6, Team Snakemouth needs to reboot a malfunctioning security monitor in the Rubber Prison. To fix it, it's required for Kabbu to Horn Dash into it, though he gets worried about hitting a valuable government equipment.
    Vi: Isn't the power on? Why's it not working?
    Leif: Eh. Just kick it.
    Kabbu: This is valuable government property! We can't just-
    Leif: ...Just kick it!
  • Permanently Missable Content: There is a dig spot in the Wasp Kingdom Hive that is inaccessible after Chapter 5. All it contains is a Dark Cherry, which can be bought infinitely or farmed from a certain endgame enemy, so it is nothing finite.
  • The Pin Is Mightier Than the Sword: The game uses a variant directly adapted from that of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, whose mechanics it's heavily inspired by. Medals are given as a reward for successful quests; depending on the specific medal's power, they can be equipped to either the whole team or a specific member. The party has a limited number of points that can be spent on medals, with more powerful ones costing more points, which can be increased through leveling up. Medal effects include giving a team member poisoned attacks, extra health or an additional special move, making it easier to flee battle, and letting the team regenerate some health after every battle.
  • Playable Epilogue: The game continues after beating Chapter 7 and stopping the Wasp King, with a separate achievement for truly completing the game after completing some post-Chapter 7 and all other tasks in the game, bar the Cave of Trials and the B.O.S.S. system. The game also lightly nudges the player to complete Vi and Leif's sidequests if they were not done during the main story.
  • Plant Person:
    • Venus, hailed as a goddess by the town she's rooted near, is a long-lived sentient flower with control over other plants. And a secret room in Upper Snakemouth shows that she's not the only one of her kind: there are at least two other plant gods named Mars and Pluto respectively.
    • The Wasp King becomes one after eating a leaf of the Everlasting Sapling.
  • Plot Tunnel: In the second half of Chapter 3, the Honey Factory undergoes lockdown, trapping everyone inside. Team Snakemouth cannot leave the Factory until Chapter 3 is completed. There are a few other instances where the team is stuck in an area and needs to solve something in order to get back to the overworld, but this is the longest of them.
  • Point of No Return: After the stove segment in the Giant's Lair, passing the wooden spoon triggers the final boss sequence. You're given a subtle warning with everything being quiet, roach constructs and scorpions laying dead on the ground, and a save point.
  • Pokémon Speak: Aphids say "aphee" and pillbugs say "pibu".
  • Power at a Price: There are exceptionally few medals that provide bonuses without any caveats or downsides. Unlike in Paper Mario, there are no medals that just give straight stat boosts, only medals that exchange attack for defense or vice versa. Many other medals, such as Favorite One and Life Stealer, also involve stat tradeoffs. Others still will only provide stat boosts if the equipped party member has a negative status ailment, such as increased attack only while the member is poisoned.
  • Power Crystal:
    • Throughout Bugaria, there are unique crystals known as "Ancient Crystals" that can store the records of previous travellers and can even heal wounds. Likewise, the Explorer's Permit contains a mini crystal that stores battle data which can be used to fight previously defeated bosses and mini-bosses via the B.O.S.S machine. Other important crystals include the large crystal in the Ant Mines that the Ant Compass always points back to and the mysterious "Mother Crystal" which is speculated to protect Bugaria from outside dangers. It is further theorised that crystal exposure can grant magical powers to bugs but tests have yet to bear results.
    • Ancient Crystals can also be found within the Giant's Lair including one that appears to be permanently powering the fridge which prompts further questions as to where the crystals came from in the first place.
  • Practical Currency/Currency Cuisine: Bugaria uses Berries as currency. Justified since the Berries used for this purpose actually taste awful, which is why they can be used as currency, since no bugs want to eat it. Aside from miner ant Diana who digs your shortcuts for those berries, and Vi even remarks "Uh those berries aren't really for eating." when you give them to her.
  • Precision-Guided Boomerang: Vi's weapon of choice, with its unique abilities explained as it being a prototype drone she bought on the black market.
  • Prison Level: The Rubber Prison, which as the name implies, is a discarded car tire that's been repurposed as The Alcatraz for Bugaria's worst criminals.
  • Prized Possession Giveaway: At the beginning of the game, a merchant offers Team Snakemouth a rare limited plushie of the Green Ranger, with it being stated that only 10 were made in the entire world. Kabbu, a huge Bug Rangers fanboy, will be extremely giddy once he buys it, and he is very protective of it, as shown in the optional dialogue when the Bug Ranger plushie is used as an incorrect option in some choices (which mostly involve giving it away). Much later, in the Termite Capitol, the team meets Terrie, a despairing termite child in front of the Colosseum's entrance, who laments that she wanted to buy a rare Green Ranger plushie, but once she finally stocked up enough money to afford it, someone else bought it before she could, and nothing could cheer her up anymore. Depending on the player's choice, Kabbu can choose to give her his own plushie, and when his teammates question his decision, he says that, given everything they went through, they became superheroes in their own right and don't need Bug Rangers to inspire them anymore, and decides to give his plushie to let Bug Rangers inspire the child to adventure. After receiving the plushie, Terrie gets incredibly overjoyed and almost decides to pay them, but the team declines (including Vi, who normally always demands a reward for anything), encouraging her to spend money on some good food instead. After completing the sidequest, the player is awarded with "A Good Deed" achievement, which is necessary for 100% Completion.
  • Purposefully Overpowered:
    • As a Guest-Star Party Member, Maki's only attack does a whopping 6 damage against the first enemy in the formation, no matter if they are flying or grounded. Naturally, you only get to use him for the first half of Chapter 5 and in the required fight against the trio of Dead Landers during Chapter 7.
    • Unlike Maki, Queen Elizant II does not fight on the battlefield as a Guest-Star Party Member, but grants Team Snakemouth the Royal Decree skill, which boosts the party's attack and defense stats for 2 turns for the low cost of 5 TP. Again, you're only given access to it during the initial journey through the Forsaken Lands and in the required fight against the trio of Dead Landers during Chapter 7.
  • Rare Candy: Heart Berries, Bond Berries, Super Peppers, and Iron Seeds; these permanently boost HP, TP, attack, and defense, respectively. There are a limited number in the game, and they are usually given out as the rewards for difficult quests. A merchant in Defiant Root also sells them for exorbitant prices, but has limited stock.
  • Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: Averted in a somewhat unusual way: characters very often interject by way of small speech bubbles off to the side of whoever the current speaker is, usually in response to something that upsets or surprises them.
  • Really 700 Years Old: Despite Bugaria being established for at least several hundred years, the Ant kingdom is only on its second Queen, and the Bee and Termite Kingdoms’ rulers were both in power during the first Queen’s rule. This points to the monarchs being much, much longer lived than their subjects. Which is Truth in Television as far as insect lifespans are concerned, but makes it difficult to really understand the scale of time between the settlement of Bugaria, Leif’s abandonment, and the present day of the game.
  • Red Baron: The player's band collectively gets the moniker of "Team Snakemouth", for not only finding the artifact in Snakemouth Den, but also being some of its only survivors.
  • Rewatch Bonus:
    • On the first playthrough, the player might not think too much about the enemies in Snakemouth Cave. However, a specific one of them serves as subtle Foreshadowing about a certain character's reveal...
    • Venus's words about Leif's original mission to Snakemouth Den take a very different meaning when looking at it again knowing Leif's origins.
      Venus: Yes, a team of three. One of them falls, the other two flee with their lives. The remaining one lingers, yet the presence vanishes.
    • In Vi's Spy notes on Weevils, found in Chapter 2, she says that she doesn't "have the best memories of them." It first just looks like she's referencing a bad encounter with them, but Chapter 3 raises the possibility that she's talking about how she said her sister drew like a Weevil right before she left the Hive.
  • Riddle for the Ages: We never find out what exactly Vi did that peeved off Reed enough to temporarily ban her from the Underground Tavern.
  • Rule of Symbolism: In the beginning of the Chapter 6, Queen Elizant II was forced to surrender the artifacts to the Wasp King, who then proceeded to escape with them, breaking through the stained window depicting her image. Afterhand, Queen Elizant's stoic and cold facade finally breaks and she reveals all of her doubts and insecurities to the group present, lamenting her inability to protect her people and obtain the Everlasting Sapling. During this entire sequence, the stained window of Elizant was shattered, representing how, with her physical imposing image shattered, so was metaphorical.
  • Schizo Tech: The Insect Kingdoms have all developed in very distinct technological directions, at very different speeds. Although technological and cultural exchanges have started taking place on a larger scale by the end of the game.
    • The Ant Kingdom, having focused on diplomacy and exploration throughout its existence, is a largely mercantile society that has only recently invented ships that don’t rely on sails.
    • The Bee Kingdom has been focusing on rapidly developing technology and research to improve the quality of life in Bugaria in general and the Hive in particular, and from the base of the tree to the top you can find windmills connected to batteries feeding a generator powering the Hive which connects to a largely automated honey factory powered by a separate, much stronger core.
    • The Termite Kingdom has been industrializing, focusing all of their energy on their own development, and their dome has ten story skyscrapers, fast food, heavy pollution, a submarine, automated supermarkets full of mass-produced goods, and even internet.
    • The Wasp Kingdom is poor but highly militant, with a fortified wall and three giant tanks in a garage.
  • Schmuck Bait: Go on. Hit the only Red Crystal in the game. It will heal you. And given the area, you'll almost certainly need it. It will also make Dead Lander Omega immediately drop a Dead Lander Gamma on top of you that is very difficult to avoid.
  • Sealed Good in a Can: Leif is this at the start of the game, resulting in him emerging decades later. Ditto for Elizant I.
  • Sequence Breaking: Three minor examples:
    • If you buy the Bug Ranger Plushie early, head straight to the north east end of the Lost Sands and try to insert it into the entrance of the Desert Temple, Vi remarks that "maybe the Roaches liked the Bug Rangers as well". This is long before you learn about the existence of the roaches and that they might have anything to do with that place.
    • If the Forsaken Lands are entered after learning Kabbu's horn charge but before Chapter 6, the team's spy dialogue will still reference the Termites, particularly in the area to the left of the start. When starting Chapter 6, Vi at the least is unfamiliar with the Termites or that they live in that area, but she would still comment on their need to build pipes out in the wasteland.
    • Technically speaking, the cannon-infested cafeteria isn't technically meant to be negotiated with by dodging everything until you make it to a bounceshroom that'll take you to the other side. The security room has a means to raise the tables to stop those cannonballs from being an issue. However, due to solving that part of the puzzle a bit difficult, some players don't realize this and just brute force their way around the cannons.
  • Sequel Hook: Quite a few, though none directly stated in the ending. For starters, A hidden area in the Snakemouth Labs reveals that Venus isn't the only one of her kind and there are other plant deities in Bugaria. There's also whatever the Dead Landers and Dead Lander Omega are, which is never properly explained in the game itself, as well as the mysterious hints about the Northern Kingdom (where Kabbu comes from) and the Eastern lands scattered throughout the game.
    • In the final Lore Book entry, the author states that he intends to travel to the Eastern Kingdoms to unravel the mystery of the Day of Awakening, and its relationship to what the roaches call the Day of Reckoning, setting up a potential plot for a future sequel.
  • Serial Killer Baiting: In the "Requesting Assistance" sidequest, Levi and Celia request Team Snakemouth's help in apprehending Monsieur Scarlet, the infamous criminal who preys on exploration teams by posting false help requests on quest boards and then draining their lifeforce when they arrive into his lair. His lair is obscured by an illusionary wall that becomes invisible for anyone who takes his request. This is also the case when Levi and Celia took his quest to set themselves up as Scarlet's target. Before, they asked Team Snakemouth to assist them to catch Scarlet off-guard. Though Scarlet escapes, Levi and Celia still managed to see his face. After they reveal Scarlet's operating methods to the public, he's no longer able to prey on explorers like he did before.
  • Serious Business: Numerous characters treat Spy Cards duels very seriously and tend to be very dramatic when taking "damage" or losing, despite it being just a card game. There's even an island that is primarily dedicated just for Spy Card duel tournaments, with berry pay outs. Leif ends up developing the similar mindset and Kabbu tends to play along with the dramatics. Vi, however, finds the whole ordeal ridiculous and is only interested in the amount of berries Leif can win from the duels.
  • Shadowed Face, Glowing Eyes: Some characters have faces that are obscured by their exoskeleton, leaving only their eyes visible underneath. Notably, beetle characters usually only have one eye visible, but them all having an Ambidextrous Sprite confirms that they all have both eyes and that they function correctly.
  • Shifting Sand Land: The Lost Sands, shown on the world map to actually be an abandoned garden sandbox, serves as the game's desert area. Environmental hazards include large pits of quicksand and large crevices filled with cacti, while the local enemies are scorpions, small Sand Worms, animated cacti, and a gang of Desert Bandits.
  • Shop Fodder: Dark Cherries are scattered all over the world buried underground, but cannot be eaten and exist mostly to be sold, with even the description encouraging the player to sell it with In-Universe justification that "collectors will buy them for a big price". However, they can also be used for cooking, making either a powerful bomb that can inflict random status effect, a powerful healing item that can restore the entire party's HP and TP, the best TP recovery item which immediately restores TP to maximum, and an item that can revive the entire party.
  • Shout-Out:
    • As a game heavily inspired by the Paper Mario franchise, there are naturally some obvious references aside from the design influences:
      • One medal that can be found is called "Luckier Day" as a reference to the Lucky Day badge, which was somewhat infamous for being hard to obtain and having a very powerful effect that is also completely random. Luckier Day on the other hand makes all your blocks and attacks automatically hit "Unbeelievable!" and has 0 cost because it's actually just a cosmetic change.
      • Another obvious reference is that paths between different rooms often have orange and yellow triangles on the side, identical to the design used for paths between different rooms in every Paper Mario game except Super Paper Mario (because the only transitions between areas in that game are doors, Warp Pipes, elevators, and wormholes).
      • There's also a drink called "Mega Rush (tm)" as a reference to the badge of the same name.
      • When you use Spy on him on the overworld after defeating him the first time, Vi dismissively refers to General Ultimax as General Guy, who is the fourth boss of Paper Mario 64 and a fellow hammy tank-driving military man.
      • The first three Paper Mario games all have a sidequest where a secret package needs to be delivered, with the game only slightly hinting what's in it. Bug Fables appears to continue the tradition with an early quest from Eetl about delivering a mysterious box. Except unlike the Paper Mario games, it's revealed what it is. The quest was simply to deliver some diving gear. Team Snakemouth then wonder why Eetl was being so secretive about it.
    • There are some obvious references to Hollow Knight:
      • A room with a rusted nail and some flowers references the Knight's first weapon and the Delicate Flower quest, respectively.
      • A line from Vi references what Millibelle does after scamming you.
        Vi: Hmph. What if after we put in a huge deposit they just steal our money and run to a hot spring or something!?
      • Team Snakemouth's first visit to the bank and Vi's mistrust of it is also a reference to Millibelle's scam. Thankfully, as this bank is endorsed by the Ant Queen, there's no need to worry about the banker doing the same.
        Vi: I don't know. I don't trust anyone else with my berries. What if they run away after we give them a bunch?
      • The Colosseum in the Termite Kingdom has a portrait of a former champion who highly resembles the designs of the unique enemies from the Colosseum of Fools. It also has an NPC with a nail, to hammer home the comparison.
    • The Banter conversation for the War Room has a reference to Dr. Strangelove.
    Kabbu: I've heard of this place. It's the War Room!
    Vi: So, what, they fight in here?
    Kabbu: Err, no. This is a place to discuss strategy and missions...
    Vi: Should just call it the Mission Room, then!
    Leif: Vi's observations are, as always... very on point.
    Vi: What's that supposed to mean!?
    • One of the playable arcade games in Chapter 6 onward is Mite Knight which has a similar art design and style as Fight Knight note .
    • At the Card Master Tournament on Metal Island, one of the contestants is a stick bug named Bu-Gi who wears a hat of colored leaves resembling spiky hair and proudly states his deck was made using his grandfather's cards. Sound familiar?
    • Right before the final battle, the Wasp King gloats about his rise to power and the crown on his head that proves it. In the sentence immediately after, he says this...
    • If Kabbu spies Cenn, he'll say the Catchphrase of Kamen Rider Double:
      Kabbu: Maki's judgment was correct. You're not ready to be an explorer! It's not only to gain riches, but to help others! Now, let's count up your sins!
    • The Battle Theme Music for General Ultimax is entitled "Battle Against Ultimax (Who Has A Tank)", which is formatted very similarly to the iconic fan-translated names of the battle songs from Super Mario RPG, but particularly that game's final boss theme, "Fight Against Smithy, Who Likes Transforming".
    • The Flower Journey minigame at the Termacade is based off Flappy Bird.
  • Shown Their Work: The bug theme isn't just for show – the writers put a lot of work into taking actual bug ecology and accurately representing it in the story. For example, the Ant and Bee kingdoms only have Queens, just like real life, while the sexual dimorphism of the Termite King and Queen is accurate as well. This is also true of wasps, who only have queens, meaning that an astute player can guess that the supposed Wasp King isn't who he says he is.
  • Show Within a Show: The quest "Awful’s Beauty" has you collecting three poorly written books for a character who collects them. He will then talk about how awful those books are:
    • Tragedy on the Hills: "This was supposed to be a murder mystery. The real mystery was how this got published."
    • Our Twisted Summer: "Why was so much time spent setting up all those characters!? There are at least three characters not mentioned post page 75. This includes the main character!"
    • Axis Invert: "No! This one’s too awful! This book was perfect. Such a beautiful story… Incredible prose! Tight pacing! Amazing characters! It was all a dream! And then a rock crushes the main character!"
  • Sidequest: Loads. You can access most of them from job boards, but you'll have to go out of your way to find a few.
  • Slaying Mantis: Maki and Kina form the highest-ranked exploration team in Bugaria, with Maki being knighted by Queen Elizant and entrusted with all kinds of dangerous missions, and Acolyte Aria is a Badass Preacher who managed to thwart the Wasp invasion offscreen before the events of Chapter 2. Thankfully they're firmly on the side of good, and are incredibly powerful fighters. However, there are still villainous examples in the form of the Ruffian enemies, which are hard-hitting mantis criminals that are fought in the penultimate chapter. Also subverted with the NPC Eophi, who's a Joke Character that accompanies the player for one sidequest.
  • Sound of No Damage: A soft "clonk" sound effect, like clicking your tongue in your mouth, accompanies anything that does no damage.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: The first boss of the game, a giant spider in Snakemouth Den, has an upbeat jazzy theme as its battle theme, something odd for a creature that was supposed to be The Dreaded.
  • Spiders Are Scary: In this world, spiders are ferocious beasts that terrorize bugkind and can't be reasoned with. The most prominent ones are the giant spider living in Snakemouth Den (designed after a brown recluse) and the Peacock Spider, while others are generic enemy encounters such as the Jumping Spiders (Which can steal items) and Mimic Spiders (which are capable of mimicking the behavior of sentient bugs in order to lure in prey). However, there are a handful of friendly spiders such as the tarantula wizard of the Far Grasslands and a jumping spider in the Forsaken Lands named Pinky, both of which are sentient and helpful to the player.
  • Springy Spores: Small green "springshrooms", which can be found scattered throughout the game, will send the party flying a long way into the air if jumped on, and serve as a way to reach otherwise inaccessible ledges and to keep players from becoming permanently stuck in certain pits. Red springshrooms exist only to create a Door to Before or create linear paths.
  • Stationary Enemy: With Pre-existing Encounters: Security Turrets, Wasp Bombers, Wild Chompers and Dead Landers Alpha are completely immobile and attack only by firing projectilesnote  at party members, initiating the fight when hitting the party.
  • Status Effects: Poison, Sleep, Paralysis (referred to as Numb), Freezing, and Burn are all present. There is also the very rare Sticky, which prevents item use. Notably, you can't lose your last HP from poison, therefore you can't wipe yourself out during the Hopeless Boss Fight against the Wasp King before he's ready to curb-stomp you.
  • Stealing from Thieves: Defied in the help dialogue in the Bandit Hideout's storage room. Vi and Leif see a lot of food stored in the boxes and assume that, since it's stolen, there will be no problem if they steal it for themselves. But Kabbu objects, claiming that a thief stealing from thieves is still a thief. Annoyed, Vi and Leif agree to leave Kabbu in the inn next time they would raid the Bandit Hideout.
  • Stock Beehive: Strangely, instead of looking like what an actual wild beehive would look like, the Bee Kingdom Hive instead resembles a yellow skep hanging from a tree branch.
  • Stupidity Is the Only Option:
    • The Mushroom sitting on top of the obvious trapdoor in the first chapter is the only item in the game that can't be picked up from a distance with Vi’s Beemerang. Justified, as you need to walk towards it to advance through the plot.
    • The Earth Key in the Bandits' Hideout is just sat on a pedestal within the first room. Kabbu and Leif find it suspiciously easy but the key is needed to unlock the Sandcastle later. Naturally, as soon as they reach the key, the team are ambushed by a group of bandits and thrown into a cell.
  • Stylistic Suck:
    • When you talk to a drunk bug named Tristan in the post-climax celebration, he'll play a very off-kilter song that sounds like it was recorded on very low-quality equipment.
    • A sidequest made available early in the game involves finding Bad Books for someone who really wants to collect them. You don't get to read them in-game, but the descriptions make them sound pretty terrible, such as one that forgets about its own main character, and one that relies on the All Just a Dream trope.
  • Sugar Apocalypse: Despite the cutesy artstyle, whimsy music and common comedic scenes throughout, the game can actually be quite dark when it wants to be. Right away, it's made clear that brutal death and dismemberment is a very real danger for Explorers, with Snakemouth Den stated to have claimed hundreds of Explorers before Team Snakemouth conquers it. And then there's pretty much everything about the Giants, the Cockroaches, and the Wasp King.
  • Super Drowning Skills: Falling in water is the same as falling in Non-Lethal Bottomless Pits.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In Metal Island's Spy Cards tournament area, there is a crack in the wall that can be dug through, not unlike cracks in other areas. All it does is tear a hole into Carmina's room and have Team Snakemouth crash in there. Not every crack in a wall is going to lead to some hidden spot with treasure; this is just a regular tear in a building that leads to the next room.
  • Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: Gold Save Crystals that both save the game and heal the party generally disappear after Chapter 2, and instead Venus Buds are found near certain (cyan) Save Crystals that heal the party with a small fee. In the rare time a Gold Crystal appears after Chapter 2, it's worth worrying — the game is giving you a free heal for a reason.
  • Take That!:
    • The bad books sidequest has a pretty big one towards the All Just a Dream trope, in which the character cites it as so bad that even he can't stand it, and promises to burn the book later.
    • The fight against Mothiva and Zasp in Chapter 2 has a stab at "choosing beggar" celebrities who insist on being given things for free in exchange for "exposure".
  • Temple of Doom: The Ancient Castle, a giant sandcastle in the Lost Sands, is an ancient structure left behind by the bygone Roach civilization, which the main characters need to traverse to find one of the ancient artifacts that serve as the game's Plot Coupons. Its local enemies consist of a number of robotic constructs left behind to guard the complex, alongside some desert scorpions, and the area culminates in a boss fight against an undead guardian watching over the artifact.
  • Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Used with most (but not all) female insects important to the story, to help players unfamiliar with the very different primary sexual characteristics insects use. Subverted with Monsieur Scarlet, who wears a pink dress and sunhat, fighting with a parasol, but is nevertheless a male ant. The only one in the game.
  • Throne Room Throwdown:
    • Team Snakemouth encounters and fights the Wasp King for the first time in the Ant Kingdom Palace's throne room. However, their fight ends up being the Hopeless Boss Fight, as he immediately defeats them with a pillar of flame, until Maki wards him off.
    • Later, to reclaim the artifact Wasp King stole during an attack, Team Snakemouth sneaks into the Wasp Kingdom Hive, and just when they enter the throne room, ready to attack the King in his royal chambers, his right-hand man General Ultimax reveals himself and calls forth his troops, initiating the fight with Team Snakemouth. However, they quickly defeat him and his troops before heading off into quarters only to find out the Wasp King is not there and already went to attack the Ant Kingdom for second time.
    • The False Monarch, one of the five Bounty bosses in the game, is fought in the throne room of an abandoned ancient ant city, where swarms of Mothflies impersonating bugs took residence.
  • Tradesnark™:
    • Metal Island's theme is called "Summer Holiday at the Metal Island™".
    • One of the items Team Snakemouth can buy in the Termite Kingdom is an energy drink called Mega Rush™.
  • Transflormation: This is the fate of The Wasp King. After he loses control of the Sapling's power, he turns into an ordinary tree sprout.
  • Turn-Based Combat: Like its inspiration, it is turn-based and focussed on the proper timing of Action Commands.
  • Two Guys and a Girl: Vi is the only girl of the three-bug band.
  • Unintentionally Unwinnable:
    • Until patch 1.1.2, you could get softlocked in the residential area of the Ant Kingdom. If you use the jumping pad to jump on the house left of the Bank of Bugaria and from there jump on the tree-like structure on the left, you can fall behind the structure and the house of the book-loving bug. There is no escape from there and you would have to return to the main menu.
    • It is possible to get softlocked in Rubber Prison too, but this is something needed to go out of the way to do. By using the Beemerang delay by a switch controlling the gates, walking in to a cell full of barrels while it is still spinning, and then releasing the Beemerang to hit the switch, Team Snakemouth will be locked inside. It is not possible to dig out with the Ant Compass either.
  • Uniqueness Rule: In the "Spy Cards" mini-game, your deck needs to have two mini-boss cards, but they can't both be the same one. This is as opposed to normal enemy cards, which don't limit duplicates.
  • Unknown Character:
    • Kabbu's master and his friend Bit, who both died on their journey through the Wild Swamplands. The artbook gives slightly more detail about them.
    • The other two members of Leif's scouting team. Venus confirms they survived the botched mission and Vi discusses locating their descendants. While the overworld dialogue on Muze reveals that Leif's original partner was his own wife, Muse, and that she was the main combatant of the team, the identity of the second member remains unknown.
    • Vanessa I. From what little we know of her she was implied to have resented Elizant I and the Alliance with the Ant Kingdom; her image in the queen's chamber not being replaced with her daughter's suggest she broke the Alliance and cut off all contact with the ants very early on through Elizant II's rule.
  • Unreliable Narrator: Vi gives a very different perspective on the Bee Kingdom than the one we eventually get. It doesn’t help that one of the few Bee NPCs the party can examine early on is a soldier that was born into the military.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The old merchant on Metal Island unknowingly fished up and sold a magical crown to a young fly, who then headed north... so that he could become the Wasp King using its magic.
  • The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The Giant's Lair. The massive (by bug standards) house that can be seen looming over all of Bugaria in the telescope turns out to be the location of the final chapter, and it's a dreaded location nobody has been known to return from. It has an oppressive dark atmosphere and the most alien enemies in the game, with the first half being a gauntlet focused on stealth and the second involving puzzles with the party's overworld skills.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: In the sidequest in which Kabbu is mind-controlled by Kali's pheromones, you can beat him up in battle. But since you only need to take down Kali, who will give up fairly quickly if repeatedly attacked, why would you do anything else?
  • Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: While the game is rather lighthearted and whimsical for the most part, the same can not be said for the Wasp King or the roach scientists in charge of Upper Snakemouth. The former is a brutal tyrant obsessed with crushing bugkind under his heel while the latter committed horrific scientific atrocities in pursuit of immortality, and both are taken dead-seriously with their appearances heralding some of the game's darkest moments.
  • Virtuous Bees: While there tends to be at least one bad egg or two among the various bug races, the bees as a whole seem to skew towards firmly being on the side of good. Most of the ones you meet are hard-working, personable, and friendly, and even the meaner ones like Vi and Dr. Honeycomb balance out their rudeness with good deeds. Snotty Spy Cards player Ritchee and the Zombee enemies are the closest ones to avert this, but even then the former is merely rude while the latter are innocent bugs puppeteered by horrific fungi.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss: The Heavy Drone B-33 is the first big roadblock many players will face, due to having a lot more to consider at once. Not only is it a flying boss that also has 1 defense (meaning Vi's Tornado Toss at this point of the game isn't doing doing a whole lot aside from knocking it down), it also can summon additional enemies and shoot missiles which drop in 2 turns, on top of having really tricky to dodge spread-damage attacks, which become much more deadly when it Turns Red and its attack increases(though, thankfully its defense goes down as well)
  • We Buy Anything: Played straight at the start, then lampshaded (and, on one occasion, subverted) once you travel further from the heart of the Ant Kingdom. There is one shopkeeper that mocks the idea of buying random items from customers (however, they are nearby another shop that will). The shopkeeper in the Termite Kingdom says that their shop doesn't buy from customers, but she is willing to buy your items with her personal funds.
  • Wicked Wasps:
    • Soldiers from the Wasp Kingdom are set up as an antagonistic faction to the Ant Kingdom the protagonists hail from. Subverted, as it turns out the Wasp Kingdom was under some kind of mind control from the king, who isn't even a wasp himself.
    • Zasp tends to flirt with this trope when in the presence of Mothiva. When he's not around her however he's a lot more pleasant, albeit still fairly gruff.
  • Wings Do Nothing: Even though every character is a bug, and most of them feature wings, only bees, wasps and dragonflies, as well as several non-sapient bugs, are actually capable of flying, while moths, butterflies, beetles, and etc. are permanently stuck on the ground. One of the lore books states that the reason behind this is due to the fact that, after the evolution, everyday life no longer required flight, so bugs eventually lost an ability to fly after many generations. It's even theorized in-universe that one day, not even flying bugs will retain this ability in the near future.
  • Women Are Wiser: Among the bug royalty, females are treated as The High Queen, with Queen Elizant I being positively adored by all of bugkind. Her daughter, Queen Elizant II, is well-meaning but stern and gruff, and secretly feels she can't live up to her mother's beloved legacy. Meanwhile, male royals are shown in a negative light — the Termite King is a hot-tempered, prideful bigot when it comes to the Ant kingdom, but is otherwise a decent person. The Wasp King is the game's Big Bad and a cruel tyrant who desires nothing more than to crush bugkind underneath his heel. By contrast, the Wasp Queen Vanessa II, whom the Wasp King usurped to get her throne, turns out to be a very kindhearted person.
  • You Have Researched Breathing:
    • Team Snakemouth cannot comment on areas or NPCs until after Vi and Kabbu's conversation early in Snakemouth that brings it up.
    • Many of the overworld abilities unlocked throughout the game are things characters should logically have been able to do from the start, such as running. There is at least some justification given for Vi's flying, as she insists she's not strong enough to carry both Kabbu and Leif, and can only do so after Leif learns to use magic to levitate.
  • Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: When Team Snakemouth goes to the Wasp Kingdom in hopes of getting one of the artifacts back after the Wasp King invaded the Ant Kingdom to steal it, they enter his bedroom only to find... the real ruler of the Wasp Kingdom, Queen Vanessa II. She then tells them that the Wasp King went back to the Ant Kingdom again to steal the other artifacts too.
  • Zip Mode: The game has a number of interconnected systems to help the player explore around faster and reduce redundant backtracking.
    • Kabbu originally unlocked a movement-boosting dash attack halfway through Chapter 5. However, as of the 1.1 update, he unlocks a non-attack version of the dash at the start of Chapter 3.
    • A few sidequests simply give the player the option to teleport back to the hub world at the end of them if they end in an out-of-the-way location.
    • The Ant Compass allows the player to travel to the Ant Mines, the Hub World of the game, which will slowly connect to most major locations in the game.
    • Inside the Ant Mines is also the Mover, who will whisk the party to several of the locations that the party might have to frequent that are not conveniently located to a Ant Mine exit.
    • At the end of Chapter 3, escorts are authorized for the party for travel through the Lost Sands. This effectively allows the player to teleport to the other side of the desert without traversing it.
    • After defeating an optional boss in Chapter 5, the player unlocks fast travel from Chapter 5's Ant Mine exit to the location in which the optional boss was found.

Alternative Title(s): Bug Fables The Everlasting Sapling

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Monsieur Scarlet

Once Scarlet is defeated, he simply teleports away. However, it is unlikely he will be a threat again now that the explorers know what he looks like.

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