Hungry Horrors Early Access Review – Next-level Food Fighting

Hungry Horrors is a roguelike card battler due to release in Early Access and is developed and published by Clumsy Bear Studio. You are a princess whose kingdom is on the verge of falling. Several beasts known as Horrors threaten your safety. Fortunately, they are willing to retreat if you feed them. Cook various dishes and feed them to the Horrors before they reach you. Learn about the Horrors’ likes and dislikes as you navigate more powerful enemies and dish combinations.

The story turns the “prince rescues princess” narrative on its head by forcing the princess to save herself. Fortunately, the princess only has to feed the Horrors since she can’t actually fight or cast magic. It’s a lighthearted story that sets the scene of the princess’ nearly impossible odds, but it helps that she’s supported by a cast of sarcastic or silly allies that don’t offer much help. The princess must wander several lands and feed the enemies she encounters. You don’t know what a Horror likes at first and must throw whatever dishes you have on hand. If a Horror is satisfied, you win the battle. Should you fail to satisfy them before they reach you, you lose and must restart your run. Along the way you can acquire new dishes, ingredients to cook them, and cookware to boost your capabilities.

However, later on you can’t just throw any dish at a Horror to feed them. You must chain your dishes together to create combinations that boost a Horror’s satiety. Each dish has a taste (ie. savoury) and can make a Horror crave another taste quality. By throwing the correct dishes together, you can sate a Horror’s hunger much sooner than if you threw random dishes with no regard. Getting the right combinations is the only way to succeed against more powerful Horrors.

Throwing dishes to see if Horrors like them is genuinely thrilling since you don’t know what the result will be. Even enemies that look similar don’t share the same tastes and you must build your knowledge from scratch. It’s not hard to ignore this fact at first but seeing a Horror dislike or even hate your food terrifies you later on. This thrill remains for a while since you must create more dishes with greater effects, meaning you must test them again.

As repetitive as this sounds, it prevents you from ignoring weaker cards. Finding the right combination is important, but Horrors can dislike or hate the advanced dishes you create later. Sometimes you need dishes that you know a Horror likes and that means using starter dishes. Creating the right combinations with those cards is important, especially if you are working your way up through earlier regions. By preventing complacency, Hungry Horrors forces you to experiment and not discard your earlier dishes as they can be useful later.

There is one slight disadvantage to this: you eventually reach a plateau where you know every dish that exists and you have enough testing on the Horrors to know what they do and don’t like. While this takes a significant amount of time to reach, it removes the suspense that makes the early-game thrilling. Eventually you can modify a dish’s traits, but that feels like a grind even at the best of times.

Testing combinations isn’t easy, but Hungry Horrors gives you several tools to make things easier and every trip you make gives you new ingredients to create more advanced dishes. One NPC helps you test a dish against a spiritual version of a Horror, giving you information without the risk. The game also tracks a Horror’s reaction to dishes, reducing the chances of feeding a Horror a dish you know they won’t like.

These mechanics make the testing process less intimidating and give you more control over your runs. While there will always be random elements, you never feel like you are taking a step back. Every run is an opportunity to grab ingredients, test new dishes, or obtain resources for permanent upgrades. It’s hard to have a “bad run” because even getting a single new resource gives you more possibilities than before.

Discovering new recipes and testing them against enemies is a thrilling experience when you don’t know what works. Several mechanics make it easy to record your progress and improve future runs without ruining the potential of your cards. However, the thrill wears off once you have enough information and there’s not much to modify. But there’s still a lot of fun to be had in Hungry Horror’s current state and it will be exciting to see what future updates will include.

Victor reviewed Hungry Horrors on PC in Early Access with a provided review code. This review is based on the version of the game available at the time of writing and will not be changed.