After Fear & Hunger peaked my interest and watching videos and reading stuff about it , starting to play it full of confidence and thinking that I’d know how to play around its trickery a lil’ bit, only for a malformed Guard to cut my arm off and beat me up till I had no health left, waking up right after without either of my legs and bleeding, surrounded by bodies and gore from which I had to claw and crawl my way out off, trying desperately to find an exit and ending up yet another enemy who promptly took away the only health point I had left, and just when I thought I had finally died for real this time, I woke up once again, and was able to witness how said enemy did something I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t even lay on text on here, watched as the world faded away on those last moments of struggle… that was easily one of the most grotesque, vile yet humbling moments a game ever made me feel.
A feeling that is not mere terror and borders true helplessness, a fate brought by chance and my own hubris, the single best and worst fucking way the game could introduce itself. The Gods are too far away to hear your prayers asking for this madness to stop, but maybe that’s a good thing… maybe a worse fate would await you if they were able to hear them.
The dungeons of Fear and Hunger occupy a space that fascinate me, and it’s kinda funny how that’s a statement that serves well for both the context and lore of the game’s world and outside of it; at its more distilled, Fear & Hunger seems something that The Simpsons or Pen & Teller would have made to parody violence in videogames back in the 90s, it’s a collection of every possible vile or grotesque thing mashed together in a festival of cruelty and pain to such an extreme that should by any means be comical. I don’t blame anyone that hasn’t interacted with the game to only see it at that, when a game starts with a content warning such as this and it’s quite literally called Fear & Hunger, it’s easy to assume that this is gonna be some Itchy and Scratchy shit.
If Fear & Hunger was entirely about that, horrid stuff just for the sake of making people point at the screen in disgust or being cruel to ‘cause pain in the player just because, I do not think it would have garnered the following it has all these years later, it wouldn’t have grabbed me like a leech grabs to a host, that’s for sure. It still can seem a bit silly or ‘’too much’’ a few times, like when you encounter an amalgamation of human flesh and minds and it ends up speaking in the foulest yet most casual mouth you can think off, but I honestly could see those moments being done as such completely purpose, as a small acknowledgement of just how exaggerated this setting can feel at first, or maybe they are just a twisted way to have a little bit of a laugh, ‘cause believe me… there ain’t much to smile at otherwise.
The dungeon seems to have something that calls people —in this case something completely opposite to the game itself—, whether is just the impulse to try it out for yourself to wanting to explore every single part of the accursed catacombs, and when I first played the game back in October of last year… I really couldn’t see why. I could see quality, no doubt about it, but with every turn and step, I could almost feel the game physically rejecting me: being mauled by bogs, getting infected after stepping on a fucking nail and dying because of it, having and undesirable encounter with the Cavemother when arriving at the mines, losing a leg or both because I took a plunge I really shouldn’t have, or that series of, let’s just say, catastrophic events I mentioned at the beginning. Every time I loaded the save, every passing moment, every single hurdle I overcame only to always be met with another that felt even major, I always saw the intent behind it, but I never felt the satisfaction of learning it and gaining the knowledge that comes with it, it only felt like I was being kicked down a stair-case that only got deeper and deeper. I ultimately stopped playing, but I was not free of the dungeon, there was something here that, even tho I didn’t quite understand, kept me thinking about it.
And after months, I couldn’t take it anymore, I caved in, I returned to the dungeon of Fear and Hunger, and this time… well, I actually think it’d be better to say this if I use another example:
After what will be a incredibly high and grueling number of deaths and finally overcoming the upper levels of the dungeon with its Guard and flying Gnome infested halls and torture chambers, and unless you find the Thicket on your first go, you’ll most likely pull the lever you’ll encounter in one of the many rooms, which will grant you access to the elevator that will lead you to the next area… the mines. The mines are the break it or make it point for many players, and in my case, they completely broke me; not because of a certain Crow headed enemy which can break your bones and blind you or the ghost enemies you can’t even hit if you don’t have any cursed weapons or magic, those are bad, yes… But they are not the Yellow Mages. Before this point, the ways you could damaged without engaging into combat ranged from being shot with a bow or stepping on a nail, annoying and potentially mortal, but nothing too dangerous if you know what you are doing, the Yellow Mages then take this and the proceed to take it to fucko-levels. Being able to cast a spell in the overworld which, if you are close enough time or take you by surprise, will make you lose an entire limb, get hit 4 times? You lose all of them. No matter what I did, no matter what I tried, because I always arrived to them really hurt or without a companion, I either died on the overworld, or got killed by them while in combat. I felt powerless and defeated, it didn’t simply feel cruel or hard, it felt like it was a fight I didn’t even had a chance of winning ever. That was where I initially stopped playing, that was where my story with the dungeons first ended, and I look back upon it I only think of stress, fear, and frustration, a mixture of feelings I wanted anything but to experience again… who would have thought that I actually never would, even when coming back.
When I finally returned, something had… changed, not with the game itself of course, bit still, it felt different, I still picked Outlander as my starting class since I really like the survival options it gives and the amazing attack stat, I even picked the same options and the introduction since I wanted to start off with something familiar, but even tho it was the exact same, even tho the dungeon was still the same aside of some layout changes that can happen in certain areas every time you start a new run… it felt different. Maybe I went in with a different mind-set, or maybe it was the fact I already had experience from that past playthrough, but despite the fact I was still dying, despite the many errors and mistake I was making and the punishment the game was putting me through just like it did months ago… it all clicked. I was trying far more stuff, the game wasn’t just a puzlle that consisted on either fighter or evading enemies, it felt much more; the world of Fear and Hunger is as integral as the action in the battles, if not more, and gaining knowledge through books, setting traps for enemies, or even just learning how to get enemies’ souls and upgrading yourself with them, little steps that came with pain and challenges, but also with an enormous satisfaction. I’d die and have to repeat all the process over and over again, but each time faster, more efficient, even when something changed, it wasn’t mere trial and error, it was a continuous experimentation that made going from dark rooms to the deepest of chasms daunting yet worth it.
I learnt and discovered strategies to efficiently take care of the guards, how red and explosive vials can be tools for opening paths and locks but also amazing items to get out to sticky situations, I tried and experimented talking to enemies which even when it most cases didn’t led to much, in others meant basically winning the entire battle or getting an item, I even got an ability which turned the bow, a weapon that isn’t actually that great in direct conflict considering is a two-handed weapon, into something hat can one shot practically every single normal enemy outside of battle. Death at the hands of a boss or the Crowmawler never stopped feeling like a looming threat, but this time it was one that could be overcome, thanks to help of allies as well as the items you can get by defeating them, especially the boss souls. But no moment, no boss defeat, no Crowmawler kill, no item requirement felt as exciting and rewarding as going back to the Yellow Mages, saying ‘’fuck it, we ball’’, trying a new plan and it actually working, making them completely unable to cast spells in battle, and after talking to them in battle, getting an item that an help you recruit a character that not only is a strong spellcaster, but also immortal, AND THEN for him to help you through a certain part of a later area, helping you discover a laboratory that gives you a way to progress without sacrificing any party members, but also that holds one of the most powerful spears in the entire game. Fear & Hunger? More like Hopes & Dreams, because we ridin’ alive out of this one!
It's honestly fucking insane, I don’t think I could put it any other way; I really didn’t have to me an active change to the way I interacted with this experience, and yet through its punishing but constant learning curve, the never ending systems that flow into one another and give so much freedom I’m convinced 90 percent of stuff I did could have been accomplished through other means, everything about Fear & Hunger feels so impossible to describe, once you fully engage with it, not because everything in it is completely original or earth-shattering, but because how immense it feels in spite of how small the dungeon is in reality.
You never achieve a point where you are an unstoppable machine, you can be more of less comfortable with your build and party, but the menace of… you know, dying, never stops being there, your fate can always depend on a coin-toss, after all. I think that the best way to say It is that I’m glad the game is the way it is, a world where luck is a prominent factor, where you can never interact with all of it fully and where a single, tiny mistake result in permanent crippling, hell, even tho I overcame the Mages, I also lost a leg to one of them, making it so I couldn’t run for the rest of the run, one last parting reminder of what I managed to win against, but also of how another mistake like that would spell literal disaster. Yet another way for the game to punish me, yet another way to laugh at it when I triumph despite it all, if you could consider any of this ‘’triumph’’.
Fear & Hunger’s sheer madness and punishments wouldn’t be what they are if it wasn’t because of its world, a world I can’t call alive, not because it doesn’t feel like it, but because it reeks of everything foul thing imaginable. Hell, at times you can be the foul thing, I had to attack an entire village ‘cause I made an accident and fucked up! It fucking sucked and I felt so terrible about it to the point of contemplating trying to load a past save? You bet I did! You are told many times that the dungeon is a horrible place, but no words truly do it justice; it gets worse as you delve deeper, and deeper it delves, to the point of questioning what’s the logic behind this walls, if none. Wretched beings brough by desperation or corruption, fauna perverted by the darkness trying to survive, cults that serve different old gods but share the same madness, and a story of fellowships both in the past and present, all searching something in the dungeon, be it someone, something, desire, or godhood. Fear & Hunger doesn’t have much narrative, the one present being defined and individual to each of the characters, but the story behind and in it is so fascinating to learn about and so horrifying to truly understand that gives so much more force to said individual narratives and a killer fantasy setting.
There are so many reasons the dungeon calls to so many, but I think it all comes down to the experience itself, the idea of finding something you shouldn’t, of continuously experimenting and winning thanks to it, of trying to about starvation and madness by all means and only grabbing onto it by the tip of your fingers, and the idea that every run can go differently not so much because of the random items (tho thank All-Mer for the ones that always are on the same place no matter what) but by decisions you take, the path you decide to go down from, the enemies you face or ignore, the friends or enemies you make. When arriving at the city of M'habre, which has to be my favorite section in the whole game, you could theoretically skip all of it if you killed the other playable characters as Knight or used a ton of Empty Scrolls. You can basically skip three whole major boss fights if you really want to. The fact that’s even a possibility shatters my feeble mind more than spamming Black Orb.
If anything, Fear & Hunger biggest problem isn’t something related to the game itself… it’s how fucking broken it is. I swear the code must have been written on a scroll or something, ‘cause the amount of bugs and glitches is… not really immense, but they a constant and some can even break the game completely, getting you stuck in certain sections or one entire area before the final bosses of ending A and B being completely broken, and in one in particular made me receive that Yellow Mage attack constantly, which honestly may seem poetic, but it made me look an entire hour for solutions, and I ended up having to repeat the whole thing while praying it didn’t happen again. If by any chance what I’ve said about the game has caught your eye and want to give it a shot, by any means, do, but please, install one of the many bug fix patched made by fand (some also include censor mods which is also pretty cool), I should have done it and makes things much better, butt he fact the game still has some of these is infuriating. Getting soft locked isn’t the same type of cruel that the rest of the game goes for, it’s just fucking annoying.
The adventure that awaits everyone in Fear & Hunger is always terrifying, it’s always a race against time and insanity, always a test in resource management and decision making… but it’s also always different, maybe sometimes in the smallest of ways, but that makes an impact, nonetheless. The dungeon forces its players are forced to get creative through sheer cruelty, but it makes those moments of glimmering light the more valuable; even when there are no happy endings at the end of the line, most come down to a simple question; will you let the dungeon change you? Or will you be the one to change the dungeon? Fear & Hunger I can’t recommend like others, if you weren’t interested by it or its premise really irks you, then I don’t think most if the things I said will make you change your mind, and that’s totally fine! I just wanted to tell of my experience with it, what I learnt, what it made me feels, and how it’s much more than it seems, and despite the pain it can induce, travelling into the unknown comes with risks, so part of the course…
After getting endings A, B, D and E, I can say that I have learnt something for sure… Gods are REALLY weak to poison, which hey, kinda nice kowing I can stop an eldritch abomination with a lil’ bit of insecticide!
A feeling that is not mere terror and borders true helplessness, a fate brought by chance and my own hubris, the single best and worst fucking way the game could introduce itself. The Gods are too far away to hear your prayers asking for this madness to stop, but maybe that’s a good thing… maybe a worse fate would await you if they were able to hear them.
The dungeons of Fear and Hunger occupy a space that fascinate me, and it’s kinda funny how that’s a statement that serves well for both the context and lore of the game’s world and outside of it; at its more distilled, Fear & Hunger seems something that The Simpsons or Pen & Teller would have made to parody violence in videogames back in the 90s, it’s a collection of every possible vile or grotesque thing mashed together in a festival of cruelty and pain to such an extreme that should by any means be comical. I don’t blame anyone that hasn’t interacted with the game to only see it at that, when a game starts with a content warning such as this and it’s quite literally called Fear & Hunger, it’s easy to assume that this is gonna be some Itchy and Scratchy shit.
If Fear & Hunger was entirely about that, horrid stuff just for the sake of making people point at the screen in disgust or being cruel to ‘cause pain in the player just because, I do not think it would have garnered the following it has all these years later, it wouldn’t have grabbed me like a leech grabs to a host, that’s for sure. It still can seem a bit silly or ‘’too much’’ a few times, like when you encounter an amalgamation of human flesh and minds and it ends up speaking in the foulest yet most casual mouth you can think off, but I honestly could see those moments being done as such completely purpose, as a small acknowledgement of just how exaggerated this setting can feel at first, or maybe they are just a twisted way to have a little bit of a laugh, ‘cause believe me… there ain’t much to smile at otherwise.
The dungeon seems to have something that calls people —in this case something completely opposite to the game itself—, whether is just the impulse to try it out for yourself to wanting to explore every single part of the accursed catacombs, and when I first played the game back in October of last year… I really couldn’t see why. I could see quality, no doubt about it, but with every turn and step, I could almost feel the game physically rejecting me: being mauled by bogs, getting infected after stepping on a fucking nail and dying because of it, having and undesirable encounter with the Cavemother when arriving at the mines, losing a leg or both because I took a plunge I really shouldn’t have, or that series of, let’s just say, catastrophic events I mentioned at the beginning. Every time I loaded the save, every passing moment, every single hurdle I overcame only to always be met with another that felt even major, I always saw the intent behind it, but I never felt the satisfaction of learning it and gaining the knowledge that comes with it, it only felt like I was being kicked down a stair-case that only got deeper and deeper. I ultimately stopped playing, but I was not free of the dungeon, there was something here that, even tho I didn’t quite understand, kept me thinking about it.
And after months, I couldn’t take it anymore, I caved in, I returned to the dungeon of Fear and Hunger, and this time… well, I actually think it’d be better to say this if I use another example:
After what will be a incredibly high and grueling number of deaths and finally overcoming the upper levels of the dungeon with its Guard and flying Gnome infested halls and torture chambers, and unless you find the Thicket on your first go, you’ll most likely pull the lever you’ll encounter in one of the many rooms, which will grant you access to the elevator that will lead you to the next area… the mines. The mines are the break it or make it point for many players, and in my case, they completely broke me; not because of a certain Crow headed enemy which can break your bones and blind you or the ghost enemies you can’t even hit if you don’t have any cursed weapons or magic, those are bad, yes… But they are not the Yellow Mages. Before this point, the ways you could damaged without engaging into combat ranged from being shot with a bow or stepping on a nail, annoying and potentially mortal, but nothing too dangerous if you know what you are doing, the Yellow Mages then take this and the proceed to take it to fucko-levels. Being able to cast a spell in the overworld which, if you are close enough time or take you by surprise, will make you lose an entire limb, get hit 4 times? You lose all of them. No matter what I did, no matter what I tried, because I always arrived to them really hurt or without a companion, I either died on the overworld, or got killed by them while in combat. I felt powerless and defeated, it didn’t simply feel cruel or hard, it felt like it was a fight I didn’t even had a chance of winning ever. That was where I initially stopped playing, that was where my story with the dungeons first ended, and I look back upon it I only think of stress, fear, and frustration, a mixture of feelings I wanted anything but to experience again… who would have thought that I actually never would, even when coming back.
When I finally returned, something had… changed, not with the game itself of course, bit still, it felt different, I still picked Outlander as my starting class since I really like the survival options it gives and the amazing attack stat, I even picked the same options and the introduction since I wanted to start off with something familiar, but even tho it was the exact same, even tho the dungeon was still the same aside of some layout changes that can happen in certain areas every time you start a new run… it felt different. Maybe I went in with a different mind-set, or maybe it was the fact I already had experience from that past playthrough, but despite the fact I was still dying, despite the many errors and mistake I was making and the punishment the game was putting me through just like it did months ago… it all clicked. I was trying far more stuff, the game wasn’t just a puzlle that consisted on either fighter or evading enemies, it felt much more; the world of Fear and Hunger is as integral as the action in the battles, if not more, and gaining knowledge through books, setting traps for enemies, or even just learning how to get enemies’ souls and upgrading yourself with them, little steps that came with pain and challenges, but also with an enormous satisfaction. I’d die and have to repeat all the process over and over again, but each time faster, more efficient, even when something changed, it wasn’t mere trial and error, it was a continuous experimentation that made going from dark rooms to the deepest of chasms daunting yet worth it.
I learnt and discovered strategies to efficiently take care of the guards, how red and explosive vials can be tools for opening paths and locks but also amazing items to get out to sticky situations, I tried and experimented talking to enemies which even when it most cases didn’t led to much, in others meant basically winning the entire battle or getting an item, I even got an ability which turned the bow, a weapon that isn’t actually that great in direct conflict considering is a two-handed weapon, into something hat can one shot practically every single normal enemy outside of battle. Death at the hands of a boss or the Crowmawler never stopped feeling like a looming threat, but this time it was one that could be overcome, thanks to help of allies as well as the items you can get by defeating them, especially the boss souls. But no moment, no boss defeat, no Crowmawler kill, no item requirement felt as exciting and rewarding as going back to the Yellow Mages, saying ‘’fuck it, we ball’’, trying a new plan and it actually working, making them completely unable to cast spells in battle, and after talking to them in battle, getting an item that an help you recruit a character that not only is a strong spellcaster, but also immortal, AND THEN for him to help you through a certain part of a later area, helping you discover a laboratory that gives you a way to progress without sacrificing any party members, but also that holds one of the most powerful spears in the entire game. Fear & Hunger? More like Hopes & Dreams, because we ridin’ alive out of this one!
It's honestly fucking insane, I don’t think I could put it any other way; I really didn’t have to me an active change to the way I interacted with this experience, and yet through its punishing but constant learning curve, the never ending systems that flow into one another and give so much freedom I’m convinced 90 percent of stuff I did could have been accomplished through other means, everything about Fear & Hunger feels so impossible to describe, once you fully engage with it, not because everything in it is completely original or earth-shattering, but because how immense it feels in spite of how small the dungeon is in reality.
You never achieve a point where you are an unstoppable machine, you can be more of less comfortable with your build and party, but the menace of… you know, dying, never stops being there, your fate can always depend on a coin-toss, after all. I think that the best way to say It is that I’m glad the game is the way it is, a world where luck is a prominent factor, where you can never interact with all of it fully and where a single, tiny mistake result in permanent crippling, hell, even tho I overcame the Mages, I also lost a leg to one of them, making it so I couldn’t run for the rest of the run, one last parting reminder of what I managed to win against, but also of how another mistake like that would spell literal disaster. Yet another way for the game to punish me, yet another way to laugh at it when I triumph despite it all, if you could consider any of this ‘’triumph’’.
Fear & Hunger’s sheer madness and punishments wouldn’t be what they are if it wasn’t because of its world, a world I can’t call alive, not because it doesn’t feel like it, but because it reeks of everything foul thing imaginable. Hell, at times you can be the foul thing, I had to attack an entire village ‘cause I made an accident and fucked up! It fucking sucked and I felt so terrible about it to the point of contemplating trying to load a past save? You bet I did! You are told many times that the dungeon is a horrible place, but no words truly do it justice; it gets worse as you delve deeper, and deeper it delves, to the point of questioning what’s the logic behind this walls, if none. Wretched beings brough by desperation or corruption, fauna perverted by the darkness trying to survive, cults that serve different old gods but share the same madness, and a story of fellowships both in the past and present, all searching something in the dungeon, be it someone, something, desire, or godhood. Fear & Hunger doesn’t have much narrative, the one present being defined and individual to each of the characters, but the story behind and in it is so fascinating to learn about and so horrifying to truly understand that gives so much more force to said individual narratives and a killer fantasy setting.
There are so many reasons the dungeon calls to so many, but I think it all comes down to the experience itself, the idea of finding something you shouldn’t, of continuously experimenting and winning thanks to it, of trying to about starvation and madness by all means and only grabbing onto it by the tip of your fingers, and the idea that every run can go differently not so much because of the random items (tho thank All-Mer for the ones that always are on the same place no matter what) but by decisions you take, the path you decide to go down from, the enemies you face or ignore, the friends or enemies you make. When arriving at the city of M'habre, which has to be my favorite section in the whole game, you could theoretically skip all of it if you killed the other playable characters as Knight or used a ton of Empty Scrolls. You can basically skip three whole major boss fights if you really want to. The fact that’s even a possibility shatters my feeble mind more than spamming Black Orb.
If anything, Fear & Hunger biggest problem isn’t something related to the game itself… it’s how fucking broken it is. I swear the code must have been written on a scroll or something, ‘cause the amount of bugs and glitches is… not really immense, but they a constant and some can even break the game completely, getting you stuck in certain sections or one entire area before the final bosses of ending A and B being completely broken, and in one in particular made me receive that Yellow Mage attack constantly, which honestly may seem poetic, but it made me look an entire hour for solutions, and I ended up having to repeat the whole thing while praying it didn’t happen again. If by any chance what I’ve said about the game has caught your eye and want to give it a shot, by any means, do, but please, install one of the many bug fix patched made by fand (some also include censor mods which is also pretty cool), I should have done it and makes things much better, butt he fact the game still has some of these is infuriating. Getting soft locked isn’t the same type of cruel that the rest of the game goes for, it’s just fucking annoying.
The adventure that awaits everyone in Fear & Hunger is always terrifying, it’s always a race against time and insanity, always a test in resource management and decision making… but it’s also always different, maybe sometimes in the smallest of ways, but that makes an impact, nonetheless. The dungeon forces its players are forced to get creative through sheer cruelty, but it makes those moments of glimmering light the more valuable; even when there are no happy endings at the end of the line, most come down to a simple question; will you let the dungeon change you? Or will you be the one to change the dungeon? Fear & Hunger I can’t recommend like others, if you weren’t interested by it or its premise really irks you, then I don’t think most if the things I said will make you change your mind, and that’s totally fine! I just wanted to tell of my experience with it, what I learnt, what it made me feels, and how it’s much more than it seems, and despite the pain it can induce, travelling into the unknown comes with risks, so part of the course…
After getting endings A, B, D and E, I can say that I have learnt something for sure… Gods are REALLY weak to poison, which hey, kinda nice kowing I can stop an eldritch abomination with a lil’ bit of insecticide!
2 Comments
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if I end up writing more stuff Fear & Hunger related, this time I wanted to focus on the game and my experience with it, but there's so much to dissect and talk about and it’s so fun to do so, I probably will say more about it if I return again in the future to get the remaining endings and the such. Also, I of course made no direct mention of the more explicit content in the game, but keep there's quite a lot in this, so again, if you are interested, there a ton of censor mods for that, and I highly recommend them!
*piqued
DeemonAndGames
1 month ago