Anyone who proudly calls themselves a gamer must have given a spin not only to the over-hyped AAA-games, but also interesting indie projects. Lately, I’ve tried out a lot of different indie games, and I want to tell you more about one of them in particular, after all, the range of emotions I got from this game cannot be described in just a couple of minutes.
To be honest, I had been drawn to the indies from the realization that there’s nothing new to be expected from the modern AAA-games and big name studios. Many are sticking to their guns and milking the existing series, with the commerce machine spinning at full speed. $70-$80-$100 for a game, 2-3 separate battle passes, microtransactions, you name it, it’s there. After all, “game development is becoming more expensive” and the profit of the projects should correspond, and oftentimes the spreadsheet takes the place of the game’s soul.
This is where small studios arrive on the scene, sometimes showing off small indie games, sometimes quite large projects. Somehow, they manage without huge money for development, supplementing it with knowledge, experience, passion and aspirations to make a game FOR players, by players. Thus, to me, the future of gaming is in the hands of small studios that are not afraid to experiment, in the process creating something unique, something that would grab the attention of even sophisticated gamers.
This brings us to Fear and Hunger. Before starting the review, I want to warn you – the game contains a LOT of horror elements, dismemberment, blood, violence and everything that in everyday life should clearly be avoided. But now I have a question for you… “How far will you go to survive?”
Fear and Hunger is an incredibly dark JRPG, created by Miro Haverinen and his studio Happy Paintings on the ancient RPG Maker MV engine. This engine is easy to learn, so it was perfect for implementing what we will see in the game later.
And that includes a lot of things that cannot be called positive. Miro wrote the concept of the game together with its lore while still being in school (and by God, what was going on in his life that he came up with THIS). The game is extremely niche, but this was perhaps my most interesting gaming experience in recent times. Fear and Hunger is not for everyone, and the player is in for a severe test, but you will only realize the degree of cruelty in the process of the game.
Few games hate the player as much as Fear and Hunger does at times. Just imagine the game that brought you the most pain, and multiply it by 20. Gameplay-wise, the game is a mix of classic JRPG and survival horror with roguelike elements. This means that death is permanent, and random is absolute, all you can do is pray and figure out how to get out of the next pickle that you got into through carelessness or by accident.
At first, you will have to start over very often, for example, I died 30 times in the first three hours of the game and did not manage to advance very far. Fortunately, Fear and Hunger allows you to save the starting choice of the character and their backstory, so that you do not have to go through the introduction every time.
The game throws you into Hell in the first few hours, forcing you to relive the flashbacks from the first launch again and again, amplifying them tenfold, it infuriates and humiliates you, mercilessly pulling out your insides and stomping you into the ground. But once you understand its rules, you will begin to get an indescribable, albeit slightly masochistic, pleasure from it.
The overview of the game’s plot should begin with the Importance of gods in the world of Fear and Hunger. There are two types of Gods – Old and New. As comes from the name, the Ancients have appeared much earlier than the New ones, and have existed from the beginning of time in some kind of emptiness. At some point, out of sheer boredom, they decided to create everything around, including people. The Ancients created the City of Gods – Ma’habre, where they ruled from until a certain moment. At the moment of the game, many Gods physically left the world of people, but their echoes still influence reality. No one will tell us the exact number of gods, but there is information about those who are directly represented in the game.
Gorgaroth is a bloody God of destruction, war and death. His sole motivation for cruelty is humans being weak and weak-willed by nature, and as soon as they stop suffering, they begin to lead an idle and sinful life, fearing innovations and changes. In his opinion, destruction is a natural process that makes room for new generations, new shoots. Those who desire the power of destruction pay a considerable price, their bodies become weak and fragile, and it becomes very difficult for them to lift anything heavier than their limbs.
The second Ancient is the goddess of fertility and love, Sylvian. A striking opposite of Gorgaroth, she created humans and had an unhealthy love for them, which over time grew into an obsession. All rituals in her honor are associated with sexual intercourse, including orgies. Her magic affects the minds and bodies of allies and enemies.
The God of the Deep is one of the gods whose physical incarnation still remains in the world of humans. And all because she simply ate her fill and fell asleep in the depths of the dungeons. She is worshiped only by those who are forgotten and abandoned. It was the God of the Deep who created the dungeon of Fear and Hunger.
The Ascended, Almer, is a straight-up reference to Jesus. He wanted to turn the world upside down, for which he was crucified. But his suffering led to him ascending to the level of the Ancient Gods. Virgin mother, 12 apostles, Crucifixion and resurrection after 3 days and 3 nights included.
Afterward, he brought peace and justice (quite forcefully at that, too), freed his people from tyranny, erected a new world order and ordered his followers to spread it. His religion becomes the dominant one for the world of Fear and Hunger, although the religions of the Ancients have not disappeared anywhere.
Over time, the kingdoms became mired in the vice. And so the 5 heroes descended again into the City of Gods, Ma’habre, demanding from the Ancients the power to change the current situation in the world, to build the future with their own hands. But after passing the trials, one of the heroes realized that their entire path to becoming New Gods was another trap of the Ancients. After all, there were other heroes before them, and all of them gave only a temporary illusion of happiness and prosperity, and the cycle of New Gods was repeated again and again.
Each of the New Gods had a special soul. Together they created a new order, launching an era of prosperity, however … The era of darkness came again, and new heroes descended into the dungeons of Fear and Hunger. The rest of the details are really worth finding out in the game, because they are strongly tied to the plot endings.
The game features four difficulty levels, which affects the rate of decrease in sanity and satiety, the amount of HP of mobs and the darkness around the character. I don’t even want to look at the last difficulty, because the game is extremely unfriendly even on the first one.
Fear and Hunger is capable of causing a storm of negativity and frustration, but if you give it a chance, accepting that you will have to die often, the game will reveal an extremely fascinating side of exploring a gloomy world full of suffering and despair. In some ways it reminds me of Dark Souls, but much more harsh and cruel (and with a clearly-stated lore). You can die here at any time. No, not like that, ABSOLUTELY at any time, even while saving or searching through a bookcase, or getting a scratch from a bat and saying the wrong word to one of the NPCs, and the coin will add even more randomness to these actions.
At the start, we are given a choice of four characters, each with their own backstory, gameplay features, and the purpose for which they came to the dungeons of Fear and Hunger. All backstories are tied to the guy who is imprisoned in the dungeon in one way or another. For the knight, he is the commander she came to save, the barbarian wants to take revenge on him, the mercenary carries out an assignment related to the prisoner, and the dark priest is looking for knowledge that the prisoner may have, and so on.
The backstory can be changed in some details after choosing a character, which will affect his skills and starting equipment. The text prologue serves as an accompaniment to the choice of starting skills and items, on which it depends whether we can go beyond the second floor of the dungeon at all.
Additionally, different characters possess different special Souls, just like the four heroes of old that turned New Gods. Gameplay-wise, these Souls give our heroes special skills and ways to develop them.
In any case, you will find yourself in the courtyard of a prison built over ancient dungeons, the influence of which gives rise to all the horrors that will be encountered ahead. But for now, you are standing in a half-empty courtyard and the barking of dogs can be heard in the background. There is no time to hesitate, because the dogs will become the first gameover on your way with a 98% probability. Upon entering the dungeon, the player is immediately hit by pitch-black darkness, which affects the character’s sanity. Its influence can be reduced with the help of torches, the number of which is always much less than one would like to have.
Sanity is one of the basic needs of the character, in addition to hunger, and affects the perception of the world, the ability to cast spells and the acquisition of phobias. With zero sanity, the character gets panophobia – fear of everything, which complicates the already hardcore gameplay. Phobias increase the damage from the source of fear, so fear of everything and everyone leads to almost inevitable death. You can restore your sanity with the help of alcohol and smoking, which is also limited in the game. In general, there are always fewer consumables than needed, so resource management is an important part of the gameplay.
After going a little deeper into the dungeon, we are guaranteed to meet the first (if we managed to avoid dogs) real enemy: a mutated guard with distorted proportions, armed with a cleaver and, ahem, an extra appendage. This enemy presents the first way to check out the combat system and is a small test of whether you will go further, or delete the game forever after an inglorious defeat. In general, the combat looks like a regular turn-based one – opponents hit each other in turn and use abilities.
The main feature of the combat system is that most of the enemy’s limbs can be cut off, thereby weakening their attacks. For example, a guard – he has two arms, two legs, a head and the aforementioned extra appendage that can be cut off. It would be logical to cut off his head, but surprise! the enemy is not going to die, and is already aggressively waving all his remaining limbs in your direction.
In order to guarantee a win, you need to throw the guard off balance by damaging his legs, and only then cut off his head. In response, he will swing the cleaver (with the probability of cutting off a limb from the player character), the outgrowth, and from time to time the special attack, the outcome of which will be determined by a coin toss. More about it in the next section.
During combat, you can also try to talk to the enemy, use items, or try to run away. In some cases, talking will reveal details of the surrounding world, or simply lead to the death of the enemy. Fights are generally extremely undesirable, because their outcome is often lethal, and the reward is minimal, so you should try to avoid battles at all costs, or kill opponents faster than they can do anything.
The coin toss is the biggest pain, the source of hatred and the way to maintain replayability.
It is the coin flip that determines the success of some attacks, the loot received and the outcome of events. Even saving the game occurs by flipping a coin – in case of failure, a monster will come to you, in a fight with which you will most likely die.
Sometimes you can find a lucky coin, the number of which is strictly limited. It will allow you to make two throws at the same time. Which is still not a guarantee of successful completion of the test 🙂
True, sometimes the god of random can arrange funny or even unlikely situations. For example, I tried to figure out how the character dies in a clearing with rabbits, and 50 times in a row knocked out a successful completion of the test. And if you lose to the guard in battle, with some probability you will see not a gameover, but the next level, in which the character will end up with severed legs and extremely poor health.
In addition to Sanity, many factors affect the character’s well-being; here you can get many types of injuries, from light bleeding to infection with parasites. Some injuries can be treated with consumables, or, for example, by amputation if the situation is critical (you have to find a saw for amputation). Consumables can be found during exploration, or crafted, and some recipes will have to be searched for.
The hunger system will allow you to process a lot of things into calories; there is no tasteless food, there are simply people who aren’t brave enough to attempt digesting broken glass. Even Dirt (no, don’t ask what it’s made of) will lie in your inventory for a rainy day, waiting for you to eat it.
Sanity is analogous to mana, but it is spent not only on magic, sanity also falls with time spent in the dungeon. The lower the sanity, the more often your heroes will start to behave strangely, and when the bar drops to zero… You will get panophobia, the aforementioned fear of everything. And believe me – this is the worst thing for you, because being afraid of everything – you will receive more damage from everything. You can increase your sanity by knocking back alcohol, smoking and other actions.
I have probably told you about all the basic things in the game, the rest are worth studying by yourself, because the main emphasis in the game is on exploring the world around you and trying to overcome its challenges, moving further and deeper into the dungeons with every attempt.
The game has a huge number of little things, both lore and gameplay, which are really interesting to discover. Fear and Hunger perfectly combines the experience of the player and the character by exploring the unknown in the dark, so everything that happens is felt especially keenly.
Therefore, I strongly do not recommend watching guides on the first playthrough, this will kill part of the atmosphere and interest in the game. Learning how to properly manage resources in the condition of randomly receiving them is a great (if brutal) experience.
You will especially suffer from the lack of torches. A torch in this game is the main resource, without it you simply will not see where to go, leading to yet another gameover. And if you are unlucky enough not to find a stick and a rag … You are better off restarting the run completely. Spoke to the monster in the wrong way, and voila – your entire team is standing without arms and legs and there are still 5 floors of dungeons ahead…
Fear and Hunger has a lot of different endings, some are canonical, and to complete them you need to fulfill the main desires of our hero. Some are just standard bad endings, but some are very difficult to get. For example, to save an essentially useless girl, not to give her to the messenger of the Ancient God for murder and torture, to keep her alive until the very bottom and there, going into the belly of the Ancient Goddess of the dungeon, get one of several endings associated with her.
A little about the visuals and music.
There is not much music in the game, it complements what is happening on the screen and sets the mood, and perhaps that is all that can be said about it. Visually, the game looks unusual, memorable, and the design of some monsters seems to have come from the stories of Clive Barker or Lovecraft. There are tentacle monsters, and cultists, and huge chthonic horrors. The locations are also well drawn and unique, so the exploration does not get boring. You will have to visit bloody dungeons, where torture instruments are hung, and burial grounds, and dark caves, where the wrong move will cause a collapse and death…
Visuals and battles are memorable, the effects of enemies are not that abundant in sprites and movements, but those you see – you will remember for a long time. To sum it up, fear and hunger is like walking on hot coals, an extremely specific activity, but memorable, and bringing a certain pleasure if you get into what is happening. Therefore, I recommend at least getting acquainted with it, even if you close the game in anger after being defeated by the first guard.
