Gotta Catch Bugs!

Gotta Catch Bugs! drops you into an underground lab where 5,000 mutant insects have just gotten loose, and hands you a net. Myth Indie's cozy first-person catcher launches on Steam on November 24, 2026, and this guide walks through the catch-carry-return loop, the gear upgrades, and all 25 bug powers you can steal from your catch.

What Is Gotta Catch Bugs!?

You are intern Peter P., and it is your first day at an underground lab. The day goes badly fast: a mutant plant smashes the control panel, the staff evacuates, and 5,000 mutant bugs scatter across three floors. The scientists are gone. The bugs are everywhere. Someone has to round them up, and that someone is you.

The pitch is pure cozy: no combat, no timers, just sweeping a net through overgrown corridors and listening to jars clink. The lab setting gives it structure that most bug-catching games lack. Three floors and more than 30 rooms form a hand-built space to clear room by room, and the mutant plant that started the mess promises some kind of escalation as you dig deeper.

The scale numbers are the eye-catchers: 5,000 bugs loose in the lab, 500 species to collect, and 25 powers to earn from your catch. That is a genuine collection game, not a two-hour toy.

How to Play: Catch, Carry, Return

The loop is three beats, and the store page states it plainly: catch, carry, return. You swing your net at bugs, tip your catch into a jar, and bring every bug back to its terrarium.

The Catch

Netting is a first-person action. You aim the net and swing through a bug or a cluster of them. Small bugs go down in one pass. The 5,000 loose insects include everything from fireflies to scorpions, so expect the later floors to hold catches that do not cooperate.

The Carry

Your jar holds what you catch, and jar capacity is one of the core upgrade tracks. Full jars mean a walk back to the terrarium, so the game has a natural push-pull: push deeper into the lab for rarer species, or bank what you have and return. Carrying several partial jars beats one overfilled jar if the rare you came for shows up mid-run.

The Return

Every bug goes back to its terrarium. Returning does two things: it registers the species in your collection and it earns you that bug's power. Powers are the real progression currency, which makes what you catch matter more than how many.

Your Gear Grows

The kit upgrades as you play, and the store page lays out the arc:

The vacuum cleaner is the headline upgrade. Swarms are the natural counter to a net, and 5,000 bugs implies a lot of swarming. Once the vacuum joins your kit, the floors that felt tedious open up.

The 25 Bug Powers

Catching bugs earns you their powers. Three are named on the store page and they hint at how the rest are structured:

• Web traps pin or slow targets, which turns escape-prone bugs into easy catches.
• The grasshopper's jump adds vertical and horizontal mobility, opening parts of the lab you cannot reach with a walk.
• Firefly light brightens dark corners, and underground labs have plenty of those.

Twenty-five powers across 25 groups of species maps cleanly: each species group carries one power. That gives the collection real direction. If a room is too dark, you are hunting the firefly group. If a high shelf hides a rare species, you are hunting the grasshopper group. Read your missing powers as a to-do list.

The Collection: 500 Species

The numbers break down neatly: 25 groups of 20 species each make 500 species total. The confirmed range runs from fireflies to scorpions, which suggests the groups split along habitat and behavior lines rather than pure appearance. Ground bugs, flying bugs, glowing bugs, swarming bugs. Each group holds 20 variants to sweep up.

A collection this size needs a plan. Work floors systematically rather than chasing the first bug you see, because the terrarium (your collection hub) shows what you have registered and, by extension, what a floor still owes you. Completionists should expect the 5,000 total insects to include many repeat individuals per species: the species count is 500, the pest population is much larger.

Reading the Lab: Floors and Rooms

The lab is small enough to learn and big enough to lose an afternoon in. Treat each floor as a chapter with its own identity, and clear it before descending:

Thirty-plus rooms sounds like a lot until you realize most rooms hold one solution: a species group you need for a power you want. Walk in, scan for movement, sweep, check the terrarium register, move on. The rooms that resist that rhythm are the ones holding a power species, and those are worth the extra ten minutes.

The overgrowth is doing narrative work too. The mutant plant smashed the control panel, and the deeper you go, the more the lab looks like its territory. Environmental storytelling in a bug-catching game is rare, and Myth Indie is clearly spending some of their art budget on making the descent feel like a descent.

Tips for First-Day Interns

Clear a room before moving on. Thirty-plus rooms is the game's own suggested pace. Leaving one bug behind in a cleared room is how floors turn into backtracking chores.

Upgrade the jar early. Bigger net range feels good, but jar capacity cuts return trips, and return trips are the real time cost of the loop.

Save the vacuum for swarms, not singles. Single bugs net faster. The vacuum earns its slot when a corridor boils with tiny fliers.

Hunt powers with purpose. Every missing power is a tool for a specific problem. Stuck on darkness, height, or fast bugs? The fix is a species group you have not cleared yet.

Watch for the mutant plant. It smashed the control panel and started everything. A instigating hazard that big is almost certainly part of the deeper floors. Expect the lab to get stranger the further down you go.

It launches November 24. The store page is live now. Family Sharing is supported, so one purchase covers the household.

FAQ

When does Gotta Catch Bugs! release?

November 24, 2026 on Steam for Windows.

How many bugs are in the game?

5,000 individual bugs are loose in the lab across 500 collectible species, organized into 25 groups of 20 species each.

What powers can you get?

25 powers total, earned by catching their source species. Confirmed examples include web traps, the grasshopper's jump, and firefly light.

Is there combat?

No. This is a catching and collecting game. The net, the jar, and later the vacuum cleaner are your entire toolkit, and nothing in the store description suggests enemies that fight back.

How big is the lab?

Three floors with more than 30 rooms, all overgrown after the mutant plant broke loose.

Is it good for kids?

The tone is cozy and the Family Sharing support makes it easy to share. Bug collection, no violence, no timers. As always, check the store page's age rating at launch for the official word.