Fear & Hunger

Fear & Hunger is a turn-based horror dungeon crawler RPG with roguelike elements. It's the debut game of a single Finnish developer, Miro Haverinen, who was inspired by media such as Silent Hill and Lovecraftian mythos.

Plot

The world of Fear & Hunger is modeled on medieval times, though it's futile to seek noble knights and beautiful noble princesses here. The main setting is the titular dungeon/fortress, Fear and Hunger, near the aptly named town of Ma'habre. Four travelers have the misfortune of ending up in this inhospitable place, where old and new deities fight an unending war.

Despite the premise typical to fantasy (adventurers traversing dungeons), Fear & Hunger is no heroic tale of good versus evil. The game features drastic, disturbing and graphic content, death often preferable to other fates awaiting those lost within the dark depths. Despite that, these grim events don't feel gratituous, being integral to the game's world and atmosphere.

Mechanics

The gameplay of Fear & Hunger is just as unforgiving as the setting. Mechanically, it's similar to a jRPG with survival horror elements - as the latter genre suggests, combat isn't always recommended. During turn-based battles we can weaken enemies by aiming for their limbs. The same applies to the player character too - a single mistake can leave us permanently armless or legless.

We must prepare for each single encounter or bypass them altogether by either running away from the enemies on the world map or setting up traps to injure or kill them before the battle. Sometimes we can try negotiations, discouraging enemies from combat or distract them to make them less threatening.

Surviving Fear & Hunger is made even more difficult by random elements. Many aspects are randomly generated at the start of the game, including room layouts, loot and enemies.

This means the gameplay boils down to trial and error (or, rather, trial and immediate death) and experimenting with available options: equipment, magic, etc. Oftentimes we must make morally dubious decisions to survive just a bit longer.

Technical aspects

The game was created using RPGmaker, a popular series of programs used to make 2D RPGs. Nevertheless, Fear & Hunger is a bit more appealing visually than most games running on this engine, combining pixel art with digital paintings. The game's gray, faded color palette and the disturbing soundtrack emphasize the grim, suffocating, unrelenting atmosphere.