A flesh-eating hole has appeared in your closet. It's YOUR job to feed it. You must! No matter what the cost... Terrorize the town on your sick quest for meat in this deranged serial killer simulator.
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I mean I get that the game tries to make you play as a serial killer and feel bad about it or whatever but like... I didn't feel like playing that way so it was just awkward that all these teens are like hunched over preparing to get killed even though I decided to leave them alone. Also there was a bug where if you took out the gun and then put it away repeatedly it'd be farther away from you each time and so I just messed around with this bug the whole time. I also jumped in the giant mouth and softlocked myself down there.
7/10
For once in Puppet Combo's games, you play as the killer. It's a good chance to explore not only some tropes commonly associated with slasher's villains but, perhaps more interestingly, to re-enact and revisit come psychoanalytic implications of the genre.
Behind the bedroom of your avatar you find an archetypal womb-like space with a huge toothed mouth in the middle. It's that mouth that orders you to kill ('feed me, Billy!'). It's a fascinating take on the Freudian interpretation of slasher films: the urge to kill arises from a repressed/unprocessed feminine (it's also interesting how the mental uterine space is also depicted as liminal - to get there, you must traverse a womb-like corridor that toys with your perception of distance (and therefore reality).
When you kill your victims, you enact ritual: you approach them (in silence, striving to find your way into the woods), you kill them (climax: slow-motion, cacophony, and 3d models distorted and stretched by their death), and you get back to your truck (drone sound carpet and dissonant noises). The sequences soon assume a dream-like undertone. The parallel climax/orgasm, reinforced by the psychosexual interpretation we may give of the game as well as of slasher movies in general, is reinforced by the orgasmic audio-visual/interactive outburst the killings provide.
Brilliant.
For once in Puppet Combo's games, you play as the killer. It's a good chance to explore not only some tropes commonly associated with slasher's villains but, perhaps more interestingly, to re-enact and revisit come psychoanalytic implications of the genre.
Behind the bedroom of your avatar you find an archetypal womb-like space with a huge toothed mouth in the middle. It's that mouth that orders you to kill ('feed me, Billy!'). It's a fascinating take on the Freudian interpretation of slasher films: the urge to kill arises from a repressed/unprocessed feminine (it's also interesting how the mental uterine space is also depicted as liminal - to get there, you must traverse a womb-like corridor that toys with your perception of distance (and therefore reality).
When you kill your victims, you enact ritual: you approach them (in silence, striving to find your way into the woods), you kill them (climax: slow-motion, cacophony, and 3d models distorted and stretched by their death), and you get back to your truck (drone sound carpet and dissonant noises). The sequences soon assume a dream-like undertone. The parallel climax/orgasm, reinforced by the psychosexual interpretation we may give of the game as well as of slasher movies in general, is reinforced by the orgasmic audio-visual/interactive outburst the killings provide.
Brilliant.
It was clear from Puppet Combo's conception that they were keen on someday creating an experience that would allow the player to control a killer. This was evident from some of their earlier playable experiences like Texas Butcher which I have reviewed previously. Killing NPCs is an inherent experience in most video games, but it isn't something that is actively planned in the minds of most.The game is incredibly taboo and feels really jarring and unsettling to play.
Feed Me Billy has you assume the role of the eponymous killer Billy, a man driven by an unsettling desire to appease the cravings of a ravenous, flesh-consuming void residing in his closet. The game consists of three distinct scenarios, in each one, Billy is awoken, equips his clown mask and revolver and sets out to hunt for appropriate victims.
In scenario one, Billy lurks near a gas station late at night, spotting a woman using a pay phone. He strategically parks his car in the nearby woods, swiftly murders her, and transports her lifeless body to his vehicle.
The second scenario finds Billy again parking in the woods, stumbling upon a vibrant campsite where three unsuspecting individuals are enjoying themselves. Without hesitation, he brutally eliminates them, collecting their remains to feed the insatiable void in his closet.
In the final scenario, Billy encounters a cluster of small houses by the roadside. He enters one with an unlocked door, ruthlessly slaughters the inhabitants, and adds their bodies to his car. As the grotesque void devours the corpses, an eerie goat-like creature materializes, accompanied by the enigmatic message, "All Done." The game abruptly ends, leaving players haunted by the lingering mystery.
I interpreted this experience as the void being an internal representation of the craving to satisfy the itch for taking human life. Billy is addicted to pornography, a common affliction for serial killers, and the game follows him struggling with resisting these unholy urges he has within. This game is on the verge of the crossing the conceptual line of what is an acceptable premise for a video game. Feed Me Billy would undoubtedly be showered in controversy if it was widely known, and is the kind of game that would be shunned by most.
The atmosphere is unsettling, but not for us. It's disturbing to approach people from a distance, with your objective established, unaware of their fate. It is extremely fucked up. This uncomfortability is escalated when you're noticed and further exemplified when you pull the trigger and the audio does a great job of solidifying these themes of unease and guilt.
As mentioned earlier, there are plenty of games that allow you to play as a killer. Dead By Daylight, Friday The 13th, but none feel more unsettling or intentional in their desire to replicate the kinds of emotions it would invoke to take a life like Feed Me Billy does. Most wouldn't even touch the game after reading what you're capable of doing. Many more wouldn't finish it. But I challenged myself to experience the entire library of this studio, even the games I feel uncomfortable experiencing. I wouldn't recommend this game to people, and I feel like it is one of those rare pieces of media that if discovered at a young age could vastly twist the mental development of impressionable youths. There aren't many adult-only games, but I feel like a new ESRB rating should be established for titles like these where you must pass a mental soundness test prior to playing so that you are resistant to the impressionable feelings of excitement that one may get replicating this lifestyle. Puppet Combo I love you guys, but you are wild for this one.
Feed Me Billy has you assume the role of the eponymous killer Billy, a man driven by an unsettling desire to appease the cravings of a ravenous, flesh-consuming void residing in his closet. The game consists of three distinct scenarios, in each one, Billy is awoken, equips his clown mask and revolver and sets out to hunt for appropriate victims.
In scenario one, Billy lurks near a gas station late at night, spotting a woman using a pay phone. He strategically parks his car in the nearby woods, swiftly murders her, and transports her lifeless body to his vehicle.
The second scenario finds Billy again parking in the woods, stumbling upon a vibrant campsite where three unsuspecting individuals are enjoying themselves. Without hesitation, he brutally eliminates them, collecting their remains to feed the insatiable void in his closet.
In the final scenario, Billy encounters a cluster of small houses by the roadside. He enters one with an unlocked door, ruthlessly slaughters the inhabitants, and adds their bodies to his car. As the grotesque void devours the corpses, an eerie goat-like creature materializes, accompanied by the enigmatic message, "All Done." The game abruptly ends, leaving players haunted by the lingering mystery.
I interpreted this experience as the void being an internal representation of the craving to satisfy the itch for taking human life. Billy is addicted to pornography, a common affliction for serial killers, and the game follows him struggling with resisting these unholy urges he has within. This game is on the verge of the crossing the conceptual line of what is an acceptable premise for a video game. Feed Me Billy would undoubtedly be showered in controversy if it was widely known, and is the kind of game that would be shunned by most.
The atmosphere is unsettling, but not for us. It's disturbing to approach people from a distance, with your objective established, unaware of their fate. It is extremely fucked up. This uncomfortability is escalated when you're noticed and further exemplified when you pull the trigger and the audio does a great job of solidifying these themes of unease and guilt.
As mentioned earlier, there are plenty of games that allow you to play as a killer. Dead By Daylight, Friday The 13th, but none feel more unsettling or intentional in their desire to replicate the kinds of emotions it would invoke to take a life like Feed Me Billy does. Most wouldn't even touch the game after reading what you're capable of doing. Many more wouldn't finish it. But I challenged myself to experience the entire library of this studio, even the games I feel uncomfortable experiencing. I wouldn't recommend this game to people, and I feel like it is one of those rare pieces of media that if discovered at a young age could vastly twist the mental development of impressionable youths. There aren't many adult-only games, but I feel like a new ESRB rating should be established for titles like these where you must pass a mental soundness test prior to playing so that you are resistant to the impressionable feelings of excitement that one may get replicating this lifestyle. Puppet Combo I love you guys, but you are wild for this one.
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f e e d m e b i l l y ! ! !
A pretty good case study in why we usually dont make full blown serial killer simulators (its a bit fucked up)