Image: Clumsy Bear Studio

Perfectly timed to accompany Steam's Cooking Fest, popular early access culinary deckbuilder Hungry Horrors has finished plating up and is ready to serve today. And if user reviews are any indication (98% positive), the general gaming public reckon that this one's a tasty little snack. It's a charming little thing, about a work-shy princess tasked with saving the monster-infested British Isles (I mean, what's new?) one meal at a time, defeating the rampaging monsters by filling their stomachs before they can cause too much trouble. Or eat you, for that matter.

As you might have guessed, this is another card-battler, although one-sided. It's just you against one monster at a time, and you've got a limited number of turns until it gets within range to eat you. While you do have a health bar, it's relatively easy to maintain it (you can eat your own food for boosts), so the main thing is racing against time. No Slay the Spire shenanigans here where you're throwing your entire deck at an enemy each turn - you're serving up one dish at a time, and discarding as needed to keep your flavor combos growing.

While each kind of monster does have fixed likes and dislikes for ingredients that you can learn over time, just feeding it one thing repeatedly likely won't get you far. You've got to serve up balanced meals, with each dish creating cravings for other flavors, like sweet, salty, or sour, multiplying the value of that next treat. There's also a lot of meta-progression, with unlocked basic ingredients expanding the ten dishes you get to take into your next run, and cookware providing perks to your overall build.

It makes for an interesting dynamic, with long-term planning combined with Balatro-esque multiplicative scoring on a per-fight basis. Plus, it's a fun introduction to the many weird and wonderful creatures of folklore from across the British Isles, delivered in cute pixel-art style and backed up with a semi-historical assortment of recipes. Yes, you can serve jellied eels, and some of the monsters will love them. At least the game understands that everyone likes shortbread, which bears the 'hard to hate' perk, making even grumpy monsters likely to tolerate the sweet, crumbly, calorie-rich treat.

Now I'm hungry for some, dangit.

For those who've been playing the game already, the v1.0 release brings a bit more of everything. New mechanics, dishes, artefacts, characters, etc. Plus the final biome (the megaliths) and the end of the main story. While the meat and potatoes of the game is that long-form roguelite story mode, there is a shorter roguelike mode where the focus is on crafting a short-term build, offering a more bite-sized experience.

From what little I've played (thank you to the devs for a key, by the way), it's a compelling little game either way, and it looks like I'm not the only one who finds it to their taste. Worth a sniff at the demo, if nothing else, but if you want to order up a full serving of Hungry Horrors, it costs £12.79/$15, with a 20% launch discount until October 19th, plus it's part of ridiculous 28 discount bundles. Guess developers Clumsy Bear Studio understand that you make lots of friends with food, huh?