Content Warning: Sexual Assault

As I sit here in bed, melancholic and isolated due to my first dose of COVID-19, I wonder about the purpose of, what else, video games. Are they meant to be a comfort during trying times? Of course they can be. They can operate as portals to other worlds, places where we would prefer to be. As I also have discussed previously, games can also function as emotional crucibles. Games can be places where we go to understand ourselves within the (sometimes) private confines of play, and in doing so, we can liberate ourselves. It might sound like I’m being melodramatic, but I truly believe that the best horror games in particular can work that way for us.

Play is itself integral to understanding ourselves. Some argue that play is frivolity; I believe that play is more than that. Anti-games are an interesting notion – the idea that games don’t have to be fun. Because play is supposed to be fun, right? If we’re playing a game as a kid, that’s supposed to be a fun experience. If a kid isn’t having fun while playing, something is going wrong – or so we presume. Yet topping the list of my favourite games are mostly anti-games, or miserable horror titles. Titles that make me sad, or worried, or anxious – these are the games that I have the luxury to engage with. The luxury to reflect on and think about. The fact I am writing this piece from my bed rather than still having to go into work or something similar I consider to be utterly privileged – to say nothing of how much worse it could truly be. These sorts of games are not for everyone, therefore, and are often subject to one’s own mental state.

As such, Fear & Hunger, a 2018 survival horror / role-playing game made within a version of JRPG Maker, is most assuredly not for everyone. It is a miserable anti-game, provoking the same kinds of feelings of confusion, alienation, and frustration as the narrative plague simulator known as Pathologic does. In a word – despair. But add on top of that some disturbing imagery and a thick layer of erotic horror – including the possibility for your character to be sexually assaulted — and you have a potent recipe to alienate perhaps everyone who plays it. And if that weren’t bad enough, the game is brutally difficult.

I should clarify that the layer of erotic horror is, all things considered, pretty tastefully done. Which, within the video game sphere, is a surprise. Most discussions of sexual assault in video games often are skimmed over, entirely non-existent, or uncomfortably fetishized. Fear & Hunger is a game about taboos, it seems – about people pushed too far by forces out of their control. It does not defend sexual assault – it condemns it, as it casts those committing the deed as monsters (rightfully so). It also, most usefully, it also shows the humanity of the plentiful victims throughout the dungeon. The story (which I have only just started to uncover) of a guard captain witnessing horrible atrocities and struggling to justify them as necessary is deeply disturbing. The mutilated corpses and piles of bodies might seem like just ways to inflate the edgy-factor of the game. But this would do a disservice to the atmosphere, which allows for these insane atrocities to exist alongside tactful presentation of these taboos. They are not inherently sexualized, and while it may be dark, these atrocities do not feel exploitative – they are there to be disgusted by, to condemn – but also they can begin to wear away at you. The first mountain of corpses is horrifying. The next is less so – soon, the apathy sets in. The horror of that realization made me feel deeply uncomfortable. It’s easy to suffer from a continual erosion of feeling when it comes to continued exposure to horror. Eventually, you end up kind of cynical and jaded about it. But I do my best to always immerse myself deeply within a game. I try to turn the internet off on my machine for a first play session at least, and put headphones on, and play in the dark. Yet, still – the apathy for the deaths in front of you on screen can set in. And what a strange, terrible thing that is. The violence we subject ourselves to desensitizes us to those same acts. So when something truly shocking happens, we tend to remember it. Fear & Hunger has a lot of these shocking moments so far, enough to provoke a kind of morbid addiction. This morbid fascination in which we can’t look away – but again, it is also restrained enough to not feel exploitative. There is never a moment of horror so in-your-face and dirty (at least so far) that I felt repulsed. Instead, I feel drawn in to the game, hungry to understand just what it is that goes wrong with human beings.

The insane pressures of what I can only presume to be an uncaring set of dark Gods are just as relevant to the game as the internal pressures of “staying good”.  The classic video game conundrum – do I make the evil choice to make my life a little easier – actually has relevance in a game with the difficulty level turned up to eleven. Just like Pathologic on a first playthrough. Now all of a sudden the evil option is not causing harm to bypass a petty inconvenience – now it could be the difference between surviving your run or getting all your limbs hacked off, before you are finally tortured to death.

Games are so interesting in that they have the capacity to simulate social situations. Abstracts that you could muddle over in your head are given concrete rules and definitions. The immutable logic of computer game code becomes cruel arithmetic as you decide whether or not heal someone else in your weary group – or just yourself. While I’ve not found food so far to be a particular difficulty in my runs, health is measley and combat is short and brutal. Sometimes this can be just down to the capriciousness of the game’s “coin flip” mechanic. You are often asked to select “heads” or “tails”, which can drastically affect everything. A 50/50 coin flip to see whether I am immediately annihilated by an enemy? That feels pretty unfair, especially when the game is entirely structured around repetition.

Much like rogue-likes, Fear & Hunger’s earliest stages are liable to be replayed again and again to the point of absolute tedium as you try to work out a strategy. But random numbers get in the way again, and once-reliable loot becomes rubbish. I’ve had several runs now where I’ve been convinced that oh, this is going to be the one! Only to discover that the game has decided to throw an enemy at me that somehow I didn’t bump into before. A few short failed rolls later, and I’ve had all my limbs hacked off yet again, and it’s back to the drawing board.

This process might sound miserable but it can also be strangely addicting. Just like all the best rogue-likes, Fear & Hunger can be extremely rewarding when you see something new. Even just being able to see the next grotesque monster fires all sorts of endorphins into all the pleasure centers of my brain. That’s the kind of stuff I play games for! But at the same time, I begin to feel a mounting sense of frustration at having to play the easy bits over and over again. The first segment is so rote now it is becoming dull. I have reached and found the first savepoint, of course, which allows me to skip that segment – but if I wanted to re-roll and try to get better loot, I have to replay the first segment – which could potentially end up better or worse for me. That’s the issue with randomness, I suppose. The issue with chaos. You just don’t know if your time investment is going to be rewarded.

Therein lies the problem – how does one make a game with a truly rewarding level of challenge? I believe myself fully to have some kind of masochistic Stockholm syndrome when it comes to horror games. I am exactly the core audience of Fear & Hunger – a person who likes his horror miserable and mysterious (the medieval twist helps too), and also likes the game side of it to remain punishing. In that way, the gameplay reinforces the theme, and helps me identify more with the beleaguered protagonist who has, yes, just had all their fucking limbs hacked off again. Goddamnit.

But in all seriousness, I am a huge fan already, despite what I’ve said about the game’s randomness and high level of challenge. Enemies are plentiful and stages are quite large (and dark). Once spotted by an enemy, it can be exceedingly difficult to escape, particularly when some enemies have a faster run speed than you do. But learning strategies for enemies – how they attack, what the best spot to target first is on their body, and so on – is delightful. It makes me feel like I’m learning something, chipping away slowly at the endless maw of darkness laid before me.

The soundtrack is truly desolate and creepy. I have been successfully jumpscared several times during this game, which is not only rare within the context of horror games these days for me (barring something like Aka Manto)but extremely rare within the context of top-down games. The music stinger is fantastic whenever an enemy spots you, and you can’t see very far in front of you. A lovely Pyramid Head homage involving prison bars was just as chilling as Silent Hill 2. And wow… what a feat that is.

I think what the game does best is that sense of discovery. I’m not a fan of lore as a concept, or at least how the internet has transformed it. Fear & Hunger, at least for now, counters the concept by connecting only vaguely loose threads. My favourite part so far has been discovering the story of the dungeon’s torturer. It left me thinking about the nature of mercy, and about humanity more generally, in a way that a small lore document rarely ever does.

So I’m trapped inside, unable to even sit next to someone with fear of getting someone sick, and playing this abjectly miserable game (among others). I’ve played a few things that are a bit more cheerful, but, as though the game is some kind of black hole… it eventually sifts its way to the front of my brain and asks, “well, you could try one more time”. The game’s enormous difficulty makes me feel a sense of triumph when I break some new barrier, however small – and that’s exactly the feeling I need when I’m bedridden.

Alright, my curiosity is piqued – fear be damned. I’m hungry for more.