Fear and Hunger is one of the most unique projects I have ever encountered.
I stumbled upon this game through one small YouTube letsplay channel (all thanks to Riskrim) and it was a very pleasant surprise. Playing demo 4 turned me into very enthusiastic fan - the amount and quality of work that was done already showed incredible effort and passion author was putting into his project. For me, this game stood out not just by merit of its solid well-crafted style or interesting and innovative game-design alone, but because of what incredible composition they formed, made to complement and enhance one another.
I want to go through every aspect that impessed me the most and that i consider an important part in what makes this game so great and unique.
I) Immersion and atmosphere
Main theme.
For me, as a main source of motivation to engage with the game serves its theme – exploration of brutality, wickedness and perversion and extends of their growth through the context of the game. On its own it is a great selling point – it sums up all of the game’s features without directly revealing them, so player would know what to expect from the game without spoiling any crucial parts and it sets to challenge developer’s dedication and creativity, by providing wealthy basis for development of story and atmosphere.
In order to realize full potential of its theme game needs to create a coherent structure of narrative, worldbuilding and atmosphere and correctly incorporate every element into a perfectly tuned composition.
Worldbuilding.
Worldbuilding takes burden of explaining players why they should immerse in happening events by providing realistic picture of the world around them, it is a foundation that should establish rules and principles all other elements use as reference to correctly coexist with each other without compromising consistency of whole structure. Fear and Hunger achieves to create coherent, believable picture of large living world, embedded with nuances and hidden meanings on top of generally well-written and creative lore. From the surface level, game follows traditional dark fantasy formula by portraying hopeless and oppressive world, devoid of light or salvation, where brutality and wickedness run rampart and unobstructed by concepts of order or justice. In such settings, gods’ design usually is mitigated to the only purpose of accommodating the atmosphere, while narrative is focusing on mortal beings and ways how their relations and interactions with one another shape the world into the horrible place it is. Commonly there gods portrayed simply as individuals with power, instead of higher beings that serve special grander purpose, emphasizing hostile and inhospitable nature of the world by removing concepts associated with civility and humanism.
What surprised me was to see how game stepped forward from this structure by adding more complexity and depth to its celestial aspect. Fear and Hunger reverses the situation by implementing element of deeper and grander meaning into gods’ characters – it provides each one of them with unique significant role and focuses on their general development and incorporation into the narrative.
Huge role in incorporating gods into narrative plays their presentation – well-paced and gradual reveal of information helps to naturally translate complexity of their characters to players. Aside from that, a different approach towards exposition regarding mortal beings and gods serves even bigger purpose – through the subtle distinction in the ways worldbuilding addresses them game gains ability to manipulate players’ attention and use it to direct their focus and change the perspective. It is seen, that when talking about humans and other lower sentient races game incorporates “show less, leave more for imagination” formula – information about existing civilizations is extremely scarce, but overall state of their moral and humanistic degradation is clear and obvious. On the other hand, game shares extensive amount of details about gods, presenting as much information as realistically possible – it shines light on their meanings, their possible motivations and the rich story they have with the world. However, it remains presenting complete picture vague, even in a rare occasion of direct contact, managing to keep their actual identities a mystery and therefore extending this sense on overall feeling of the game. That approach achieves to avoid driving players’ attention from superficial ideas, instead shifting their focus towards exploring the nature of celestial beings and darkness they cause, rather than on results of their actions, what I think is essential for this aspect of the game.
Atmosphere.
While the worldbuilding serves as a basis for all other immersion-oriented aspects, the way game presents immediate information is what is doing central work on establishing proper mood and atmosphere to the player. A great game uses as much of its components as it can for that goal – from the visual and audio design to gameplay and lore, if everything works in a coherent composition with each other and chooses a complex enough theme as its core, as a result may come out a true masterpiece. With Fear and Hunger it is pretty much the case – aside from worldbuilding, that was already described, game uses its graphics, its audio and most of its gameplay elements with great success.
The art perfectly conveys depressing alienated atmosphere of the game through bleak grey tones of surface world and dark nightmarish scenery of anxiety inducing dungeon levels, emphasizing on gore, brutality and body horror in most intense moments. It is very well done on technical part and from stylistic standpoint ideally suits game’s mood. Character design forms its own sort of realistic style, with emphasis on crudeness and detalization in models, which helps to stand out its impressive variety of monster designs, that revolve around themes of nudity, mutilation and other unpleasant motifs.
Sound design is something that I, personally, haven’t heard in a very long time – general quality is astonishing and amount of specific implementations will uphold most demanding standard. Usage of ambient sounds is exceptionally creative and worth noting – playing various tricks on player, game achieves to create very unnerving paranoid atmosphere, always making sure to not let him relax even for a second.
However, with all regards to visual and audio design, what makes this game truly unique is gameplay, as through its mechanics it makes biggest impact by setting up most subtle, most complex and most powerful atmosphere-building components.
II) Gameplay
1. Combat mechanic
Segment-targeting system
The central gameplay component is combat. At its core, it is a result of natural progression of traditional turn-based fighting mechanic – a segment-targeting system. In my opinion, that system should become a standard for many genres of modern games, from pure action-oriented products to stat-based rpgs. Even by default, this system is pretty complex – it creates a prioritization mechanic by bringing difference in segment attacking efficiency and it provides very deep development potential through allowing implementation of almost limitless variety of unique sub-mechanics. In addition, it also positively affects other related mechanics, such as inventory, looting, health-maintaining system and others. Game very successfully utilizes this system right now – every enemy has distinct fighting style, which requires devising a special strategy to deal with and only in rare occasions enemies’ characters will appear as a single entity and not as a set of mutually related elements each with own role and purpose. It perfectly manages to fulfill the role of main combat mechanic and as an atmosphere-building component it is utilized very effectively on many different layers.
Talking
Second main in-combat mechanic is talking – main character is able to try to engage in conversation with the foe with the cost of an action. Every enemy has its own set of questions with different outcomes. This is not a novelty in turn-based games, but it is another great mechanic that I want to see used more in similarly styled rpgs, because it is a very effective tool in setting atmosphere and world-building, especially in a game with emphasis on such things. Currently this system is in a very raw state – while it allows a relatively diverse variety of actions to execute (receive information from enemy, get a new party member, calm down/confuse enemy for a limited amount of time or completely pacify the situation), it lacks actual weight that would make outcomes of these questions more effective. With all the criticism, this system is working well as it is right now. It is a great tool that provides additional world-building information and helpful hints for curious players, while from player’s perspective, using it is very interesting and rewarding.
Coin-toss
A significant importance in combat bears an element of random. In battle it is revolving around a coin toss “minigame” – a 50/50 winning chance luck test. Every enemy in the game, with a small exception, has its own special attack that charges during a battle and then applies itself after main action from the turn, initiating that minigame. It punishes player for failing by death and is implemented as a sort of parallel mechanic – it can be disabled by removing a corresponding limb from an enemy, but outside of that it stands separately from main combat system, ignoring important attributes such as strength, current health, ability to miss etc. From a grander perspective, it stops player’s skill from being the only factor that decides an outcome of a fight, representing chance and what may be player’s character could be interpreting as a chance because of their lack of understanding. The way it is applied in the game adds risk for player to lose everything even in an initially successful turn of events. In a result, this amps up tension inside and outside of combat immensely - it forces player to thoroughly think and consider before entering combat encounters, and puts colossal amount of weight on decision making during that combat.
Long-lasting consequences and player's treatment
From the outside perspective combat is utilized as an introductory tool and in continuous use as a primary mean of generating tension, being the main reason of player’s fear of interaction with the unknown.
The brutality and difficulty of the first combat establishes and promises to player what to expect from further game. It shows extreme hostility of the world he enters and teaches long-lasting consequences of engaging with danger. Firstly, realization of segment-targeting system on player’s character is made to accommodate that important principle of game’s design. In event of severe trauma characters lose their limbs, and logically - that event is very common in dungeons filled with terrible monsters. Loss of a limb is permanent (with small hints `of possibility to grow it back through alchemy mechanic, but for now it’s absent), as is its effect on gameplay, not mentioning a horror of seeing your character in decapitated state and realizing that it is unrevertable. Experiencing that first time was a powerful moment for me, thanks to the atmosphere I was immersed in process to associate with my character enough for the effect. I felt that range of emotions of a person that understands that he has lost something from his body and now has to live with it – a genuine panic, fear and existential horror.
Most important part in that plays presentation of game’s relation to the player, it is most prevalent here and runs through the rest of playing experience. What you can do to an enemy, how you can harm and mutilate them and how game indifferently treats that, in same way it is applied to player’s characters. That establishes not only game’s in general, but specifically its world’s relation to the player, building up feeling of alienation and hostility, signifying absence of any sort of empathy or special treatment. When your hand, head or leg cut off, interface’s only reaction is small prompt before immediate return to fighting, not even a reaction from a character – the way event presented as a commodity and its implications about world’s attitude towards you are powerful means of instilling uneasiness and tension.
2. Saving system
A person that didn’t play the game would wonder why death or dismemberment is such a big deal – just reload and replay fight until the perfect outcome. At this point comes central gameplay component that makes all others so effective – saving mechanic. In this game saving is implemented very interestingly: firstly, let’s talk about two different types of saving systems – in normal games and in rogue-likes.
The traditional system is known to all, it’s main goal is to accommodate long narrative-based process as a mean of going back after closing the game or game-ending event, such as failure or death. While its purpose is only to save progress for a player to be able to continue from last achieved point, it has created phenomena of abusing saving system and replaying dangerous encounters for perfect outcomes, supposedly not intended by developers. This is more relevant for turn-based or stat-based rpgs (i.e. savescumming in fallout), where the outcome is affected by random. This system’s main issue is that it ultimately fails to provide proper characterization and effect to specific situations and gameplay in general, by removing any stakes from risk-revolving aspects of the game and rendering them inconsequential.
The other system alters saving mechanic severely, building gameplay to revolve around it on several layers and lore to incorporate story and world in it. Instead of starting game over, death of a character treated as another step in continuous process of completion the game, with external progression implemented as most important component, usually through some ability/items unlocking or currency systems, for example you can take “Binding of Isaac” and “Enter the Gungeon” correspondingly. Since the point of that system is to accommodate cycle-oriented nature of the game, it gains means of implementing risk-revolving elements into the gameplay, but not to the extent of having them outside of cycles.
Progression
Fear and Hunger creates a hybrid of these two systems – firstly, it removes external progression completely – now death is absolute, there is nothing earned from dying except player’s experience. The in-session progression is focused more on consumables and some wearable inventory items – collected food and alcohol items are base resources for the fear and hunger management system, amount of healing items dictates your fighting capacity, various books open some range of abilities and actions and there is some variety of armor that gives damage reduction. There is no stat or level growth, winning in battle most of times gives you much less than it takes - currently there is only ONE sword in the game that deals drastically more damage that default one, and it’s not a reward for killing the strongest enemy. This always makes player to focus on an actual process thus making it more emotionally effective in result.
Specific saving implementation
Other, more important part is conventional absence of ability to save – there is no option in the menu, and, on a bigger scale, there is no game mechanic that is treated as supposed initial component of the game. There is an actual ability to save, but it’s made as more of a hidden mechanic then what actually expected to use as granted – it’s incorporated through a consumable item that gives a single-use ability to save and in addition moves character on next step of spiritual enlightenment. Both bonuses are given without any preliminary explanation and come up as a surprise for a player on first use, while second is not even completely clear in what it does after that. More importantly, reducing ability to save from being an initial important part of playing experience to being simply a reward – a small (but still significant) component in not a central part of the game, not only makes this reward extremely powerful, but also expresses that gameplay direction change to the player. Moreover, basing this system completely on a random emphasizes its inconsistent nature as a game mechanic, helping to solidify presented point in player’s mind.
What’s most important is how this influences playing experience – if any other horror game uses momentary scares based on sudden or subtle methods, Fear and Hunger manages to make whole experience a tension filled nightmare by making every encounter extremely dangerous and reworking saving system to the point of almost nonexistence. Game achieves to create a realism in gameplay from a psychological standpoint – it is truly horrifying to traverse dungeons knowing that there is nothing to stop you from losing everything, making smallest things gain tremendous effect, when even just a weird sound is enough to stop player in fear and tension. To generalize – a mechanical implementation of gameplay is built in rogue-like-oriented fashion, with heavy emphasis on random in larger parts of fighting, looting and saving mechanics, while from atmospheric and continuity standpoints game is focused on narrative progression and traditional treatment of main character’s story and role in the game. That exact composition of thoroughly built atmosphere and lore, enhanced by brutal and unforgiving gameplay is what I would describe as game’s identity.
IV) Conclusion
This is a cut down version of my analysis of this game, due to character limit i had to remove all critique, so it may appear weirdly written in some places. For those who might be interested i will put full version in official discord channel. Aside from that, my goal was to express why i considered the game so amazing and try to covince people to check out game for themselves as well as motivate developer to keep doing great job. I wholeheartedly believe that this project has all of the chances to become a next big thing in indie community and i wish it good luck.
Hi! I played v5.1 today and found this bugged wall. I thought you might want to know that. Btw, do you have any tips for the coin flip coincidence game feature? At the beginning I had a lucky hand but then the game always used the opposite side of the coin I chose. And, when the Dark Priest fights against monsters he is scared of, does it mean his rate of hitting the monster is lower?
Hey! Killswitch here. We have a discord channel if you want to join. We already have a list of known bugs and issues. If you need questions we'll answer them too! Helping you out with your questions...the coin toss is a 50/50 chance so you really dont have a choice. Although there was a pattern in Demo 4, anway Demo 5 introduces phobias. Certain phobias make the character weaker, or as you say make the accuracy rate lower.
For some reason, i cant hit the buff guys guys heads! So i end up dying in 2 seconds every playthrough. It might be a bug but if its meant to be in the game then why put the option to hit the head? Plz fix this :(
Hey! Hitting the head is instant kill, so of course it can't be that easy. In previous versions it was easier, but with v5 you have to first cut the legs of the guards to rock their balance. Then the head becomes vulnerable, with an icon indicating this.
You are right that the game doesn't inform this properly to newcomers. I still need to figure out how to give players tips about this new weakness system. Sorry if it felt too unfair. I know the game can be a little bit more difficult at places because of this new system, I'm still looking for better balance.
Have a dying survivor on th ground tell you some survival tips and some hints about rocking the balance of certain enemies. Or do a sparring seqeuence in the beginning of the game where you have each character spar with someone, (outlander and his tirbe chief/d'arce and the captain/mercenary and his bandit captain trainer/enki and his cult)
Yeah it's definitely a mechanic that needs to be explained.... Although in the upcoming version the chances of hitting the head are closer to the chances you had in the previous versions, before the weakness mechanic that is. So rocking the balance is just a guaranteed way to get that headshot, not the only way.
Hay Mirohaver, names Wallace so i've made a bunch of progress in the game but only because the Explosive Vial doesn't consume during battle, only for breaking crumbled walls. So I can throw a bunch at the enemies in one turn. Almost all of the special enemies are defeated through this glitch. I guess it's a V5 glitch.
My friend had his one experience, Chopping off the prison guard arm and then avoiding the instant kill grab causes a loop where the monster will infinitely "take a step closer". Happened 4 times at level 1. He also found a way to boundary break in level 3, all the black areas are walkable. Clipping into areas he shouldn't be.
Hey! You can call me just Miro :-D thanks for letting me know of the bugs and problems. The game is riddled with bugs at the moment. I'll try to put out more polished stuff later on. Again, thanks for the great feedback!
Thanks Miro, I have one more question. I was watching my friend stream yesterday and noticed that the guard had a yellow symbol over it's had after a few turns of battle. Does it mean the chances of hitting the head are more in the players favor or straight up guaranteed?
I can't wait for more, to be totally honest. I love the game and I am a little saddened at the fact that I can't continue playing because I feel like I already found everything there is to find. There are so many secrets which I cannot figure out since only the demo version is available. What's it about the path of mahabre? What can you do with the embryo (artificially created by the black liquid and blood), what about the pinecone? There are many more questions which make me excited for the full game. I hope in the next update I can find this out and figure out how to make my party bigger by more useful characters like the Highlander or the Mercenary.
My experience: 1) I love playing as the Dark Priest because of his necromacy although it frustrates me just more when the revival of the corpses doesn't work out.
2) The crow guy is a tough guy. I remember when I had a full party of the Dark Priest, 2 ghouls and the little girl, and the crow bit all their heads off except for the priest. I managed to kill it, but my party of 4 reduced itself to a one man army.
3) All the different endings and ways you can die are shocking and exciting. It really makes the game special as well. There is so much detail to the game.
Please keep up the great work! Can't wait for the final result :)
Sounds like you've really experienced a lot of the content available!! I always love hearing about people's experiences with the game. Pretty epic victory over the Crow Mauler. Thanks a lot for the nice words!
Hmm.. This sounds troublesome :-/ The game is heavier than your typical RPG Maker games, because there are tons of processes running all the time. That said, the game definitely needs some optimization work done. Hopefully I can find a solution to this.
Hmmm. This is really unfortunate! I can try to look into optimizing some things, but I'm not sure if it's gonna help a lot in the end. My own laptop isn't very powerful and I don't experience any lag, so I wonder what kind of hardware you have?
Also might want to balance out the game too when you get it polished. I do like difficult, but it might need balance with the chance system and combat.
Yo Microhaver! Have any idea how much more time until the demo version 5? I'm not putting pressure on you or anything, some of my buddies wants to know. Thanks!
I find the lack of audio disturbing, but watched it anyway. I usually don't go for the head after hacking off enemie's limb with weapon - the fail chance is too high and you can get hit by enemy on the 2nd turn, i use kiting which i described in your comment section.
Other than that, keep going! You have to start somewhere)
HUGE SPOILER ALERT! DON'T READ BELOW UNLESS YOU REALLY WANT TO.
Ok, I will have one more runa little bit later, but, for now, I'd like to express my emotions and make a few statements. Miro, if you would decide to read the things below, please note - I do not doubt your competence as a game developer, these are my personal opinions and they may be completely ignored.
First of all, Marksmanship skill for Outlander. Nerf it. Enemy Instakills ruin the difficuilty too much. Make them move really slow instead, like they do when they fall for the bear trap in addition to losing one of their limbs.
Second of all, the crude sword that is dropped by lizards. Its ridiculous damage is unhindered by accuracy, so there is no reason to not use it as the main weapon (apart from losing one of the arms). Add a minor accuracy penalty to it. As for the claymore that is given to you by the Pocketcat, i have no issue with it because of the dangerous bargain invonlved, so there is no need to change it in any way.
Third of all, I think this game needs a vendor of sort. The RNG here is just too goddamn unfair sometimes. I'd suggest the creation of an NPC on the 3'rd level (the prisons are too empty anyway) that can give you 1 needed item in exchange for 5 other. His item list excludes: opium powder (the trader near the altar of darkness sells it), cooked food, iron arrows (the trader near the altar sells it), books of any kind (we have Pocket Cat for that), whiskey (strong mind-restorative that is unfair to be given in such a way, ale is fine though), weapons of any kind, competent armor (trash armor is fine, but it must be allowed to be usable in trading), any kind of liquid that can be obtained by filling the glass vial (glass vials themselves should be allowed, though) and no explosive vials too.
Lastly, i'd like to talk about bosses. In the current version, they are too inclined to be DPS races - all you need to do is compile 4 party members and hack away at the torso. With a few exceptions, bosses here are too straightforward - hacking Salmonsnake's limbs off is not as reliable as an all-out attack on the torso (thanks to the overpowered crude sword), same for the cavemother, the head of the wizard is made only to give exposition and to be ran away from with no second encounter and the Crowmauler, oh the Crowmauler, was too disappointing for me.
Maybe that's my problem, but for a guy that is first introduced as this game's pyramidhead, he just didn't live up to my expectations: hacked off his arm and DPSed his torso till he fell. He should be causing the main character hysteria just by being in your sight, teleporting behind you if you ever start to outrun him like he was in the tattered note and, should one decide to face him in battle and not escaping on the first turn (that can easily fail), unleash myriad of debuffs coupled with weak AoE attack to give you slow and painfull death.
The solution for others? Make their torsos' defence much higher and decrease it for a certain percent for each limb hacked off.
For the Salmonsnake specifically - leave its limb attack spams as they are now, but introduce some sort of gimmick to give a player the ability to stop their actions without dismemberment. For example - now, destroying the eye seems to lower the accuracy of attacks for a bit, but it can be made a little bit more interesting - destroying the eye will actually make a battle harder, as opposed to saving, as in doing so you lose the ability to throw a red vial into it and to make it's limbs to do"tries to clean the eye" action for a few turns instead.
As for the Cavemother, the main issue that prevents the player from aproaching the battle carefully is "One Tooth Peck" (uh... sorry, can't remember the exact name) attack - instant limb loss is just too unfair. Make it use this attack only when its breasts are cut off - that way the player will be stimulated to act more strategically by having to pay attention to weak but tolerable cavegnomes.
Whew, that's a lot to read through. Despite the above, traversing the game was really fun. Can't wait to know more... What is the reason the new gods entered the dungeons of fear and hunger? Who is the God of Depth and is he in any way connected to the fifth member of the fellowship? Will Norasmus open up to us and tell what his role in this madness is? And finally, what is the purpose of the girl in this mess?
Man, i hate waiting) But, in the end, it will all be worth it...
I have to totally agree with you on that one, most of your suggestions or as I like to call it "constructive critiscm", are mostly the ones I was gonna ask about. All that lore and the backstory Miro put into the game does mean he/or she is passionate about this "project" but as he said before, he has to deal with his real life situations before he/or she can get to this. Oh and one more thing to add on the table, maybe make the scrolls as a temporary save, or some sort of scroll where you sort of "embed" your memories in the scroll for the time being. I understand how the save oppurtunities are really rare and you have to sacrafice alot for even one slot. Maybe make that save option avalible for a certain time or something. And if you get the chance to add this on steam, give me a free copy ;D
Personally, I don't mind the current save system, as the acqurement of the Book of Enlightment allows to make the game easier if used strategically. For example, getting to Nosramus and using it there as soon as you arrive allows you to generate necronomicons, books of forgotten memories and even light blue potion vials for more convenience.
Also, Kill_Switch-X, may i ask you a favour? Could you write here what your encounter with the book "Passage of Ma'Habre" was like if you ever encounter one? I used it once but i didn't manage to get a good grasp at the location due to the time limit and i have problems generating the book, even by using save-scumming. I really want to know whether it is randomly generated, whether battling spider-torso is worth it and if that place has a boss to beat.
Sure, i first got the passage of Ma'Habre when I wa splaying as the Mercenary, thinking it was just the book Ma'Habere, I didn't think too much about it. When I realized it was a special book, I read it and I got transported to the Ancient City of Ma'Habere. The New Gods spoke to me about how I was gonna be chosen and stuff and i was on my way. I walked around and looted abunch of goodies from the urns and crates. Then I saw that creepy dead spider-person [I later was looking in local files and saw that apparently you can encounter a live one]. I didn't make it that far due to the time limit but I ended up looting those two chests, I did get it twice and just now when I'm playing too, well I usually always get it if I make the coin flip in one of the bookshelfs in the catacombs library, where I'm struggling to recruit the dark priest. Sometimes I belive pocketcat has it
Might be the same as the Altar of darkness - sacrificing party members to it gives nothing in return and praying to the God Of Depth gives no benefit either. Malevolent creatures don't really like to share, it seems. That makes me think - perhaps the Old Gods chose to be unresponsive to humans BECAUSE they stopped making actual requests to them and the new gods, while being presented as the heralds of salvation, provide no actual help at all as they have no wish to squander their newly acquired godly powers.
Also, thanks for the feedback, i'll make a mercenary and try to study the Ma'Habre's layout - I'll try to go deeper ignoring all the chests and barrels and see what it has to offer.
Okay first of all, Fed, I'm really grateful for the time you've spent on the game and the interest you've shown. Reading through your texts has given me a lot to think about.
People got every right to question my competence as a game developer (even if you said that you didn't) because I do a lot of things out of a whim and just for the sake of having some traditional game design breaking elements haha :D And also my game development is very reliant on the feedback I get from you guys. I just throw things together the best way I see fit, without that much game testing, and see what comes out of it. I'm sure every professional game developer would just shake their head if they saw me working on this :D
I'll take your points with Crude sword and Marksmanship and tweak those. As for the vendor - There's probably going to be an option at the beginning of the game where you get to choose an item or another goodie to start the game with. Kinda similar as in Dark Souls. This way the player can strategize a little bit more at the character select screen. Another vendor or something would be good too. You are right that the cells are a little bit too empty as they are now.
Finally, that's some really good insight about the bosses. I'm considering everything you said seriously. Especially the Crow Mauler. He was supposed to be more fleshed out, but I had to nerf some of my plans to get the demo out.
Well, I wouldn't be writing if i wasn't sure that the message would get to you)
Kinda ironic, really - there are a ton of people making bright, colorful games with good morals who turn out to be complete jerks to their audiences, and the person whose creation is a vile, nihilistic and unforgiving experience turns out to be on the good side of spectrum. Life is too goddamn peculiar sometimes...
soooo um eventually i got the knight but i ran into a few problems immeditaley, first of all. The knight was still being attacked by a dead cave dweller, and when I thought it was bugged and left, the dead dweller on the ground somehow glided out of the map, and the frozen cave dweller on the right i had to fight again with its arm cut out, but it really iffed me because once i recruited the knight, i only had 8 hp left and when I died, the game was over, and no book of enlightment in that game session=perma-death/ another few hours of grinding.
My, you are a master at sequence breaking). Personally, i had no problem with these guys - as soon as I aproached the right one ran away (might be due to me having girl and moonless in party), so i just bumped into the one who was attacking and did the battle. After that, the Knight was standing there in her idle animation and after i asked her about "what god do you believe in", the option to recruit the party member appeared (i have to note here that i did pray to All-mer, her god of choice, 3 times before that encounter).
Also, i think you wanted to know where you can get light blue vials. The recipe appeared after i read Alchemilla vol. 2. Although Neco admitted before that vol. 2 is the same as vol.1, i did get 3 recepies other than given by the vol. 1 even though the text was the same. To create one you need 2 blue vials and it heals for 80 hp instead of blue vial's 20. If you haven't encountered the recipe for it in first-floor library, you might wanna check Nosramus - the guy that is protected by spectral knight. He has 2 boookshelves where you can potentially get Alchemilla vol. 2, or even the light blue potion itself on the potion shelf or by checking the pile of bottles near the locked chest. Beware though - the escape chance from spectral knight (both of them) is lower that usual, so kiting him (the one that is lying on the altar) is not reliable. However, the battle becomes pathetically easy if you use an explosive vial.
i found an easier way to get an light blue vial just a few hours ago, [and i beat the game too]. I decided to talk to some of the random mobs around the map, and I learned at least one interesting thing: Instead of fighting Tortur (can't remember name), talk to him first thing in battle and sell out the buckman that's hiding in it's cell, thne you get the key from him and a light blue vial, what a good deal.
I have a feeling that it has something to do with either cavemother's egg or creating a fetus (logically, i suggest praying to Gro-Goroth too). I'll try to do that a bit later.
So, Kill_Switch-X was wondering earlier if showing love at the altar is possible. Well, had a run not so long ago with my outlander and managed to recruit the Knight. What happened at the altar after i chose the option was... unexpected. I wonder if i should've given it my name, though)))
Oh yeah, that ladder was unclimbable for me when I was playing as the dark priest. The room that is shown in the picture is the one you get in when you fail a coin throw and fall down the hole.
Hi, I'm here to reporting a bug I found in the game.
SPOILER ALERT:
I used the explosive vials in one of the fallen fortress near the entrance. This is the area with two fallen fortress near the entrance. I tried to enter the area, but I can't even go to the left. For some reason, there is an invisible wall on that left area which makes me uncapable to procees. I'm curious if I'm the only one with this issue.
Encountered the same problem recently on that rubble pile too. Tried the vial on the nearby rubble pile (the one in front of the starting point) and found out what the issue is - the tiny smoke animation appears to be the part of the event, so it is counted as an unpassable tile. Simple solution - move that "rubble" event down one tile. In case Miro would like to make smoke animation passable, I'd suggest him to make it a separate, "move through tiles" event.
Ok, finally got my hands on the new version. Still having a blast as I was half a year ago. Well, can't say anything new here - after all, the aspects of the game i've mentioned in the comment below are all still there (although, apparently, my excitement towards the resemblance of most dead bodies towards the main character hold true no more due to the introduction of new starting classes), so I'm gonna list some events I've encountered.
1. The Mercenary's sprite becomes invisible after he reemerges from the gore pile. Sometimes. Sometimes the animation of emerging plays as usual and the game goes on as intended, but sometimes, no animation is played and the character appears invisible. The game still functions normally, though. The same didn't happen with other characters for me.
2. The corner tiles on the 3rd level (prisons) are passable - as far as my experience with RPG maker goes, you have forgotten to set these tilemaps to untraversable.
3. Cavegnomes on level 3 can pass through prison bars. Due to the nature of the "pass through tiles" event property, I'd suggest the replacement of the Cavegnomes AI: make them spawn and roam above the black void with the event on, but as soon as they see a player, they, after a 1 second delay, rush to the tile coordinate that the player was spotted on with a speed of 6 (sorry, RPGMXP user here, don't know about other versions). Just as they reach that tile, switch "pass through tiles" off and let them chase you the same way they do now.
4. Ok, so I was recently playing with my Mercenary and decided to sacrifice the girl at the altar. I was given the "Summon blood golem" spell, which i used in the battle against lone dark priest. After winning the battle, i've tried to re-summon the golem again, this time in the encounter with 2 other dark priests. However, after i used the skill the game consumed my HP but refised to summon the blood golem, telling me that "He was already in the party", although he definitely wasn't.
That's it for now, i guess. I'll continue playing and tell if i encounter something else worth mentioning.
Awesome! Thank for the feedback! I'll do something about the bugs mentioned here. I must say your original theory about the resemblance of the corpses was so good that I considered it myself. But multiple characters was my initial concept of the game, so I decided to roll with it.
I'm glad you caught the reference! You're the first one to mention it :D Silent Hill is a big influence on this project.
V4 Seems to be a bit, super fast, if not 2x or 3x faster than what I'd expect - text, movement and top-screen dialogue move at alarming speeds and I'm unaware of how I can slow it down since there's no options menu to increase/decrease it - is this a bug? Seems too fast than what I'm used to from the last version.
Also, bugs found: Defeating a Skeletal monk that has 2 of them fight you, the 2nd Skeletal monk dies when you win the 1st fight? Intentional? Both NPC units died but 1 was left standing upright, but upon using an action key on the enemy, it was a dead body, yet stood.
- Alchemillia Vol1 and 2 are the same and are both Vol1
Hi!! It's definitely not intended to go any faster. It's a bug that was already present in the previous version. The framerate is tied to your monitor's screen refresh rate I belive. Or so I was told. I'm guessing your monitor has 144hz refresh rate?
I just recently discovered this and I have yet to get a solution.
EDIT: I uploaded a version with a tweak. I'm not sure if it fixes the issue though, because I don't have any extra monitors :P I'll have to ask around and confirm this. Sorry for the trouble man! D:
EDIT2: the new download should be okay. At least the animator of the game said his game is running at correct speed now (he had the same problem)
Huh, it seems plowing through miriad of copycats and lazy-ass creators CAN lead to something interesting...
There i was, sitting my day off, looking for a game to bash on in the comment section of the Neco's channel, decided to take a peek at the first part of that game's let's play and... got myself unusually enthralled by this wonderfull game.
This is the part where many might say: "Oh, come on! It's just a small, buggy RPG maker horror demo. Yeah, it looks preety, but it lives on the carcass of trial and error gameplay, try playing THAT for more than a couple of hours!" And, indeed, they will be right. This beast really is hard to handle for the hands of normal gamers for the reason of it's savage nature towards player - win'or'lose coin flips that can potentially decimate the otherwise lucky run, enemy attacks and no-escape-trap-rooms that can do the same, constant reliance on luck in terms of getting restorative items and overall chaotic structure of the gameworld rules are to blame.
The thing is... It all works in the end, at least for me. Yeah, these gamedesign decisions are usually pointed as flaws, but here, they are actually really good supplements to the main source of fun in this game, all thanks to these aspects of narrative:
1. Subtlety is strong in this one - the amount of death-screens one will face is reflected onto the game's world - notice, how almost every corpse you find has a strong resemblance to your own sprite, how every ghoul enemy pleads for death if intimidated all while wearing your distorted face, how, after failing "the save throw", you, completely decimated, can end up in the dungeon full of what looks like copies of yourself. Also, every book you read is dictated to you bo some sort of narrator, who actually tries to convince you that it is what YOU think, without any way to confirm the information yourself... As if the Mercenary (the hero of the game) is nothing but a fragile shell, manipulated into doing what the unknown entity wants.
2. The overall mocking attitude of the game towards the player. So, you want to jump down the hole into the fecal pit? Sure, go ahead. Ooops, you can't get out now. Oh, you've won the coin flip? Here take this book that you already have. My my, you grew confindent enough to engage every enemy on the level? Oh, you've missed once and now you're dead, what a pity! Yeah, this game tries to pull out the rug under your feet, but does so to a certain extend. Breezing through the demo without major loses is very much possible, and is actually satisfying - being able to counter every bullshit the game throws at you makes you switch sides - you become the one mocking the game.
3. Interesting approaches to decision-making. Although few due to the game's shortness, there were some moments that made me really satisfied from the sheer ambiguosity they present. The most notable example is this - at some point, you will be given the option to trade your party-member for some sort of probable benefit. You can get a weapon, and it is really powerfull... in theory. In the end, you are left without a reliable way to dispose of Guard enemies by trading an additional life-saving attack, as said weapon won't kill them outright, and, despite it's much bigger damage, you will still have to rely on dismemberment in order to not die in 1 hit. And you soon find out that your standart sword is as efficient at dismembement as that overkill weapon. Plus, you get it at the end of the demo. Haw, haw!
These three points alone are enough to hook me up on this game and to stay hopefull for it's eventuall full release. This may very well turn out to be the new Witch's house, Mogeko Castle, Middens or Ib and become the first one with the most complex gameplay so far. My hopes are high for this game, and i really wish for it to become more than a demo.
Anyone curiously stumbling on this page should definitely give this game a go - It's punishing like Dark Souls, Darkest Dungeon and has deep lore and difficult but addicting combat - If you like dark indie horror RPG's? You owe it to yourself to play this - I of course can't wait for more content :P I was able to painfully learn the ways of the game that was at first, very punishing, then learning the ropes until I could simply destroy all the Teaser-version enemies - (Can't say I'll be as confident with New enemies that have abilities and deadly attacks that I won't be aware of) - Every new enemy and situation is a new danger that can lead to an untimely death.
-My friend. This game is far too explicit. I understand how the game is for a mature audience only, but the things in this game just takes things too far. Aside from the 'satanic' pentagram (which despite the setting still seems like it was thrown in from out of nowhere) you have to remember that in today's day and age, people are extremely squimish with content that depicts any form of rape (even if attempted or implied) sexual gore, and heavy violence.
People might not really be willing to pay to experience something that is too heavy and explicit for them to take part in. For example: feces or visuals depicting this is something that might have players shut the game off and ask for refunds, not neccessarily say 'cool this is fun' Also semen is something that is kinda gross, no? I take it this was not ment to be an errotica game? Then since its not the right place at all for it, many are going to be severely grossed out by this. With the #MeToo movement, you have to know that people in this day and age are stand offish towards anything that involve mistreatment and cruelty such as this.
With that being said, it is very hard to advertise your game because of all this heavy content within it, I had to search to discover this very telling review after coming across F&H from a John Wolfe video showcase. You must include all of this disclaimer on the page (as in actually tell users all the explicit content that could be found in the game, besides just simply 'violent sexual conent' because that could mean anything) which in this case would mean chopped genitals and mass orgies.
I think if the content was massively cleaned up to remove any form of 'rape' or 'gross orgies' feces, and then at least include a save game system, in where a save can be done, this will help at least make it something that players can enjoy playing. With that there are multiple classes that kinda are too similar, such as the mercenaries. I see the outlander and the knight are basically warrior classes, so it really doesn't seem like there's a diffference.
-The thief should be more stealthy and faster, and use a dagger; has less damage, but the enemy misses them often. -The warrior should be stronger (doing more damage) and might be a tad slower. -The archer should use a bow, and perhaps be versitile, using both a sword short and the arrows (give them like the perk to find more perjectiles then the other races, that gives them value and makes the player feel like they are playing the archer role) And of course, make it so that the player can choice different looks and sex (play male or female) change eye color, skin tone. This makes me feel like I'm more in the game.
Also I do apologize for this HUGE writing, I just do like the game. With that being said, I do think that the game is too linier, and would make a better open-world game, then a dungeon crawler (you could still incorporate both into the game) then you can add much, much more content to the game, and give it a whole world that the player can explore. Make it so that outfits can be changed; when the player changes gear it can be seeen in their avatar.
I think having a 'legal' (it's gotta be consensual, come on now bud! :/ ) relationship system is something that would be awesome! Like if the player meets a party member, they have an afinity system. Then THAT way, if you want to include a sex scene that the player can physically see, it would make much more sense and they would feel more attachment to their team members.
That way the survival element becomes much more important, then the screw it i'm gonna just die here anyway, now the main chracter is gunna try to survive much more since they care about the people in their party.
I really do hope that you take all these things into consideration, it would really be an epic thing to see. :)
I completely disagree. The game is exactly explicit enough. Telling Fear and Hunger to be less explicit is like telling a slasher flick to have less boobs and teenager death. The whole point of this game is that it depicts a world that's neck deep in blood sh*t and other horrible bodily fluids -humans and less than humans at their most animalistic and depraved. Terrible things will happen. The Gods are uncaring and will not save you from excruciating suffering. Heck they'll probably add to it. That is the point of this game.
-Pentagrams are not 'thrown in out of nowhere' -the dungeon is full of lunatic cult members that will gut you and draw rituals on the floor with your blood. It's perfectly at home there. -People of "today's day and age" who are offended by disturbing themes and sexual violence should not play a game that heavily markets itself as being full of disturbing themes and sexual violence. If you hate apples do not buy an apple pie and then complain about apples being in it.
Also the #MeToo movement has nothing to do with this game, any less than the gun control movement should affect games like Fortnite. Sexual assault of any woman or man is wrong and should be pursued to the fullest extent of the law. Telling a game developer that they shouldn't depict fictional crimes or violence is lunacy. If you are equating the rape of a pixeled video game character to the sexual abuse of real life women then the problem is not with the developer, but you.
This game was made for people who want to play a difficult filthy medieval rogue-like full of gore and brutality, not for people who think 'feces is too gross' and "let's keep it consensual, bud". By changing it or removing these harsh elements they are moving away from their target audience in favor of trying to appeal to people who would not like the core themes of the game anyway no matter how watered down it got. If this game were to be "cleaned up" as you say then most of the lore, environments, monsters, and story of the game would end up changed or just gone and it would end with it looking like literally any other dungeon rogue-like, too afraid to be shocking in case someone didn't like what they saw. And there are many people out there who will take issue with nearly everything. This game did what it set out to do, and it stands out from many other games right now because of that. I cannot imagine this game being able to keep the developer's vision had this been done by a AAA game publisher or even an Indie Studio.
Any way, the game is rough, bug-ridden, and makes me stressed -but I'm glad I found it (thank you NecoSergal for bringing it to my attention) and am enjoying figuring it out slowly and excruciatingly. Thank you to the developers and people that assisted in the creation of this breath of fresh(rotten?) air to rpgs and rogue-likes.
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Fear and Hunger is one of the most unique projects I have ever encountered.
I stumbled upon this game through one small YouTube letsplay channel (all thanks to Riskrim) and it was a very pleasant surprise. Playing demo 4 turned me into very enthusiastic fan - the amount and quality of work that was done already showed incredible effort and passion author was putting into his project. For me, this game stood out not just by merit of its solid well-crafted style or interesting and innovative game-design alone, but because of what incredible composition they formed, made to complement and enhance one another.
I want to go through every aspect that impessed me the most and that i consider an important part in what makes this game so great and unique.
I) Immersion and atmosphere
For me, as a main source of motivation to engage with the game serves its theme – exploration of brutality, wickedness and perversion and extends of their growth through the context of the game. On its own it is a great selling point – it sums up all of the game’s features without directly revealing them, so player would know what to expect from the game without spoiling any crucial parts and it sets to challenge developer’s dedication and creativity, by providing wealthy basis for development of story and atmosphere.
In order to realize full potential of its theme game needs to create a coherent structure of narrative, worldbuilding and atmosphere and correctly incorporate every element into a perfectly tuned composition.
Worldbuilding takes burden of explaining players why they should immerse in happening events by providing realistic picture of the world around them, it is a foundation that should establish rules and principles all other elements use as reference to correctly coexist with each other without compromising consistency of whole structure. Fear and Hunger achieves to create coherent, believable picture of large living world, embedded with nuances and hidden meanings on top of generally well-written and creative lore. From the surface level, game follows traditional dark fantasy formula by portraying hopeless and oppressive world, devoid of light or salvation, where brutality and wickedness run rampart and unobstructed by concepts of order or justice. In such settings, gods’ design usually is mitigated to the only purpose of accommodating the atmosphere, while narrative is focusing on mortal beings and ways how their relations and interactions with one another shape the world into the horrible place it is. Commonly there gods portrayed simply as individuals with power, instead of higher beings that serve special grander purpose, emphasizing hostile and inhospitable nature of the world by removing concepts associated with civility and humanism.
What surprised me was to see how game stepped forward from this structure by adding more complexity and depth to its celestial aspect. Fear and Hunger reverses the situation by implementing element of deeper and grander meaning into gods’ characters – it provides each one of them with unique significant role and focuses on their general development and incorporation into the narrative.
Huge role in incorporating gods into narrative plays their presentation – well-paced and gradual reveal of information helps to naturally translate complexity of their characters to players. Aside from that, a different approach towards exposition regarding mortal beings and gods serves even bigger purpose – through the subtle distinction in the ways worldbuilding addresses them game gains ability to manipulate players’ attention and use it to direct their focus and change the perspective. It is seen, that when talking about humans and other lower sentient races game incorporates “show less, leave more for imagination” formula – information about existing civilizations is extremely scarce, but overall state of their moral and humanistic degradation is clear and obvious. On the other hand, game shares extensive amount of details about gods, presenting as much information as realistically possible – it shines light on their meanings, their possible motivations and the rich story they have with the world. However, it remains presenting complete picture vague, even in a rare occasion of direct contact, managing to keep their actual identities a mystery and therefore extending this sense on overall feeling of the game. That approach achieves to avoid driving players’ attention from superficial ideas, instead shifting their focus towards exploring the nature of celestial beings and darkness they cause, rather than on results of their actions, what I think is essential for this aspect of the game.
While the worldbuilding serves as a basis for all other immersion-oriented aspects, the way game presents immediate information is what is doing central work on establishing proper mood and atmosphere to the player. A great game uses as much of its components as it can for that goal – from the visual and audio design to gameplay and lore, if everything works in a coherent composition with each other and chooses a complex enough theme as its core, as a result may come out a true masterpiece. With Fear and Hunger it is pretty much the case – aside from worldbuilding, that was already described, game uses its graphics, its audio and most of its gameplay elements with great success.
The art perfectly conveys depressing alienated atmosphere of the game through bleak grey tones of surface world and dark nightmarish scenery of anxiety inducing dungeon levels, emphasizing on gore, brutality and body horror in most intense moments. It is very well done on technical part and from stylistic standpoint ideally suits game’s mood. Character design forms its own sort of realistic style, with emphasis on crudeness and detalization in models, which helps to stand out its impressive variety of monster designs, that revolve around themes of nudity, mutilation and other unpleasant motifs.
Sound design is something that I, personally, haven’t heard in a very long time – general quality is astonishing and amount of specific implementations will uphold most demanding standard. Usage of ambient sounds is exceptionally creative and worth noting – playing various tricks on player, game achieves to create very unnerving paranoid atmosphere, always making sure to not let him relax even for a second.
However, with all regards to visual and audio design, what makes this game truly unique is gameplay, as through its mechanics it makes biggest impact by setting up most subtle, most complex and most powerful atmosphere-building components.
II) Gameplay
1. Combat mechanic
The central gameplay component is combat. At its core, it is a result of natural progression of traditional turn-based fighting mechanic – a segment-targeting system. In my opinion, that system should become a standard for many genres of modern games, from pure action-oriented products to stat-based rpgs. Even by default, this system is pretty complex – it creates a prioritization mechanic by bringing difference in segment attacking efficiency and it provides very deep development potential through allowing implementation of almost limitless variety of unique sub-mechanics. In addition, it also positively affects other related mechanics, such as inventory, looting, health-maintaining system and others. Game very successfully utilizes this system right now – every enemy has distinct fighting style, which requires devising a special strategy to deal with and only in rare occasions enemies’ characters will appear as a single entity and not as a set of mutually related elements each with own role and purpose. It perfectly manages to fulfill the role of main combat mechanic and as an atmosphere-building component it is utilized very effectively on many different layers.
Second main in-combat mechanic is talking – main character is able to try to engage in conversation with the foe with the cost of an action. Every enemy has its own set of questions with different outcomes. This is not a novelty in turn-based games, but it is another great mechanic that I want to see used more in similarly styled rpgs, because it is a very effective tool in setting atmosphere and world-building, especially in a game with emphasis on such things. Currently this system is in a very raw state – while it allows a relatively diverse variety of actions to execute (receive information from enemy, get a new party member, calm down/confuse enemy for a limited amount of time or completely pacify the situation), it lacks actual weight that would make outcomes of these questions more effective. With all the criticism, this system is working well as it is right now. It is a great tool that provides additional world-building information and helpful hints for curious players, while from player’s perspective, using it is very interesting and rewarding.
A significant importance in combat bears an element of random. In battle it is revolving around a coin toss “minigame” – a 50/50 winning chance luck test. Every enemy in the game, with a small exception, has its own special attack that charges during a battle and then applies itself after main action from the turn, initiating that minigame. It punishes player for failing by death and is implemented as a sort of parallel mechanic – it can be disabled by removing a corresponding limb from an enemy, but outside of that it stands separately from main combat system, ignoring important attributes such as strength, current health, ability to miss etc. From a grander perspective, it stops player’s skill from being the only factor that decides an outcome of a fight, representing chance and what may be player’s character could be interpreting as a chance because of their lack of understanding. The way it is applied in the game adds risk for player to lose everything even in an initially successful turn of events. In a result, this amps up tension inside and outside of combat immensely - it forces player to thoroughly think and consider before entering combat encounters, and puts colossal amount of weight on decision making during that combat.
From the outside perspective combat is utilized as an introductory tool and in continuous use as a primary mean of generating tension, being the main reason of player’s fear of interaction with the unknown.
The brutality and difficulty of the first combat establishes and promises to player what to expect from further game. It shows extreme hostility of the world he enters and teaches long-lasting consequences of engaging with danger. Firstly, realization of segment-targeting system on player’s character is made to accommodate that important principle of game’s design. In event of severe trauma characters lose their limbs, and logically - that event is very common in dungeons filled with terrible monsters. Loss of a limb is permanent (with small hints `of possibility to grow it back through alchemy mechanic, but for now it’s absent), as is its effect on gameplay, not mentioning a horror of seeing your character in decapitated state and realizing that it is unrevertable. Experiencing that first time was a powerful moment for me, thanks to the atmosphere I was immersed in process to associate with my character enough for the effect. I felt that range of emotions of a person that understands that he has lost something from his body and now has to live with it – a genuine panic, fear and existential horror.
Most important part in that plays presentation of game’s relation to the player, it is most prevalent here and runs through the rest of playing experience. What you can do to an enemy, how you can harm and mutilate them and how game indifferently treats that, in same way it is applied to player’s characters. That establishes not only game’s in general, but specifically its world’s relation to the player, building up feeling of alienation and hostility, signifying absence of any sort of empathy or special treatment. When your hand, head or leg cut off, interface’s only reaction is small prompt before immediate return to fighting, not even a reaction from a character – the way event presented as a commodity and its implications about world’s attitude towards you are powerful means of instilling uneasiness and tension.
2. Saving system
A person that didn’t play the game would wonder why death or dismemberment is such a big deal – just reload and replay fight until the perfect outcome. At this point comes central gameplay component that makes all others so effective – saving mechanic. In this game saving is implemented very interestingly: firstly, let’s talk about two different types of saving systems – in normal games and in rogue-likes.
The traditional system is known to all, it’s main goal is to accommodate long narrative-based process as a mean of going back after closing the game or game-ending event, such as failure or death. While its purpose is only to save progress for a player to be able to continue from last achieved point, it has created phenomena of abusing saving system and replaying dangerous encounters for perfect outcomes, supposedly not intended by developers. This is more relevant for turn-based or stat-based rpgs (i.e. savescumming in fallout), where the outcome is affected by random. This system’s main issue is that it ultimately fails to provide proper characterization and effect to specific situations and gameplay in general, by removing any stakes from risk-revolving aspects of the game and rendering them inconsequential.
The other system alters saving mechanic severely, building gameplay to revolve around it on several layers and lore to incorporate story and world in it. Instead of starting game over, death of a character treated as another step in continuous process of completion the game, with external progression implemented as most important component, usually through some ability/items unlocking or currency systems, for example you can take “Binding of Isaac” and “Enter the Gungeon” correspondingly. Since the point of that system is to accommodate cycle-oriented nature of the game, it gains means of implementing risk-revolving elements into the gameplay, but not to the extent of having them outside of cycles.
Fear and Hunger creates a hybrid of these two systems – firstly, it removes external progression completely – now death is absolute, there is nothing earned from dying except player’s experience. The in-session progression is focused more on consumables and some wearable inventory items – collected food and alcohol items are base resources for the fear and hunger management system, amount of healing items dictates your fighting capacity, various books open some range of abilities and actions and there is some variety of armor that gives damage reduction. There is no stat or level growth, winning in battle most of times gives you much less than it takes - currently there is only ONE sword in the game that deals drastically more damage that default one, and it’s not a reward for killing the strongest enemy. This always makes player to focus on an actual process thus making it more emotionally effective in result.
Other, more important part is conventional absence of ability to save – there is no option in the menu, and, on a bigger scale, there is no game mechanic that is treated as supposed initial component of the game. There is an actual ability to save, but it’s made as more of a hidden mechanic then what actually expected to use as granted – it’s incorporated through a consumable item that gives a single-use ability to save and in addition moves character on next step of spiritual enlightenment. Both bonuses are given without any preliminary explanation and come up as a surprise for a player on first use, while second is not even completely clear in what it does after that. More importantly, reducing ability to save from being an initial important part of playing experience to being simply a reward – a small (but still significant) component in not a central part of the game, not only makes this reward extremely powerful, but also expresses that gameplay direction change to the player. Moreover, basing this system completely on a random emphasizes its inconsistent nature as a game mechanic, helping to solidify presented point in player’s mind.
What’s most important is how this influences playing experience – if any other horror game uses momentary scares based on sudden or subtle methods, Fear and Hunger manages to make whole experience a tension filled nightmare by making every encounter extremely dangerous and reworking saving system to the point of almost nonexistence. Game achieves to create a realism in gameplay from a psychological standpoint – it is truly horrifying to traverse dungeons knowing that there is nothing to stop you from losing everything, making smallest things gain tremendous effect, when even just a weird sound is enough to stop player in fear and tension. To generalize – a mechanical implementation of gameplay is built in rogue-like-oriented fashion, with heavy emphasis on random in larger parts of fighting, looting and saving mechanics, while from atmospheric and continuity standpoints game is focused on narrative progression and traditional treatment of main character’s story and role in the game. That exact composition of thoroughly built atmosphere and lore, enhanced by brutal and unforgiving gameplay is what I would describe as game’s identity.
IV) Conclusion
This is a cut down version of my analysis of this game, due to character limit i had to remove all critique, so it may appear weirdly written in some places. For those who might be interested i will put full version in official discord channel. Aside from that, my goal was to express why i considered the game so amazing and try to covince people to check out game for themselves as well as motivate developer to keep doing great job. I wholeheartedly believe that this project has all of the chances to become a next big thing in indie community and i wish it good luck.
Played a bit of this on my channel!
Hi! I played v5.1 today and found this bugged wall. I thought you might want to know that. Btw, do you have any tips for the coin flip coincidence game feature? At the beginning I had a lucky hand but then the game always used the opposite side of the coin I chose. And, when the Dark Priest fights against monsters he is scared of, does it mean his rate of hitting the monster is lower?
Hey! Killswitch here. We have a discord channel if you want to join. We already have a list of known bugs and issues. If you need questions we'll answer them too! Helping you out with your questions...the coin toss is a 50/50 chance so you really dont have a choice. Although there was a pattern in Demo 4, anway Demo 5 introduces phobias. Certain phobias make the character weaker, or as you say make the accuracy rate lower.
For some reason, i cant hit the buff guys guys heads! So i end up dying in 2 seconds every playthrough. It might be a bug but if its meant to be in the game then why put the option to hit the head? Plz fix this :(
Hey! Hitting the head is instant kill, so of course it can't be that easy. In previous versions it was easier, but with v5 you have to first cut the legs of the guards to rock their balance. Then the head becomes vulnerable, with an icon indicating this.
You are right that the game doesn't inform this properly to newcomers. I still need to figure out how to give players tips about this new weakness system. Sorry if it felt too unfair. I know the game can be a little bit more difficult at places because of this new system, I'm still looking for better balance.
Have a dying survivor on th ground tell you some survival tips and some hints about rocking the balance of certain enemies. Or do a sparring seqeuence in the beginning of the game where you have each character spar with someone, (outlander and his tirbe chief/d'arce and the captain/mercenary and his bandit captain trainer/enki and his cult)
Yeah it's definitely a mechanic that needs to be explained.... Although in the upcoming version the chances of hitting the head are closer to the chances you had in the previous versions, before the weakness mechanic that is. So rocking the balance is just a guaranteed way to get that headshot, not the only way.
Hey! You can call me just Miro :-D thanks for letting me know of the bugs and problems. The game is riddled with bugs at the moment. I'll try to put out more polished stuff later on. Again, thanks for the great feedback!
Thanks Miro, I have one more question. I was watching my friend stream yesterday and noticed that the guard had a yellow symbol over it's had after a few turns of battle. Does it mean the chances of hitting the head are more in the players favor or straight up guaranteed?
Almost guaranteed. Most of the enemies got a weakness like that.
What a good day to be alive...
I can't wait for more, to be totally honest. I love the game and I am a little saddened at the fact that I can't continue playing because I feel like I already found everything there is to find. There are so many secrets which I cannot figure out since only the demo version is available. What's it about the path of mahabre? What can you do with the embryo (artificially created by the black liquid and blood), what about the pinecone? There are many more questions which make me excited for the full game. I hope in the next update I can find this out and figure out how to make my party bigger by more useful characters like the Highlander or the Mercenary.
My experience: 1) I love playing as the Dark Priest because of his necromacy although it frustrates me just more when the revival of the corpses doesn't work out.
2) The crow guy is a tough guy. I remember when I had a full party of the Dark Priest, 2 ghouls and the little girl, and the crow bit all their heads off except for the priest. I managed to kill it, but my party of 4 reduced itself to a one man army.
3) All the different endings and ways you can die are shocking and exciting. It really makes the game special as well. There is so much detail to the game.
Please keep up the great work! Can't wait for the final result :)
Sounds like you've really experienced a lot of the content available!! I always love hearing about people's experiences with the game. Pretty epic victory over the Crow Mauler. Thanks a lot for the nice words!
i too am experiencing very bad movement lag,,
Hmm.. This sounds troublesome :-/ The game is heavier than your typical RPG Maker games, because there are tons of processes running all the time. That said, the game definitely needs some optimization work done. Hopefully I can find a solution to this.
hey love the game, but its extremely laggy for some reason. I was wondering if theres something you could do on your end. thank you for your time!
hey! What your platform is it? and how old is ur computer? [ not dev jus tryin to help ]
Hmmm. This is really unfortunate! I can try to look into optimizing some things, but I'm not sure if it's gonna help a lot in the end. My own laptop isn't very powerful and I don't experience any lag, so I wonder what kind of hardware you have?
Has some bugs such as certain terrain where you should be able to walk is blocked in the prison and tree dungeon.
Yes you're right. I'm trying to release a more polished version next time. There are a lot of minor bugs to be found. Thanks for letting me know! :-)
Also might want to balance out the game too when you get it polished. I do like difficult, but it might need balance with the chance system and combat.
Yo Microhaver! Have any idea how much more time until the demo version 5? I'm not putting pressure on you or anything, some of my buddies wants to know. Thanks!
Ah, sorry I can't give any real estimate. In a month or 2 I should be able to release a smaller update.
Here is my gameplay part 1, of merceay, turn on subtitles cuz audio sort of died.
I find the lack of audio disturbing, but watched it anyway. I usually don't go for the head after hacking off enemie's limb with weapon - the fail chance is too high and you can get hit by enemy on the 2nd turn, i use kiting which i described in your comment section.
Other than that, keep going! You have to start somewhere)
lol my audio worker doesn't work, it records my mic, not my in-game sounds.
Adding another one was bakround ost
WOOOOHOOOO!!!
HUGE SPOILER ALERT! DON'T READ BELOW UNLESS YOU REALLY WANT TO.
Ok, I will have one more run a little bit later, but, for now, I'd like to express my emotions and make a few statements. Miro, if you would decide to read the things below, please note - I do not doubt your competence as a game developer, these are my personal opinions and they may be completely ignored.
First of all, Marksmanship skill for Outlander. Nerf it. Enemy Instakills ruin the difficuilty too much. Make them move really slow instead, like they do when they fall for the bear trap in addition to losing one of their limbs.
Second of all, the crude sword that is dropped by lizards. Its ridiculous damage is unhindered by accuracy, so there is no reason to not use it as the main weapon (apart from losing one of the arms). Add a minor accuracy penalty to it. As for the claymore that is given to you by the Pocketcat, i have no issue with it because of the dangerous bargain invonlved, so there is no need to change it in any way.
Third of all, I think this game needs a vendor of sort. The RNG here is just too goddamn unfair sometimes. I'd suggest the creation of an NPC on the 3'rd level (the prisons are too empty anyway) that can give you 1 needed item in exchange for 5 other. His item list excludes: opium powder (the trader near the altar of darkness sells it), cooked food, iron arrows (the trader near the altar sells it), books of any kind (we have Pocket Cat for that), whiskey (strong mind-restorative that is unfair to be given in such a way, ale is fine though), weapons of any kind, competent armor (trash armor is fine, but it must be allowed to be usable in trading), any kind of liquid that can be obtained by filling the glass vial (glass vials themselves should be allowed, though) and no explosive vials too.
Lastly, i'd like to talk about bosses. In the current version, they are too inclined to be DPS races - all you need to do is compile 4 party members and hack away at the torso. With a few exceptions, bosses here are too straightforward - hacking Salmonsnake's limbs off is not as reliable as an all-out attack on the torso (thanks to the overpowered crude sword), same for the cavemother, the head of the wizard is made only to give exposition and to be ran away from with no second encounter and the Crowmauler, oh the Crowmauler, was too disappointing for me.
Maybe that's my problem, but for a guy that is first introduced as this game's pyramidhead, he just didn't live up to my expectations: hacked off his arm and DPSed his torso till he fell. He should be causing the main character hysteria just by being in your sight, teleporting behind you if you ever start to outrun him like he was in the tattered note and, should one decide to face him in battle and not escaping on the first turn (that can easily fail), unleash myriad of debuffs coupled with weak AoE attack to give you slow and painfull death.
The solution for others? Make their torsos' defence much higher and decrease it for a certain percent for each limb hacked off.
For the Salmonsnake specifically - leave its limb attack spams as they are now, but introduce some sort of gimmick to give a player the ability to stop their actions without dismemberment. For example - now, destroying the eye seems to lower the accuracy of attacks for a bit, but it can be made a little bit more interesting - destroying the eye will actually make a battle harder, as opposed to saving, as in doing so you lose the ability to throw a red vial into it and to make it's limbs to do"tries to clean the eye" action for a few turns instead.
As for the Cavemother, the main issue that prevents the player from aproaching the battle carefully is "One Tooth Peck" (uh... sorry, can't remember the exact name) attack - instant limb loss is just too unfair. Make it use this attack only when its breasts are cut off - that way the player will be stimulated to act more strategically by having to pay attention to weak but tolerable cavegnomes.
Whew, that's a lot to read through. Despite the above, traversing the game was really fun. Can't wait to know more... What is the reason the new gods entered the dungeons of fear and hunger? Who is the God of Depth and is he in any way connected to the fifth member of the fellowship? Will Norasmus open up to us and tell what his role in this madness is? And finally, what is the purpose of the girl in this mess?
Man, i hate waiting) But, in the end, it will all be worth it...
I have to totally agree with you on that one, most of your suggestions or as I like to call it "constructive critiscm", are mostly the ones I was gonna ask about. All that lore and the backstory Miro put into the game does mean he/or she is passionate about this "project" but as he said before, he has to deal with his real life situations before he/or she can get to this. Oh and one more thing to add on the table, maybe make the scrolls as a temporary save, or some sort of scroll where you sort of "embed" your memories in the scroll for the time being. I understand how the save oppurtunities are really rare and you have to sacrafice alot for even one slot. Maybe make that save option avalible for a certain time or something. And if you get the chance to add this on steam, give me a free copy ;D
Personally, I don't mind the current save system, as the acqurement of the Book of Enlightment allows to make the game easier if used strategically. For example, getting to Nosramus and using it there as soon as you arrive allows you to generate necronomicons, books of forgotten memories and even light blue potion vials for more convenience.
Also, Kill_Switch-X, may i ask you a favour? Could you write here what your encounter with the book "Passage of Ma'Habre" was like if you ever encounter one? I used it once but i didn't manage to get a good grasp at the location due to the time limit and i have problems generating the book, even by using save-scumming. I really want to know whether it is randomly generated, whether battling spider-torso is worth it and if that place has a boss to beat.
Sure, i first got the passage of Ma'Habre when I wa splaying as the Mercenary, thinking it was just the book Ma'Habere, I didn't think too much about it. When I realized it was a special book, I read it and I got transported to the Ancient City of Ma'Habere. The New Gods spoke to me about how I was gonna be chosen and stuff and i was on my way. I walked around and looted abunch of goodies from the urns and crates. Then I saw that creepy dead spider-person [I later was looking in local files and saw that apparently you can encounter a live one]. I didn't make it that far due to the time limit but I ended up looting those two chests, I did get it twice and just now when I'm playing too, well I usually always get it if I make the coin flip in one of the bookshelfs in the catacombs library, where I'm struggling to recruit the dark priest. Sometimes I belive pocketcat has it
I also fail to see why the human hydra is there, I guess its for the laughs
Might be the same as the Altar of darkness - sacrificing party members to it gives nothing in return and praying to the God Of Depth gives no benefit either. Malevolent creatures don't really like to share, it seems. That makes me think - perhaps the Old Gods chose to be unresponsive to humans BECAUSE they stopped making actual requests to them and the new gods, while being presented as the heralds of salvation, provide no actual help at all as they have no wish to squander their newly acquired godly powers.
Also, thanks for the feedback, i'll make a mercenary and try to study the Ma'Habre's layout - I'll try to go deeper ignoring all the chests and barrels and see what it has to offer.
Yeah sure, free copies are on your way, if Steam was ever to accept this game, being full of awful awful stuff. ;D
You can get the book of enlightenment with the empty scrolls too. I wonder if anyone figured those out yet...?
nope i never knew lol now i need to see somehow
You can?
Is it
"O LORD
TEACH
ENLIGHTMENT"
invocation?
Nice. Close. There are only 2 invocations currently available in the demo: TEACH and GIVE.
Okay first of all, Fed, I'm really grateful for the time you've spent on the game and the interest you've shown. Reading through your texts has given me a lot to think about.
People got every right to question my competence as a game developer (even if you said that you didn't) because I do a lot of things out of a whim and just for the sake of having some traditional game design breaking elements haha :D And also my game development is very reliant on the feedback I get from you guys. I just throw things together the best way I see fit, without that much game testing, and see what comes out of it. I'm sure every professional game developer would just shake their head if they saw me working on this :D
I'll take your points with Crude sword and Marksmanship and tweak those. As for the vendor - There's probably going to be an option at the beginning of the game where you get to choose an item or another goodie to start the game with. Kinda similar as in Dark Souls. This way the player can strategize a little bit more at the character select screen. Another vendor or something would be good too. You are right that the cells are a little bit too empty as they are now.
Finally, that's some really good insight about the bosses. I'm considering everything you said seriously. Especially the Crow Mauler. He was supposed to be more fleshed out, but I had to nerf some of my plans to get the demo out.
Thanks for taking your time with the writing ! :)
Well, I wouldn't be writing if i wasn't sure that the message would get to you)
Kinda ironic, really - there are a ton of people making bright, colorful games with good morals who turn out to be complete jerks to their audiences, and the person whose creation is a vile, nihilistic and unforgiving experience turns out to be on the good side of spectrum. Life is too goddamn peculiar sometimes...
"Life is peculiar when your peculiar"
haha this is awesome! You guys made my day :-D
My, you are a master at sequence breaking). Personally, i had no problem with these guys - as soon as I aproached the right one ran away (might be due to me having girl and moonless in party), so i just bumped into the one who was attacking and did the battle. After that, the Knight was standing there in her idle animation and after i asked her about "what god do you believe in", the option to recruit the party member appeared (i have to note here that i did pray to All-mer, her god of choice, 3 times before that encounter).
Also, i think you wanted to know where you can get light blue vials. The recipe appeared after i read Alchemilla vol. 2. Although Neco admitted before that vol. 2 is the same as vol.1, i did get 3 recepies other than given by the vol. 1 even though the text was the same. To create one you need 2 blue vials and it heals for 80 hp instead of blue vial's 20. If you haven't encountered the recipe for it in first-floor library, you might wanna check Nosramus - the guy that is protected by spectral knight. He has 2 boookshelves where you can potentially get Alchemilla vol. 2, or even the light blue potion itself on the potion shelf or by checking the pile of bottles near the locked chest. Beware though - the escape chance from spectral knight (both of them) is lower that usual, so kiting him (the one that is lying on the altar) is not reliable. However, the battle becomes pathetically easy if you use an explosive vial.
i found an easier way to get an light blue vial just a few hours ago, [and i beat the game too]. I decided to talk to some of the random mobs around the map, and I learned at least one interesting thing: Instead of fighting Tortur (can't remember name), talk to him first thing in battle and sell out the buckman that's hiding in it's cell, thne you get the key from him and a light blue vial, what a good deal.
Nice job! Too bad i've never had any desire to negotiate with him.
DO you have any idea on how to recruit the dark priest?
I have a feeling that it has something to do with either cavemother's egg or creating a fetus (logically, i suggest praying to Gro-Goroth too). I'll try to do that a bit later.
So, Kill_Switch-X was wondering earlier if showing love at the altar is possible. Well, had a run not so long ago with my outlander and managed to recruit the Knight. What happened at the altar after i chose the option was... unexpected. I wonder if i should've given it my name, though)))
Ok, new lesson learned - never name things after yourself in this game, you may get a fatal loss of luck)
Yep so true! Do you know a quick an easy way to get a light blue vial right off the bat
ummmmmmmm, nani!?!?!?
Congrats! You discovered secret ancient debug mode ghosts.
Oh yeah, that ladder was unclimbable for me when I was playing as the dark priest. The room that is shown in the picture is the one you get in when you fail a coin throw and fall down the hole.
Another bug (lol) Can't get down ladder in the tree dungeons.
Hm. Weird. They seemed to work just fine for me, but maybe I didn't run in the same variation of tree dungeon as you.
I'll check it out nevertheless. Thanks for letting me know!
you should be able to do something when you commit suicide at the altar after parying to the sacrafice god lol
You are absolutely right. It's an idea I've been toying around with for a while.
I'm here to also post about a minor bug, nothing that serious.
I used the explosive vial in the lvl 3 prisons and found a chest floating in the air (its a 2-d ish game) so yeah I'm stuck here too
Oh! This one is new! Thanks for pointing it out!
Is there a way to make love with the girl yet? I'm quite curious to see what you might receive if you do.
Well tbh it's a subject I wouldn't like to handle in the game. At least in that way.
Of course I could come up with something unique...
In the very first demo, choosing to make love with the girl resulted an instant game over.
oof
Hi, I'm here to reporting a bug I found in the game.
SPOILER ALERT:
I used the explosive vials in one of the fallen fortress near the entrance. This is the area with two fallen fortress near the entrance. I tried to enter the area, but I can't even go to the left. For some reason, there is an invisible wall on that left area which makes me uncapable to procees. I'm curious if I'm the only one with this issue.
Encountered the same problem recently on that rubble pile too. Tried the vial on the nearby rubble pile (the one in front of the starting point) and found out what the issue is - the tiny smoke animation appears to be the part of the event, so it is counted as an unpassable tile. Simple solution - move that "rubble" event down one tile. In case Miro would like to make smoke animation passable, I'd suggest him to make it a separate, "move through tiles" event.
Yup! Thanks for letting me know! I'm surprised all these passability problems slipped under my radar.
Hey I forgot to mention is there a way to make love with the girl implemented yet? I'm sorta curious to see what might happen if you do.
Ok, finally got my hands on the new version. Still having a blast as I was half a year ago. Well, can't say anything new here - after all, the aspects of the game i've mentioned in the comment below are all still there (although, apparently, my excitement towards the resemblance of most dead bodies towards the main character hold true no more due to the introduction of new starting classes), so I'm gonna list some events I've encountered.
1. The Mercenary's sprite becomes invisible after he reemerges from the gore pile. Sometimes. Sometimes the animation of emerging plays as usual and the game goes on as intended, but sometimes, no animation is played and the character appears invisible. The game still functions normally, though. The same didn't happen with other characters for me.
2. The corner tiles on the 3rd level (prisons) are passable - as far as my experience with RPG maker goes, you have forgotten to set these tilemaps to untraversable.
3. Cavegnomes on level 3 can pass through prison bars. Due to the nature of the "pass through tiles" event property, I'd suggest the replacement of the Cavegnomes AI: make them spawn and roam above the black void with the event on, but as soon as they see a player, they, after a 1 second delay, rush to the tile coordinate that the player was spotted on with a speed of 6 (sorry, RPGMXP user here, don't know about other versions). Just as they reach that tile, switch "pass through tiles" off and let them chase you the same way they do now.
4. Ok, so I was recently playing with my Mercenary and decided to sacrifice the girl at the altar. I was given the "Summon blood golem" spell, which i used in the battle against lone dark priest. After winning the battle, i've tried to re-summon the golem again, this time in the encounter with 2 other dark priests. However, after i used the skill the game consumed my HP but refised to summon the blood golem, telling me that "He was already in the party", although he definitely wasn't.
That's it for now, i guess. I'll continue playing and tell if i encounter something else worth mentioning.
P.S. Love that Silent Hill 2 reference)
Awesome! Thank for the feedback! I'll do something about the bugs mentioned here. I must say your original theory about the resemblance of the corpses was so good that I considered it myself. But multiple characters was my initial concept of the game, so I decided to roll with it.
I'm glad you caught the reference! You're the first one to mention it :D Silent Hill is a big influence on this project.
V4 Seems to be a bit, super fast, if not 2x or 3x faster than what I'd expect - text, movement and top-screen dialogue move at alarming speeds and I'm unaware of how I can slow it down since there's no options menu to increase/decrease it - is this a bug? Seems too fast than what I'm used to from the last version.
Also, bugs found: Defeating a Skeletal monk that has 2 of them fight you, the 2nd Skeletal monk dies when you win the 1st fight? Intentional? Both NPC units died but 1 was left standing upright, but upon using an action key on the enemy, it was a dead body, yet stood.
- Alchemillia Vol1 and 2 are the same and are both Vol1
More to come.
Hi!! It's definitely not intended to go any faster. It's a bug that was already present in the previous version. The framerate is tied to your monitor's screen refresh rate I belive. Or so I was told. I'm guessing your monitor has 144hz refresh rate?
I just recently discovered this and I have yet to get a solution.
EDIT: I uploaded a version with a tweak. I'm not sure if it fixes the issue though, because I don't have any extra monitors :P I'll have to ask around and confirm this. Sorry for the trouble man! D:
EDIT2: the new download should be okay. At least the animator of the game said his game is running at correct speed now (he had the same problem)
Wait, so it was a bug all along that I simply adapted to in the past version? xDDD and yeah, 144hz. I'll give the new tweak a try, thanks!
Huh, it seems plowing through miriad of copycats and lazy-ass creators CAN lead to something interesting...
There i was, sitting my day off, looking for a game to bash on in the comment section of the Neco's channel, decided to take a peek at the first part of that game's let's play and... got myself unusually enthralled by this wonderfull game.
This is the part where many might say: "Oh, come on! It's just a small, buggy RPG maker horror demo. Yeah, it looks preety, but it lives on the carcass of trial and error gameplay, try playing THAT for more than a couple of hours!" And, indeed, they will be right. This beast really is hard to handle for the hands of normal gamers for the reason of it's savage nature towards player - win'or'lose coin flips that can potentially decimate the otherwise lucky run, enemy attacks and no-escape-trap-rooms that can do the same, constant reliance on luck in terms of getting restorative items and overall chaotic structure of the gameworld rules are to blame.
The thing is... It all works in the end, at least for me. Yeah, these gamedesign decisions are usually pointed as flaws, but here, they are actually really good supplements to the main source of fun in this game, all thanks to these aspects of narrative:
1. Subtlety is strong in this one - the amount of death-screens one will face is reflected onto the game's world - notice, how almost every corpse you find has a strong resemblance to your own sprite, how every ghoul enemy pleads for death if intimidated all while wearing your distorted face, how, after failing "the save throw", you, completely decimated, can end up in the dungeon full of what looks like copies of yourself. Also, every book you read is dictated to you bo some sort of narrator, who actually tries to convince you that it is what YOU think, without any way to confirm the information yourself... As if the Mercenary (the hero of the game) is nothing but a fragile shell, manipulated into doing what the unknown entity wants.
2. The overall mocking attitude of the game towards the player. So, you want to jump down the hole into the fecal pit? Sure, go ahead. Ooops, you can't get out now. Oh, you've won the coin flip? Here take this book that you already have. My my, you grew confindent enough to engage every enemy on the level? Oh, you've missed once and now you're dead, what a pity! Yeah, this game tries to pull out the rug under your feet, but does so to a certain extend. Breezing through the demo without major loses is very much possible, and is actually satisfying - being able to counter every bullshit the game throws at you makes you switch sides - you become the one mocking the game.
3. Interesting approaches to decision-making. Although few due to the game's shortness, there were some moments that made me really satisfied from the sheer ambiguosity they present. The most notable example is this - at some point, you will be given the option to trade your party-member for some sort of probable benefit. You can get a weapon, and it is really powerfull... in theory. In the end, you are left without a reliable way to dispose of Guard enemies by trading an additional life-saving attack, as said weapon won't kill them outright, and, despite it's much bigger damage, you will still have to rely on dismemberment in order to not die in 1 hit. And you soon find out that your standart sword is as efficient at dismembement as that overkill weapon. Plus, you get it at the end of the demo. Haw, haw!
These three points alone are enough to hook me up on this game and to stay hopefull for it's eventuall full release. This may very well turn out to be the new Witch's house, Mogeko Castle, Middens or Ib and become the first one with the most complex gameplay so far. My hopes are high for this game, and i really wish for it to become more than a demo.
Anyone curiously stumbling on this page should definitely give this game a go - It's punishing like Dark Souls, Darkest Dungeon and has deep lore and difficult but addicting combat - If you like dark indie horror RPG's? You owe it to yourself to play this - I of course can't wait for more content :P I was able to painfully learn the ways of the game that was at first, very punishing, then learning the ropes until I could simply destroy all the Teaser-version enemies - (Can't say I'll be as confident with New enemies that have abilities and deadly attacks that I won't be aware of) - Every new enemy and situation is a new danger that can lead to an untimely death.
-My friend. This game is far too explicit.
I understand how the game is for a mature audience only, but the things in this game just takes things too far. Aside from the 'satanic' pentagram (which despite the setting still seems like it was thrown in from out of nowhere)
you have to remember that in today's day and age, people are extremely squimish with content that depicts any form of rape (even if attempted or implied) sexual gore, and heavy violence.
People might not really be willing to pay to experience something that is too heavy and explicit for them to take part in. For example: feces or visuals depicting this is something that might have players shut the game off and ask for refunds, not neccessarily say 'cool this is fun'
Also semen is something that is kinda gross, no? I take it this was not ment to be an errotica game? Then since its not the right place at all for it, many are going to be severely grossed out by this. With the #MeToo movement, you have to know that people in this day and age are stand offish towards anything that involve mistreatment and cruelty such as this.
With that being said, it is very hard to advertise your game because of all this heavy content within it, I had to search to discover this very telling review after coming across F&H from a John Wolfe video showcase. You must include all of this disclaimer on the page (as in actually tell users all the explicit content that could be found in the game, besides just simply 'violent sexual conent' because that could mean anything) which in this case would mean chopped genitals and mass orgies.
I think if the content was massively cleaned up to remove any form of 'rape' or 'gross orgies' feces, and then at least include a save game system, in where a save can be done, this will help at least make it something that players can enjoy playing. With that there are multiple classes that kinda are too similar, such as the mercenaries. I see the outlander and the knight are basically warrior classes, so it really doesn't seem like there's a diffference.
-The thief should be more stealthy and faster, and use a dagger; has less damage, but the enemy misses them often.
-The warrior should be stronger (doing more damage) and might be a tad slower.
-The archer should use a bow, and perhaps be versitile, using both a sword short and the arrows (give them like the perk to find more perjectiles then the other races, that gives them value and makes the player feel like they are playing the archer role)
And of course, make it so that the player can choice different looks and sex (play male or female) change eye color, skin tone. This makes me feel like I'm more in the game.
Also I do apologize for this HUGE writing, I just do like the game.
With that being said, I do think that the game is too linier, and would make a better open-world game, then a dungeon crawler (you could still incorporate both into the game) then you can add much, much more content to the game, and give it a whole world that the player can explore. Make it so that outfits can be
changed; when the player changes gear it can be seeen in their avatar.
I think having a 'legal' (it's gotta be consensual, come on now bud! :/ ) relationship system is something that would be awesome!
Like if the player meets a party member, they have an afinity system.
Then THAT way, if you want to include a sex scene that the player can physically see, it would make much more sense and they would feel more attachment to their team members.
That way the survival element becomes much more important, then the screw it i'm gonna just die here anyway, now the main chracter is gunna try to survive much more since they care about the people in their party.
I really do hope that you take all these things into consideration, it would really be an epic thing to see. :)
wut
I completely disagree. The game is exactly explicit enough.
Telling Fear and Hunger to be less explicit is like telling a slasher flick to have less boobs and teenager death. The whole point of this game is that it depicts a world that's neck deep in blood sh*t and other horrible bodily fluids -humans and less than humans at their most animalistic and depraved. Terrible things will happen. The Gods are uncaring and will not save you from excruciating suffering. Heck they'll probably add to it. That is the point of this game.
-Pentagrams are not 'thrown in out of nowhere' -the dungeon is full of lunatic cult members that will gut you and draw rituals on the floor with your blood. It's perfectly at home there.
-People of "today's day and age" who are offended by disturbing themes and sexual violence should not play a game that heavily markets itself as being full of disturbing themes and sexual violence. If you hate apples do not buy an apple pie and then complain about apples being in it.
Also the #MeToo movement has nothing to do with this game, any less than the gun control movement should affect games like Fortnite. Sexual assault of any woman or man is wrong and should be pursued to the fullest extent of the law. Telling a game developer that they shouldn't depict fictional crimes or violence is lunacy. If you are equating the rape of a pixeled video game character to the sexual abuse of real life women then the problem is not with the developer, but you.
This game was made for people who want to play a difficult filthy medieval rogue-like full of gore and brutality, not for people who think 'feces is too gross' and "let's keep it consensual, bud". By changing it or removing these harsh elements they are moving away from their target audience in favor of trying to appeal to people who would not like the core themes of the game anyway no matter how watered down it got.
If this game were to be "cleaned up" as you say then most of the lore, environments, monsters, and story of the game would end up changed or just gone and it would end with it looking like literally any other dungeon rogue-like, too afraid to be shocking in case someone didn't like what they saw. And there are many people out there who will take issue with nearly everything.
This game did what it set out to do, and it stands out from many other games right now because of that. I cannot imagine this game being able to keep the developer's vision had this been done by a AAA game publisher or even an Indie Studio.
Any way, the game is rough, bug-ridden, and makes me stressed -but I'm glad I found it (thank you NecoSergal for bringing it to my attention) and am enjoying figuring it out slowly and excruciatingly. Thank you to the developers and people that assisted in the creation of this breath of fresh(rotten?) air to rpgs and rogue-likes.