Isopod Video Game Review - A Small Delightful Adventure
Written by Rei Caldombra 11/14/25 Video: TBD
Hello everyone, Rei Caldombra here. I recently had the pleasure of playing this indie game and really wanted to promote it because I loved it (no I’m not sponsored). This is the most delightful game I’ve played in some time. It is not a perfect game, but it was a great shot of pure video game fun in a small package.
There will be no direct spoilers for the storyline outside of the main premise and I won’t be revealing everything about the mechanics and areas. Warning for any serious Entomophobes that this game and pictures I will include here have realistic looking bugs in it.
Isopod: A Webbed Spin-off is a 3D adventure game made by Sbug Games Steam Curator: Sbug Games where you play as a pill bug / roly-poly / whatever other nickname you have for Armadillidiidae who is tasked with protecting his home from greedy industrialist ants who only understand obedience or destruction. You crawl, roll, swing and fly your way through a woodland world to fight against the conglomerate and work alongside bugs in arms.
I love bugs, I think they can be adorable like any other animal species and are super interesting. And one of my favorites has always been pill bugs. I enjoyed playing with them in the backyard when I was a kid. This game was made for bug fans. You really feel like what you’d imagine a superpowered pill bug would be like. The world being designed around bugs when it comes to things like the architecture and scale work really great at making you feel like a small bug in a big world. There are some really interesting and fun setpieces to explore.
You also have lots of color variations you can get if you’d like, many of which are inspired by other bugs. If you couldn’t tell by the name of the developers, they also clearly love bugs.
In general Isopod is a perfect example of the pure simplicity and down-to-earth games that good indie titles tend to be. This game doesn’t have amazing graphics, a deep story, complicated mechanics, 50 hours of gameplay, or perfect polish. It’s a straightforward fun gameplay experience that feels like it was made by people who had fun making a game that is fun to play. It has true personality and great vibes.
Where this game truly excels is in its core movement systems and mechanics. The game is just straight up fun to play and feels so good. It is such a great example of how simple but engaging gameplay can work so well. The gameplay is based heavily around physics and gaining momentum. Your basic states of being are on foot or in a ball. You can walk slow and stick to the ground for more precision, or you can roll around as a ball at high speeds and being at the mercy of physics. Both of these states play well into the movement options you have and the world you have been provided. You can build up a ton of speed and pull off some really cool maneuvers. The basics are easy to pick up but it’s very satisfying to get better. Timing really is key. I loved learning how to build up speed faster, when to let go on a swing, and how to launch myself and land where I wanted. Even the act of going back and forth between walking and being a ball can give you opportunities for making a cool landing. My favorite thing to do was to launch myself fast as a ball and then unroll right as I am about to hit the ground so I can stop most of my momentum. What can also be fun is getting really fast and/or high up and then rolling into a ball and just seeing what happens when you hit something. The basic abilities you have are simple but provide you with a lot of options for moving around the world as you like.
You get various segments of the game that make you use the different mechanics, with most of them being super fun. There are more tight segments as well as wide open areas. There are multiple abilities you get that work to help you navigate the world. With these mechanics feeling very reliable. The player feeling confident in the mechanics is very important for making it a fun experience. Inconsistent mechanics are a big annoyance for me in games. And I almost never felt that here. The physics can feel a little wonky at times but for 98% of it I feel like the game worked as I understood it should. Which makes me feel more immersed in the game and have a better experience. Once you unlock all the mechanics it really feels like the world is at your fingertips. You feel like you can do so much. It’s really invigorating and kept making me want to play more. There were multiple times I took it slow or had trouble finding something, but it never really bothered me because I was still having fun just running around. It’s just fun to be in this world doing stuff.
Isopod does a great job at accommodating for different types of players. The game helps you navigate pretty well, giving you a map and arrows by your icon showing you what direction you are facing. This is especially important for someone like me who is not great at navigating and relies heavily on knowing what direction I am facing to use maps effectively. Without this, I would have gotten way more lost and frustrated. The game also gives you pillars of light that help you locate objectives in the world. I think maybe these could have been a bit brighter as sometimes I had a little trouble seeing them, but they get the job done and are helpful. The game also doesn’t force you to complete minor objectives that you don’t want to. There are a ton of collectables and currency you can collect but none you have to get. One of the objectives where you had multiple things to find did not make you have to get all of them, instead you have to get two thirds of them. If you want to do the rest in the moment you can, but if you just want to move on you can do that. The game gives you the opportunity to move through areas extremely fast, but it doesn’t mean you have to do that at all times. There is no timer outside of the races. Those can be genuinely challenging, but likewise you don’t have to do them. I am not much of a speed runner, but I am looking forward to taking more time to get the mechanics down better. I am also not a completionist, but the general gameplay is so fun that I will try to 100% the game. The necessary parts of the game never get super hard but do require you to up your skills and really think about what you are doing. It will take some trial and error, but to me it didn’t feel to an annoying degree. I think it struck a good balance.
Whether I am rolling around on the ground at high speeds, launching myself through the air, fighting enemies or exploring the world I am having a great time. The general gameplay of Isopod is absolutely excellent and super fun. And that is the main takeaway here that I want to convey. This is a simple game focused on providing a fun gameplay experience. And it succeeds at that very well.
But it is not truly perfect, so I can bring up some minor criticisms and other aspects of the game.
One very specific criticism I can make is that I think the canons in this game are actually a little too accurate. I don’t think I’ve ever faced an enemy canon in a video game that destroyed me like these do. They were hitting me midair sometimes and accurately predicting where I’d be for me to get hit after they fired. It didn’t truly ruin the experience as a whole as they were manageable, just obstacles that you had to take surprisingly seriously. Which at times was fun. But it did lead to one short moment in the game in which I genuinely stopped having fun and got annoyed. I am trying not to do many direct spoilers for gameplay segment, but the combination of multiple extremely accurate canons and infinitely spawning mobs in my opinion was a bit much. That ended up being frustrating rather than a fun challenge to me. But that is the only moment where I genuinely felt like losing was not my fault. There were various moments in the game that are more challenging but just needed more time or practice. My advice if you are struggling is to just slow down.
One aspect of the game that I can say is a minor disappointment is the ending. I won’t be super specific, but this will reveal a bit about the finale. The build up throughout the game as you make progress on the main story and get better abilities and skill as a player is great. The boss fights were solid, and each unique platforming section was really cool, especially the final one. But what happened is that I fought what I thought was going to be the pre-final boss (like how many games have a boss gauntlet before the final boss) but that was the actual final boss. And the game ending a few minutes after that. I don’t mind the game being short, and I thought that fight was fun. But I really think it could’ve used one more big moment. I thought we were going to end the game with a big climactic fight against a certain vehicle but that didn’t happen. It doesn’t ruin the game for me or make the ending totally suck, but it is a bit of a bummer. It is the one moment where I feel it should’ve been longer. But outside of that I think the game is fairly well paced and does a lot with its simple mechanics. I think there was room for a bit more exploration into these mechanics, but I am very happy with what I got.
To briefly talk about the topic of game length, the game is very short. I am not one for doing the sort of dollar cost to time ratio analysis that other people do when evaluating games. I think length and price are only two of many traits that can define the subjective quality of a game and should not be put above the other things. I will just leave you with the information that it took me about 5 hours to beat and costs $20. You interpret that information as you will. I have no qualms about paying that price for this experience. I still have a lot I want to do in the game like getting the collectables and racing, and I definitely will replay it from time to time. I can easily see myself tripling that time at least. It could have been more a little more complete of a package though, and I definitely would not have complained if I had more areas to run around in and bosses to fight though.
We would have to eventually talk about it directly, yes, this game is political. It is very much about class revolution, in line with Socialist ideologies of the working class needing to unite and rise up against the rich who intentionally abuse their workers and harm the environment in their pursuit of wealth. I don’t get too political unless it’s relevant and am not going to use this opportunity to preach my own beliefs other than that people should have robust human rights and be paid and treated better. The real reason to bring this up is to say that the politics of this game should not stop you from playing it. There’s nothing serious here, it’s just a fun game with a very basic plotline. The gameplay is the star of the show. The ideology is right in front of you, as is very clear by my screenshots, but there’s no lectures or anything like that. The conglomerate ants are comically evil in their capitalist endeavors.
The topic of politics in games has become extremely heated and in my opinion the idea of it being a problem is very overblown, especially the idea that this is a “modern thing”. Video games have always had political messages across the spectrum. Whether you can enjoy games depending on their politics is up to you. But I want to encourage y’all to not be so jumpy or polarizing when it comes to these things.
When it comes to this game: It is a goofy game, not a political drama. There are some absolute banger lines in here that are hilarious and hopefully remind a potentially disgruntled player who doesn’t like woke bugs that they don’t need to take this that seriously.
I like the very simple story they tell here. It is effective in giving the bugs a world to live in and objective to follow. Even if you don’t agree with the ideology, I think you can enjoy it. The Conglomerate is so evil that I think everyone should agree you are very much in the right and doing what needs to be done.
You interpret media how you want; I’m all about our differences in perspectives and opinions. I’m just sharing mine. Which includes that these bugs are pretty based. Also there are gay ants, good for them.
To conclude, Isopod is a great short and sweet indie game with super fun gameplay. It has a solid world, simple but functional story, and generally polished and well utilized mechanics. Though there are some minor pain points. It gets a big thumbs up and recommendation from me. If you like 3D platformers/adventure games and don’t mind it being short and literally buggy, I highly recommend you give it a try. I hope the price tag or the politics of these bugs will not prevent you from experiencing how fun this game is. This feels like a shining example of what indie games should be.
I am looking forward to the next game from Sbug games, I want more games where you play as bugs. I like Isopod better than Webbed, but I have had some fun with that game too. I have not beaten it yet though. Consider checking it out if you are open to more of a puzzle-based platformers with fun spider inspired mechanics. It’s not my cup of tea the way Webbed is, but once I got through some parts my smooth brain (when it comes to puzzles) struggled with, I started having a lot of fun with it again. Thanks for reading!
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