Ever fancied dispatching creatures of British folklore using traditional recipes? Hungry Horrors has you covered.
As someone rather familiar with deckbuilding roguelites around here, I was already happy enough to take a look at the Early Access release of Hungry Horrors. Adding folk horror creatures from British history makes it even more appealing. Throw in classic food and you’re onto a winner. Have you seen that Vince McMahon meme of him becoming increasingly interested in something? That’s me with Hungry Horrors, but with far fewer problematic attitudes.
The lovely Dann took a look at the demo for Hungry Horrors and found it quite engaging, although somewhat mechanically familiar to other games in the genre, and having had a longer look at the game I think I agree to an extent. On a purely gameplay level, this isn’t all that different to a lot of deckbuilders. You’ll move from room to room, defeating enemies with an ever more effective deck of cards before eventually failing and returning to the start with more experience and access to a greater range of cards for your next attempt. Hungry Horrors absolutely slathers theme onto the mechanics though, and even introduces an interesting combo system that requires mastering to be most successful.
You play as a princess that finds her land cursed by ravenous hunger amongst the monsters that reside there. Being a princess, you’re obviously far too important to bother yourself with this nonsense, but unfortunately you find yourself in possession of a magical cauldron that will cook the food needed to sate these beasts. Who bestowed this curse? Why are you the chosen one? Where is your dashing prince? The plot progresses, filling in these blanks with a dash of light humour and irreverence along the way.
As you move from room to room, you’ll come up against horrors that you’ll need to satiate with food. Unlike other deckbuilders, you only get to play one card per turn, and you’re under a time limit as the monster will approach you most turns. If they reach you, you lose immediately. Occasionally they’ll heal themselves or directly attack you causing stamina damage, which will also result in your loss should it run out. What’s interesting is that on your turn you can choose to feed a monster to fill its hunger meter, or feed yourself to recover stamina. There’s a neat little bit of forward planning involved, as you may want to heal for the next battle at the risk of your current one going awry.
There are a lot of different foods, and each one falls into a category such as salty or bitter. Feeding a monster a meal will make them crave another category of meal, and should you satisfy that craving you’ll increase their hunger bar faster. The trick to winning is having a deck that allows you to build ever longer combos, filling that hunger bar as quickly as possible. It does mean that the start of any battle is a little on the slow side as you build up that combo, but it’s very enjoyable to see those numbers rocket up all of a sudden. Break the combo chain though, and you’ll be in trouble.
A few curveballs can impact this though. Monsters like and dislike certain meals. If they dislike one, it’ll score zero but you can maintain your combo, and if they love a meal it’ll be worth double, triple, or more! The real problem is if they hate a meal. This causes them to vomit back up meals from the previous combo, massively reducing the hunger bar and putting you in a really difficult position, often resulting in a loss. The obvious thing to do is not feed a monster something they hate, but this is very tricky as you don’t know a monster’s likes and dislikes until you’ve fed them a meal. I had more than a few runs where I’d reach a boss of a region only to be sent right back to the start because I didn’t know that it hated a meal and lost suddenly. It was quite frustrating, as I couldn’t find a way to learn without fighting them other than with an occasional character that would allow you to spend resources to test meals out. I suppose it leans into that “learning the game through failure” element. It didn’t feel like I’d failed through my poorly constructed deck or bad decisions though.
Something I really liked though was the presentation. The art is absolutely gorgeous, and the animation that goes with it is really impressive. I like that the horrors each give you a unique death animation too. It’s nothing gruesome, but one would fling you into your own cauldron, whilst another would gobble you up with its long tongue. This is nothing on Henry Taylor’s soundtrack though, which is incredibly good. Subtle in places, loud and blaring in others, but always with a bouncy and upbeat feel. I legitimately asked people to come and listen to the menu music as it was such a banger.
Hungry Horrors is a solid deckbuilder with an excellent theme and presentation. It’s a genre I occasionally feel burned out on, but this is one that I’m always keen to have another run on. Considering it’s in Early Access, it feels mechanically complete, so I feel you could play it in its current state without feeling hard done by. The nerd in me liked learning about different British folk horrors too, which is done as you meet them on your journey. As a neat variation on the genre, Hungry Horrors is worth sinking your teeth into.
Hungry Horrors is available now on Steam Early Access.
