After debuting as an Epic Games Store exclusive on PC, Bugsnax is finally coming to Steam “sometime next year,” developer Young Horses announced Thursday. Young Horses is also teasing “some meaty news and a few juicy surprises to get people talkin’ ‘bout Bugsnax again later this year.”
Bugsnax debuted last November as a launch title for the PlayStation 5 (along with a PS4 version) and on PC and Mac via Epic Games Store. Bugsnax was also free for PS5 PS + for about two months after its release.
Young Horses president Philip Tibitoski said last February that despite being free for PS+ members, Bugsnax had by then already sold more copies than their previous game Octodad: Dadliest Catch. Bugsnax appears to be following in the footsteps of other indie games with enough success to allow its developer to continue working on and expanding the world, like Yacht Club Games’ success with Shovel Knight (which has received multiple new campaigns and two planned spin-offs) and Concerned Ape’s Stardew Valley (which has sold more than 10 million copies since launch). It’s clear that Young Horses was hoping for long-term success, with Tibitoski and creative director Kevin Zuhn teasing future plans on a pre-launch episode of IGN’s Podcast Beyond.
As of now, though, it’s unclear if Bugsnax will receive a major piece of DLC, an outright sequel, or something more modest in scale. It’s worth noting that Octodad: Dadliest Catch was itself a sort of expansion of the original Octodad, which was a student game project by many of the developers who went on to form Young Horses. So expanding on an existing project certainly isn’t an unfamiliar concept for the team.
You can wishlist Bugsnax on Steam now, or check out IGN’s review of Bugsnax, which called it an adventure “full of charm, mystery, and a surprising amount of emotional depth.”
If you’ve already played Bugsnax, check out IGN’s interview with the developers to learn how the game’s ending was originally much darker and drastically changed a main character’s fate.
Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/bunger for IGN.