Fear & Hunger is an incredible mixture of RPG and horror with lite roguelike elements. Your bones will be broken, limbs sawed off, spirit crushed, eyes pecked out, and life force siphoned out of you - and you will love every second of it.

This game is exceptionally punishing and unforgiving, to an almost unfair degree. Nearly every encounter can end with your untimely demise if you dare to take so much as even one wrong step, or if luck simply turns away from you. Every resource is scarce and darkness is pitch-black. But this game is not purely unfair - there is always a possibility for success, however you will need a lot of trial and error to know how to properly navigate dungeons of fear and hunger. This game is specifically designed to induce dread and suspense into the player using game mechanics, and it does not shy away from the most cruel and low ways to do it. It is designed as a macabre puzzle for you to throw yourself onto its bloodied spikes again and again, to constantly make new characters and lead them to their doom. And this is beautiful - there are very few games that can achieve THIS level of tension, even if at the expense of some convenience. Art, sound design and storytelling of the game is also very good and enhances these feelings.

There are downsides to this harshness - the game really loves to waste your time due to easy deaths and restricted saves, but I think it's forgivable, considering how strong its good qualities are.

This is a must-have for anyone interested in dark, morbid, unconventional and just weird games.

Pretty good retro-style FPS. But instead of being dynamic and crazy like it's many counterparts, it's more tactical and moody. You move slower, enemies are very deadly, your health restricted by hunger meter (which acts as a kind of second health bar - I found this mechanic rather underdeveloped, but it's still interesting idea, and it does not get in the way of action), you can lean, aim down sight, crouch to reduce sight jitter, and this game even have realistic, relatively complex reload mechanic. There are almost no saves throughout the levels, which gives weight and consequences to death. Citadel encourages you to play very carefully and tactically, and I very much enjoyed this tense gameplay. Game feel in this game is also incredible, every weapon bangs and clangs magnificently.

Guns look, sound and twitch in an incredibly impactful way. Every burst of shots is accompanied by a barrage of shell casings clanking very satisfyingly, and every kill is accompanied by an explosion of gibs. Gibs system is very thoughtfully done, and it makes killing enemies incredibly enjoyable.

The world around you is an abstract, greenish metal hellscape under heavy scarlet sky, populated with your former comrades who have gone insane. Heavily featured gore punctuates not only how fun it is to spray walls with their guts, but also how pitiful it would be to be in their place - you often see ripped faces of your enemies, full of regret and sorrow amidst the wreckage you just caused.

Citadel can feel very amateurish at times - visual design of maps is always the same and too monotonous, enemy design is far too boring compared to main character and bosses, a couple of music tracks do not fit the mood, and the game becomes too easy in later levels. But even amateurish elements of this game form a strangely alluring atmosphere.

Also, this game has the most disturbing yet satisfying flamethrower kill effects.

I feel crazy with this one. I keep hearing people calling it the first soulslike to rival From Software’s games, and… I just don’t see it? This still was a very mediocre experience. Yes, this is probably the only soulslike that comes close to doing things that Fromsoft are doing in their games at their level, but that says more about the priorities and quality of most other soulslikes than of Lies of P’s good qualities. Mind you, this is an okay, competently made game, with an interesting idea for a narrative, but it’s not even close to Fromsoft level. It feels like a retread of everything I have seen in From’s games, but on a smaller scale and in a less interesting way. There’s the regenerating health from Bloodborne, there’s the prosthetic arm from Sekiro, there’s modular weapons mechanic that’s reminiscent of Bloodborne, there's a gothic Victorian city from Bloodborne. But unlike those games, this game doesn’t have some kind of idea upon which everything is built. It isn't focused around parrying like Sekiro, or aggressiveness like Bloodborne, or RPG customizability like Dark Souls. It tries to do all those things a little bit, and ends up doing all of them mediocrely.

And the overall quality of the game is not on a very good level. Level design is unimaginative and too formulaic, writing and voice acting feels stiff and boring, art direction is unimpressive, combat is just okay. Final nail in the coffin of my playthrough was bosses - they are so focused on being crushingly punishing and difficult, that it stops being fun. Lies of P overall is focused on precision on the player's part way too much. It’s like this game doesn’t understand its own inspiration - where in Dark Souls hard difficulty was there to cloak players in a dreadful and suspenseful atmosphere, there it feels like the bosses are hard just for the sake of it. Like the game feels pressured to have bosses that are harder than that of its competitors, just for the sake of it. Of course, it’s good to make a game that focuses on different things than your inspiration. But this game doesn’t feel like it focuses on anything in particular, or like it has any certain vision. It feels like Lies of P game design is purely reactionary to its contemporaries in the “soulslike” genre and “git gud” culture that’s formed around them.

By the time I finished writing this I feel like maybe I’m focused too much on comparisons to From’s games and being too reductive, but I think this game justifies it - it's just too derivative and too stale. I find nothing of note to say about its positive qualities except that it’s just a competent videogame.