Clumsy Bear Studio takes a healthy pinch of British and Irish folklore to concoct its unique card-based adventure game Hungry Horrors.
It’s always fun to see a turn-based fighting system get thrown a curveball, and in Hungry Horrors, it’s a deceptively simple change. Instead of attacking your foes, you feed them. Yes, in this pixel art adventure, your attacks are meals, and your card-based options are ingredients.
The game begins in a dungeon, where the Princess has just awoken. Seeking a way out, she comes across a purple-eyed cat in a cage, who, it turns out, can talk, revealing her name to be Lady Catherine. Our newfound feline friend offers a way out.
Soon enough, we meet our first monster, a heavily mustachioed redcap, and Lady Catherine warns us it’s hungry, and then instructs us to cook for the critter. Now armed with some basic ingredients and a cauldron to mix them in, the Princess must choose from those ingredients drawn as cards to create a tasty treat for the knife-wielding creature blocking her way.
The encounter boils down to this. There’s a hunger bar, which is sort of like reverse hitpoints. You need to fill it up to nourish your foe and avoid becoming its alternate meal as it draws closer each turn. Each card has a hunger value that will help fill the enemy’s stomach. Simple pottage is worth one, whereas pickled onions are worth four.
Hungry Horrors Early Access Gives a Taste of Adventure
Different enemies will have different preferences, marked on the cards as you play them. So while certain cards might fillthem up more, they might prefer something lesser. But by feeding certain foods to an enemy, you can invoke a craving. In the case of this initial fight, if you feed the redcap pickled onions, it will begin craving salty foods.
That craving bonus boosts foods with that value, so here, that means a batch of salted roast potatoes will fill double the value it normally would.
I like cooking in real life because I can try out different things to create tailored versions of long-established dishes. That’s part of what makes Hungry Horrors work for me. A knowledge of cooking isn’t necessary, but it certainly adds a bit of extra flavor to the card-based combat.
The other refreshing quality that got me onside with Hungry Horrors is its British and Irish backdrop. The environments and monsters take heavy inspiration from the locations and legends of our shores. This version of the game already has a variety of biomes, and each brings fresh monster challenges to test your culinary card-dealing.
The humor could do with a little tweaking. The often dark comedy has its moments, but some of it lacks the snarling sizzle it needs to stand up to the rest. The twee pixel art style is great for pulling the rug of expectations out from under you, but there are times the game can’t seem to decide which tone should dominate.
In its Early Access form, Hungry Horrors currently includes Act 1 of the story, five playable biomes, core progression systems, and a selection of folklore Horrors and dishes. As early Access continues, the small, self-funded team aims to add more mechanics, features, creatures, and dishes.
What’s on offer in the Early Access version is just enough to satisfy my roguelike cravings, with tasty monster designs, and a novel twist on the card-based adventure.
Hungry Horrors Early Access code provided by the publisher.
Hungry Horrors is available now on Steam Early Access.
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