Developer Game Pill calls their debut original IP, Hangry, a “Snack n Slash” RPG. Now, I’ve played all sorts of RPGs in my 25+ years of gaming life. Over the years, I’ve beaten Elder Gods, handled detective work, and tried to break out of prison in various RPGs. But this has to be the first time I’m playing an RPG all about snacking on all sorts of nasty-looking beasties. Yes, Monster Hunter and plenty of other RPGs also feature harvesting and dining on exotic and often questionable cuisine. However, in all these games, cooking is just a means to an end. In Hangry, our titular blue-furred hero is all about insatiable hunger and fine dining.
Hangry is a third-person action-adventure RPG where the player assumes the role of Hangry, a beastly mercenary employed under Goutra, the owner and chef of an underworld diner in an alien city where food is all the jazz. Goutra’s bottomless greed and Hangry’s insatiable hunger drive them to the city’s seedy underworld. It’s Hangry’s job to procure the exotic items on the menu and Goutras to prepare fine meals for the underworld honchos. Two peas in a pod, don’t you think? In this sci-fi world ruled by food, only the finest cuisine connoisseurs will survive. Have no fear; Hangry is here.
While the Canada-based Game Pill offers its players visits to BBQ’d woodlands to candy-coated caverns, the demo that I got access to limits the culinary exploration to a colorful but generic grassland planet. Right off the bat, Hangry’s 7th-generation console inspirations make themselves apparent. Hangry looks, controls, and plays like an action game from the PS3-360 days. This is not a bad thing by any means, since the style of gameplay long forgotten is actually making a slow comeback through indie houses. Hangry happily (and sluggishly) responds to each press of the controller buttons, and players are given brief but confusing tutorial messages, to get them up to speed.
It turns out that it’s not just exotic animals that aren’t free from the sharp senses of our blue meanie. Even the beautiful alien floras are fair game, as they make up ingredients of the ever-increasing recipe list. But there’s no need to be overwhelmed. At its core, Hangry is an action game you’ve seen and played a dozen times before. What sets Hangry apart from other standard action games is, of course, the hunger mechanics. Hangry is like Hulk. The “hangrier” he gets, the more violent and uncontrollable he becomes. Balancing this hunger/anger mechanic becomes an important part of the game, as some care and strategies must be taken to extract the most valuable parts from your targets. Going full-on Hulk mode night satisfies your immediate hunger, but there is a risk of permanently damaging recipe ingredients.
The demo did exactly what demos are supposed to do—give the players a small taste. Over the course of the sizeable demo, I really got comfortable as Hangry, got angry and slaughtered an entire planet in the name of running a restaurant. I got to fight exotic beasts of all shapes and sizes, went out hunting for unique ingredients, learned to extract the said ingredients, and finally, cooked the dishes by engaging in a fun mini-game back at the restaurant kitchen. What a wonderful time to be a video game enjoyer!
The demo for Hangry got me excited for the full game and even managed to get a wishlist from me. However, I have to say that the technical state of the demo leaves much to be desired. I did not mind the junky and, at times, unresponsive combat because those are all subject to change. But man did the demo run like crap. I did not expect a game that resembled an early PS3 title to bring my RTX 3070 to its knees. Despite messing around with the settings, I couldn’t get the game to run at a stable fps. Thankfully, there is no release date in sight for Hangry and I assume there’s plenty of time for the performance to be optimized. Man, talking about Hangry is making me hungry. But alas! We poor humans have to settle for generic, non-alien cuisine.
