Fear & Hunger - Survival Horror Rogue-Like Blobber *qualifier overflow*

[Karl Barx]

Spoiler

Hi folks,

On my first topic here ; I'd like to introduce my current-time-favorite indie RPG : Fear & Hunger.

Let's try to describe it, shall we ? Well, I'd say F&H is:

- a rogue-like:

• dungeons are procedurally generated;
• death is mostly brutal permadeath;
• very few occasions to save.

- counterintuitively though, it has a strong narration:

• numerous NPCs, some of whom you can recruit (up to 4 at a time; game is thus also a blobber);
• multiple-choice conversations, including convos with party members;
• multiple endings. Game can technically be completed while keeping most of its lore hidden.

- intended for a mature audience (21+):

• inspirations for story and visuals include Silent Hill, Amnesia : The Dark Descent, Saw;
• crude nudity and violence;
• player is frequently presented with strong moral dilemmas.

- also a survival horror:

• Hunger and Fear gauges, requiring to gather -often moldy- food and comforting oneself with light sources and beverages;
• numerous weakened states : Bleeding, Poisoned, Intoxicated, Infected, Mad...
• you'll never have enough resources to slay everything down there. Fleeing is often your best option...

Now, what does a Fear & Hunger playthrough look like ?

You first select from one of the following classes: Outlander (kindof Berserker), Mercenary (kindof Ranger), Knight (kindof Paladin), Dark Priest.
After a skippable intro, here you are, facing the Fear & Hunger prison entrance -hounds are barking on your trail.
Your only well-defined objective : rescuing Captain Le'garde, missing for months now.

You enter the fortress. It is reminiscent though different of your previous visits.

You prudently step foward. A menacing shade moves at the limit of your view cone. You wait for it to vanish, go forward, step into some food locker, inspect a barrel: moldy bread and cheese inside. It'll do the job... for now.
Turning back more confidently now. Too bad you didn't notice the grotesque shade doing the same, now occupying the entrance hall... it sees and runs towards you. Combat is unavoidable.

Screen zooms in on a JRPG (a la Final Fantasy) closer view. The monster swings a meat clever and puts a hideous stinger out. You cut it preventively; creature swings its arm down in retaliation, cutting through your right arm. You manage to decapitale it 2 turns later but at which cost... you lost 1/2 of your Body points and are now bleeding heavily!
You collect your freshly cut arm, meat clever, rip the monster's cloth to stem the bleeding. If not for some unholy black magic, dual-hand swords are out of question now... You replace your sword with the meat clever.

No skill tree nor XP points. All skills are learned organically during game events. For instance :

- hunger is tormenting you badly. Freshly deceased comrades are lying all around. Are you willing to do anything to survive ? If so, congrats, you just learned the "Cannibalism" skill ^^.
- combat-oriented Mage, you notice that high-level Fire spells require getting closer to All-Mer, God of Death and Blood. Deity well-known for its thirst for human sacrifices.
- the silent little girl you just saved is following you now, only avoiding combat. At some point, you find a small dagger and show it to her. She smiles and eagerly takes it. Little did you know she already had the "Short blade" skill.

Why am sharing all this on the Codex ?
First, game is pretty ambitious and complete for its team size (1 developer + contributions). It mashes several genres up, weighs 1 Gb once installed, has a distinct art style and has already kept me busy for 1 week now.
It also instills dread very efficiently. Soundtrack, permanent death threat and edgy topics are doing a great job of horror for a 2D game.

Some caveats through:
- art is pretty good for an indie game, but still uneven and inferior to pieces such as Darkest Dungeon e.g.;
- too much randomness. Game-decisive events are literally resolved with a coin toss (coin actually shows on screen !);
- often frustrating. Trolls will say game is mostly long because it is hard.

There is a free demo available (search "Download demo" on page) :
https://mirohaver.itch.io/fear-hunger
along with the full version. Steam version will come shortly.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

The description sounds interesting...

(From the comments it seems pretty buggy too.)

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[JarlFrank]

• dungeons are procedurally generated;

Lost me there.

 

[JarlFrank]

from those ss it looks like 2 seperate games

No, it just looks like an RPG Maker game, which it obviously is.

 

[thesheeep]

Yeah... I'm certainly not the only one thinking "Oh.. Hmmm... could be interest--- aaand it's an RPG maker game incl. bobbleheads. Nope."

 

[Darth Canoli]

I wanted to leave a comment after reading about the saves shenanigans and seeing that's obviously a RPGMaker game but instead, i tried the demo.

It took me five minutes to decide to uninstall it, i guess that's a new record.

Spoiler

• Slow/laggy walking pace
• Even the textbox is laggy, simple things like checking a barrel takes way too many seconds.
• RPGMaker combat system
• Also, the portraits of the knight and the dark priest are a total decline.

Also, i don't like "survival" games like this one where you obviously have to cook to feed your toons (a lot of fucking ingredients in the barrels like flour and stuf)

Sim games killed cRPG ...

Everything else is probably alright but i didn't get to test it.

 

[Mortmal]

Hi folks,
- intended for a mature audience (21+):

• inspirations for story and visuals include Silent Hill, Amnesia : The Dark Descent, Saw;
• crude nudity and violence;
• player is frequently presented with strong moral dilemmas.

Tempting...but for the usual rpgmaker shit, 8$ is that really worth it ?

 

[Mortmal]

I just paid the hefty entrance fee.. It might be some hidden gem after all.

 

[Karl Barx]

Hey man, that's great, but no need to take my word. Demo has already lots of edgy content ^^.

from those ss it looks like 2 seperate games

Visual quality is really uneven during the game.
I posted "best" and "worst" ss, so that you know what to expect.

 

[Agame]

Is OP the developer? Cos seems a bit like that from the way you introduce it...

Anyway regarding the visuals, having started my own RPG maker project I very quickly realized you have to make a choice: either go all in and change ALL the visuals completely to your own style to avoid looking like "generic RPG maker" game. Or just embrace the RPG maker look and find other ways to make the game unique and stand out from the crowd. Here it just looks like a mess, some nice unique visuals mashed with generic stuff.

 

[Latro]

Damned Registrations i thought you were op

 

[Jacob]

it seems like the devs had a decent artist but incapable of making a game without rpgmaker. sad

 

[Lithium Flower]

I've played a bit of the demo.

Sure, it is an RPGmaker game, but it doesn't actually stick to the gameplay one would typically expect from the engine (ie oldschool JRPG). A lot of good games were made by a artists trying to figure out the whole programming thing, so I don't see why that should automatically disqualify the game.

Instead of every step taken having a chance to trigger a random encounter ala Final Fantasy, enemies actually patrol the level, meaning avoidance and stealth are options. Some like massive betentacled amoebas are slow and passive and only lazily chase you if you get their attention, but will actively wrap their tentacles around you to prevent escape in combat, meaning that they are easy to avoid but hard to disengage from. Others, like the grotesque prison guard, patrol about slowly but will be on your shit in seconds upon detecting you. Due to the darkness of the dungeon you can only see a few feet in front of you so you have to take care in navigating the areas, and once opened doors stay open forever - the game explicitly warns you of this. All of this combines to make exploration a tactical and tense affair.

Although I have not played enough to gain a party, combat is also quite different in that you can actually target and dismember individual limbs...and the enemy can do the same to you. The first time I tried fighting one of the huge prison wardens I was reduced to an armless onahole. You even even attempt diplomacy during combat (more on this in the below paragraph)

The writing is amateurish - I get the feeling that English is not the dev's first language - but is coherent enough and flavorful enough that it carries the atmosphere of the game nicely. Think weird, as opposed to offensive, sentence structure. That being said, most of the actual atmosphere comes from the gameplay itself. As you crawl through the dungeon, sneaking around monsters and scrounging for items, your sanity slowly decreases as your hunger constantly increases, so you check everywhere you can for food and alcohol, mostly finding rot. I discovered a pair of dark-robed priests, their faces covered with veils, gathered around an obscene statue. They held up lanterns that blasted me with scorching light and knowing that I could do little against them I actually tried pleading (this opens up a dialogue window and you can try different approaches to conversation) - at first I told them I was merely a pilgrim, but they simply scoffed at my pedestrian faith before attacking me once again. I was reduced to half my health before deciding to ask them about their gods, and in their desire to proselytize they actually stopped attacking me and I promptly fled. At one point the floor underneath me gave way (via RNG cointoss) and I found myself on a level below (I've discovered multiple proper shortcuts that connected different areas as well)...with a busted ankle. I managed to sneak by some bizarre looking enemies and find my way back to the floor I was originally on before finding a latrine large enough to crawl through and in a fit of morbid curiosity decided to drop down. I found myself in a small hole but deep hole, knee-deep in shit, and once I tried climbing back up the pile of offal I couldn't get a grip and remained in the shithole, presumably for all eternity.

In terms of themes there is a lot of grotesque and sexual horror that reminds me of Berserk and Kingdom Death: Monster. Everything stinks of blood and semen. Good shit.

Anyway, I personally am very charmed with the game but do acknowledge it can very well become unbearable after an hour or so - I simply have not played enough to know - but hopefully this is enough to dispel some preconceptions. I will probably grab the game once it comes out on steam.

 

[Mortmal]

Well summed up by Lithium Flower ,alas i can confirm after a few hours it gets unbearable. This game has all the right ideas , however the save system is crippling . No save if you exit game, you can only save on level 2 using a bed with 50% chance to die, you flip a coin heads and tails,a very common occurrence for many encounters . You can also find books of enlightment in the random libraries, but you almost never do . Worse the game sometimes crash , even while using one of those books. So those 8$+20% VAT are a bit steep for what it is right now i'd say.

 

[Karl Barx]

A new version (1.1.1) is out, and it reduces the randomness where it was the most infuriating (say, will I survive this coin toss against the most generic enemy) :

The coin tosses are still there. But toned down. Most of the one hit kills are removed and replaced with strong attacks that you can deal with if you got good armor or enough health. Also some of the more annoying coin tosses elsewhere are toned down too.

I'm personally more interested in the new stuff. Still digging this :

2 new regular enemies
2 new boss enemies
1 new mysterious enemy/friend?
A new area with 2 floors and 2 timelines
A new area in the ancient city
Some new items

 

[Beastro]

Soy!

 

[lightbane]

Snipped around for info about this. It got me interested. As expected, the game is edgy enough to double as a razor and then some.

However, it has EVERY element the Codex gushes about: C&C, hardcore turn-based combat, multiple endings and situations mutually exclusive according to your actions done in-game (and not just a last minute choice), no "save the world" plot, the MC is not a chosen one but a poor bastard, no animu hairdos, etc.

The only Japanese thing of the game is that it uses RPGMaker.

However, seeing that Valve is in a witch-hunt mode of anything that smells remotely Japanese from indie publishers, I would say to watch out as it will be banned sooner or later.

 

[Karl Barx]

seeing that Valve is in a witch-hunt mode of anything that smells remotely Japanese from indie publishers, I would say to watch out as it will be banned sooner or later

We'll still be able to get it from itch.io or wherever.
But care to elaborate on this ? What issue does Steam exactly have with Jap-style indie games ?

 

[lightbane]

What issue does Steam exactly have with Jap-style indie games ?

Are you one of the devs? You can request a Developer tag from Infinitron if that's the case. Either way, lately someone from Steam is doing everything they can to censor or ban Japanese games (usually Visual Novels) with erotic content. Normally they use the excuse of "think of the children!", wihch can be accepted in some cases, but games set in high school or with underage-looking characters, even if they have no erotic content, still get the banhammer. Meanwhile, games from big developers like Senran Kagura, which is as subtle as a sack of bricks as you may think, are left untouched, and so are games with gay sex (even if they feature minors and/or hare hardcore). More info here: https://www.oneangrygamer.net/2019/...-ban-games-that-they-deem-legally-grey/75759/

Of course, this game is not strictly a porn game nor is a standard animu thing. However, since it features all kind of gross things from rape to extreme violence, mutilation and so on (including the same things applied to children or worse), you can be sure this game will likely attract bad looks from the censorship brigade.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

The first two screenshots makes it look like a scuffed Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. You have Alucard-lite and Legion-lite.

 

[Mortmal]

What issue does Steam exactly have with Jap-style indie games ?

Are you one of the devs? You can request a Developer tag from Infinitron if that's the case. Either way, lately someone from Steam is doing everything they can to censor or ban Japanese games (usually Visual Novels) with erotic content. Normally they use the excuse of "think of the children!", wihch can be accepted in some cases, but games set in high school or with underage-looking characters, even if they have no erotic content, still get the banhammer. Meanwhile, games from big developers like Senran Kagura, which is as subtle as a sack of bricks as you may think, are left untouched, and so are games with gay sex (even if they feature minors and/or hare hardcore). More info here: https://www.oneangrygamer.net/2019/...-ban-games-that-they-deem-legally-grey/75759/

Of course, this game is not strictly a porn game nor is a standard animu thing. However, since it features all kind of gross things from rape to extreme violence, mutilation and so on (including the same things applied to children or worse), you can be sure this game will likely attract bad looks from the censorship brigade.

There's indeed everything included, and that's a good thing. Last update made it saving slightly less insuferable as the bed near he maiden and crow statue is not 50% death anymore.. the first time. Worth trying i think but still something for the most deviant and masochistic codexers.

 

[jungl]

game more survival horror then anything. You will die a lot till you figure out how to approach stuff and ignore the haha gotcha bullshit. Kind of reminds me of a choose your own adventure book in a way except you in control what happens and its a bitch to keep the protaganist alive.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

This game is the dark souls of rpgmaker games