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The full version is out!!
You can buy the Windows and Mac versions from either itch.io, Gamejolt or Steam.


Here is a discord link to anyone interested: https://discord.gg/bJES7Sp
Thanks to Vague/iopiop123 for getting it started!




What is Fear & Hunger

Fear & Hunger is a horror dungeon crawler set in the dark and hopeless dungeons of fear and hunger. Four misfortuned adventurers dwell deeper and deeper to the darkness and uncover the secrets this ancient fortress holds inside. The fortress works as an ancient nexus for different planes of existence. The depths are in an eternal turmoil as both old and new gods struggle for power, it’s up to the players to choose their position and stance in all of this.

The game is a hybrid of survival horror and dungeon crawler genres with its influences ranging from Silent Hill to Nethack. There are roguelike elements to the game as well as a heavy foundation of a j-RPG. Fear & Hunger is heavy on atmosphere and ruthless in its difficulty.


Features:

  • Oppressive and relentless atmosphere

  • 4 different character classes and many additional characters to recruit

  • 9 different endings

  • Different game modes, including a super secret one unlocked upon beating the game

  • Unforgiving and unique gameplay

  • Randomized elements to keep the game fresh with subsequent playthroughs

  • Turn-based Strategic Dismember Combat System

  • Numerous unique gameplay systems

  • Graphical art style mixing pixel art with digital painting

  • Original ambient soundtrack creating the dreary mood


The world of Fear & Hunger is VERY dark. THE GAME IS MEANT ONLY FOR MATURE AUDIENCES! Extreme violence and gore are everyday sights in the dungeons and death is one of the easier ways to go in the game. The game has drug and substance abuse, heavy themes ranging from self-mutilation to sexual violence. None of the themes are taken lightly however. They are all part of the world building and there to create the unique atmosphere where the game measures just how far the player is willing to go in order to survive.

Parts of the dungeon layout, events, loot and enemy placements are randomized with few different variations to keep things fresh with subsequent playthroughs. The game is designed with the classic trial and error formula, so you can expect to start the game over and over again. But as long as you learn from your mistakes, you can quickly find yourself at the deeper levels of the dungeon.

The combat in Fear & Hunger is turn-based akin to classic role-playing games, but with a twist of its own. You can target individual limbs of your enemies to dismember them strategically and thus maximize your chances for survival. However, just the same, enemies can also cut off the arms and the legs of your playable characters if you are not careful. You need to prepare well for every encounter if you wish to stay alive. But don’t forget that running away from threats is often the best solution as well. There are many ways for survival in Fear & Hunger - You can find better equipment, learn different blood and love magic, fuse characters into each other, pray different gods, talk your way out of battles, meet new party members, snipe enemies from distance, use traps to disable them… and so on. The Idea is to use what you got at your disposal and be creative with it.

Latest Blog

Featured Game Give Away!

Oh wow! Fear & Hunger got on the front-page? Wasn't expecting this.

RMN, you have my deepest gratitude! RPG Maker community has a dear place in my heart, despite not being that active member around these parts of internet. I actually started my game making on Don Miguel's forums ages ago and it had a very big impact in me eventually returning to this stuff. And that's also the reason I've stuck with RPG Maker, despite what 99% of internet tells me. So getting featured here really means a lot to me.

To celebrate the front-page spot, here are few free Steam keys for the game. First ones to get them, gets them, sorry :/ Please don't hog more than one!

WBZEF-TA3MW-LA7BY
8J89Y-EW0HJ-YYW40
JC3HQ-E97VA-HR0LN
GWNFX-DZNKR-EC2T4
H96Y6-9KEC2-2HIZ2
IQNYW-8I29F-38XFN
K0YMR-KE9VE-2Z3HZ
YHTRH-PM6IC-6GIJD

Would love to hear what everyone thinks of the game. It's a bit divisive and I don't mind even heavier criticism.
  • Completed
  • Commercial
  • orange-
  • iopiop123
    kumada
  • RPG Maker MV
  • Adventure RPG
  • 01/13/2017 11:40 PM
  • 05/30/2023 01:45 PM
  • 12/11/2018
  • 393831
  • 107
  • 3727

Posts

Alright, starting a playthrough of the new download. Feedback below.

-Sweet title screen backdrop. Font clashes, though.

-Really nice, tense, atmospheric music. Reminds me a bit of Alien: Isolation.

-Mapping 'confirm' to 'z' causes hitting okay on the name select to immediately add a Z. Hence, I am now called Mercenaryz

-Interacting with the skeleton: feeling superiority causes less loss of mind than taking it as a warning, but both cause loss of mind. Is this intended?

-I like the high number of interactive objects.

-I also like that nearly all interactions prompt spooky info and loss of mind. That's very in keeping with the theme.

-Not sure if the dungeon is randomly generated, but I ran into a kitchen to the northwest of start that had what looked like a door leading to the east from it, and the apparent door was completely non-interactive.

-I seem to be recovering mind just walking around. Is that intended? In a game without random encounters, that would be abusable, albeit in a very slow, boring way.

-Atmosphere is oppressive and great.

-Monster spawns retain their positions when you leave a map, which is neat, but this also caused me to be able to walk back into a map on top of one of the dudes and stand inside his sprite.

-Hunger does not seem to be tracked anywhere visible, except when it degrades. It might be nice to have a regular reference for when it degrades.

-Alchemilla vol 1 has the following typo: "Black - Growth Hormone. Causes uncontrollale growth in living tissue"

-I freaking love the Lovecraftian lore in the books. There's this perfect aura of quiet menace to the things in this game. Like everything is a trap, loaded and waiting to go off.

-Splashing the title screen after a death just feels right.

-That said, being insta'd by a prison guard with no warning, does not feel right. It's really abrupt. It doesn't build menace. It feels like flipping to a bad end in a choose your own adventure, one of the old ones where choices like "go to the lake or go home" resulted in previously unmentioned squidmonsters bursting out of the lake and inhabiting your kidneys.

Edit: from just what I played, I have a couple of suggestions. The game stays interesting so long as the player stays engaged, so the trick to keeping that *strong* Corpse Party sort of vibe in a game where there's combat and some limited progression, is going to be hitting the player with heavy losses but allowing the player to partly crawl back out of them with heavy resource spends. Instead of simply insta-ing the player, those jailers could drag him off to stash in a corpse pile or toilet. That is sufficiently hideous without being run-ending. Also, the game has a very slow, deliberate pace, which is great for atmosphere, but really bad for roguelikes where you lose all progress. Getting to keep recipes or other things between runs would be a really good way to keep players engaged, even when their run is going poorly.
Okay, more feedback on second and subsequent runs.

-Prison guards still take an action after being decapitated. Is this intentional?

-Is there a way to check status, to see which limbs I have remaining? This would also be a handy reference.

-Being insta'd by the necronomicon feels appropriate. This one may not need to be changed, since it's locked behind a player decision.

-The Beware! card, Demo card, and intro title crawl should all be skippable with a button press. I understand wanting to make super sure the player knows what they're getting into, but on the fifth respawn they really start to wear out their welcome.

-I really like how the guards move around. It's deliberate and ponderous and they seem to hesitate around corners, building suspense. They also don't immediately spot you from across the map, which is lovely.

-A floor remains the same when it spawns, which makes progress a matter of memorizing what to interact with. I'm not hugely against this, but that means you really want to minimize instadeaths from things and just have terrible consequences, because otherwise playing this is a matter of someone writing a player guide, and then everyone else following it. Instadeaths remove any incentive to play blind, which is how the game feels it ought to the played.

-Found alchemillia vol 2 on a bookshelf without finding vol 1. Item in inventory is listed as vol 1 and shows text for vol 1. This bug is repeatable.

-Would be nice to get an advantage for ambushing enemies.

-Could not find small key on floor one during one run. Seemed to have spawned behind door that I could not smash.

-Jailers injured both my arms, each time taking one after I cut off his head. I got no notification for this, only finding out later when I could not equip weapons.

-Trofurr's insta is horrifying, but genre-appropriate and revolves around player choice. I have no problem with this one (at least, from a game design perspective) either.

-Jailer appeared right on top of me, caught me instantly, entered combat. Missed both attacks on head, it did its grab-and-squeeze, coin flip went its way. There were exactly zero choices I could have made to prevent this from happening, as it happened in the second room of the dungeon. If the jailers are going to get a free attack when they die, and other enemies are going to fight in groups, and enemies do not ever miss, why have a miss chances on the player's weapon? It just invites that much more rng insta into the game.

Edit: depending on the game's backstory, I could see reforming or regrowing from a tangle of mangled organs as a way of continuing a run after a 'death'. I get the strong impression the main character is supposed to be that god of destruction hiding in human skin, which would allow him to pull himself back together and keep going, either by navigating some kind of fleshy helltunnel side dungeon or by sacrificing stats or something else costly. This could keep the instadeaths without the frustrating abrupt run-ends.
CashmereCat
Self-proclaimed Puzzle Snob
11638
Looks interesting. I'm curious to see how this game is a roguelike.

author=Game Description
Randomized dungeon(only loot and enemies so far)


What else do you plan to randomize?
@OldSchool, wow that sucks! When did you try downloading it? I just uploaded new version of the demo with few fixes, I wonder if it's somehow broken version or something? the old version can be found here:
https://mega.nz/#!hQg2QYyS!WhAVoc2CmNQFYOj59a-Qk1jE5barfYVNnBxVTLB6G6w


@loplop123, good idea with the sterile bandage! The guard can be killed either by destroying it's head or torso. The guard has one more last-breath kinda attack, even if you destroy it's head. Those flying goblins are super annoying yea, I uploaded already teaser demo v2, with minor bug fixes and tweaks, I also made the fight against those creatures more bearable. There is a limit to their spawn numbers. And yes, there will be a couple of ways to get your limbs back. One way is already present in the demo, however it doesn't produce the wanted effects yet...

@kumada, thanks you for the awesome feedback! really helpful info!! I'll answer few points, but I do take all the criticism and points raised to consideration:

author=kumada
-Interacting with the skeleton: feeling superiority causes less loss of mind than taking it as a warning, but both cause loss of mind. Is this intended?
It's actually the fear system that's constantly eating away your mind. If you put up lights, it recovers slowly. The feature was a last minute addition and not fully realized.

author=kumada
-Not sure if the dungeon is randomly generated, but I ran into a kitchen to the northwest of start that had what looked like a door leading to the east from it, and the apparent door was completely non-interactive.
This one is weird, lol I have no idea what doorway you are talking about. You probably noticed the dungeon layout is not randomized.

author=kumada
Instead of simply insta-ing the player, those jailers could drag him off to stash in a corpse pile or toilet.
I'm liking these ideas! :)

author=kumada
-Prison guards still take an action after being decapitated. Is this intentional?
It's a thing that originated from a bug, but it is intentional at this point. I imagine it being a dying-breath kinda attack.

author=kumada
-The Beware! card, Demo card, and intro title crawl should all be skippable with a button press.
Yes absolutely! This is going to happen.

author=kumada
-Found alchemillia vol 2 on a bookshelf without finding vol 1. Item in inventory is listed as vol 1 and shows text for vol 1. This bug is repeatable.
This is a really weird bug, I think there is something in the RPG Maker MV's code that makes text "vol" in message boxes trigger something... although it makes no sense. I mean in the message box it says loud and clear "Alchemillia vol.1"

author=kumada
-Would be nice to get an advantage for ambushing enemies.
Yes. absolutely!

author=kumada
-Could not find small key on floor one during one run. Seemed to have spawned behind door that I could not smash.
You can always use small keys found from other areas too. There is at least one small key in certain place that you can always acquire.

You got really interesting ideas here and I think it's safe to say at this point that one-hit kills are gonna be nerfed dramatically. If anything, that's the most coherent feedback I keep hearing from the game.


@CashmereCat, I'm going to test randomizing the dungeon layout in few simple ways. I don't know if it's going to be too much uncertainty for players yet, but it would at least keep things more fresh if you have to restart the game over and over again.
The message box when I picked up the book said Alchemillia vol 2. Everything else about it said vol 1. I have also, on different runs, gotten a message box that said Alchemillia vol 1. Are there multiple volumes currently implemented?

As for the guard, the dying breath attack is super neat and makes them scary, but it also means that the only way for them to not take out a limb when you fight them is for them to miss at least once. Hitting their head means they still chop on their next turn. Taking out their arm first and then their head means they still grab on their next turn. Arm and then arm means they sting on their next turn. I haven't tried cleaver and then arm and then stinger and then head in a sequence to try and disable them yet, but that is a *lot* of hits to have to get in a string without missing one by chance to not lose a limb and/or be insta'd by one of these guys.

Edit: I think tweaking the miss chance way up on their cleaver and giving their off-hand a non-limb-destroying hp damage attack would make the guards more grind-the-player-down than immediately-insta-him. Battles with guards would result in hp damage more often (because you'd either be taking out the cleaver arm first and getting guaranteed hp damage, or taking out the head and hoping the cleaver arm doesn't get a rare limb hit), and there would still be the stinger for a lurking insta.

2nd edit: you could even preserve the text for the arm insta by combining it with the results of getting insta'd by the stinger, resulting in maximum horror.
hmhm interesting ideas! I'll play around with the guards for sure and see how they end up. Your previous posts already got my brain juices flowing. But tbh, my initial idea was that the player would run away from most of the guard fights, but no one seems to do that lol :'D

On Cain Reval's let's play, they had pretty good strategy with the guards. first they took off the cleaver hand, then the off-hand and then just aimed for the head. Stinger attack doesn't happen that often, so they mostly just took a little damage from guard's tackle but that's all. Also I might be wrong (I need to make sure of this) but if you destroy the head on your second turn, the one-hit kill doesn't happen.

As for the alchemillia books. That's really weird bug because there is only one volume at the moment. But that shouldn't matter anyway because the message box text has nothing to do with the actual item name as it is only text (talking from game developer perspective now) Still RPG Maker changes the number without any real reason :O That lead me to believe that text 'vol.' might have some built in features in RPG Maker's message boxes (kinda similar to how you change color of texts with some commands). Still I'm gonna fix it up somehow!
author=orange-
hmhm interesting ideas! I'll play around with the guards for sure and see how they end up. Your previous posts already got my brain juices flowing. But tbh, my initial idea was that the player would run away


Run away


RUN AWAY


I DIDN'T KNOW I COULD DO THAT
after using the mock-up book and returning from the place it opened the shelf glitched. Also Some more ideas, Drinking alcohol could give you empty containers, or any other type of thing that would have something like that. I always thought it was kinda funny how in games you seemed to EAT the bottles with the potion and such.

Edit- A thought occured...an armless enemy tackled and missed...shouldn't that result in it falling and being helpless, at least for a turn?

Also maybe make the coin flip animation slightly faster? It'll both save some time, and make it harder to notice the individual frames of the animation.

Edit 2- Idea, Maybe some enemies could aggro on each other? Like if a guard sees the crazed prisoner, It takes him for easier pray and attacks him, temporarily distracting both, and probably eventually leaving the latter dead/unconscious

Edit 3- So, If you Go to the sacrificial/summoning circle, and chose sacrifice or show love it just closes, I'd recommend adding a message like "I have nothing to sacrifice" or such,
@iopiop123, I'm liking all your ideas! By all means keep em coming! enemies that aggro each other would be really awesome. I'll see what I can do. I'm a one man team so it can become a little daunting every now and then but I'll do my best ^.^" I'd really like to add more alternatives to fighting, because even if I nerf enemies, I still plan on leaving them quite difficult.

I think I need to make run-command more prominent as now it's kinda hidden, you need to back away from battle commands with esc to get the option. That's just default RPG Maker MV and I was too lazy to think up an alternative.

I'll fix the ritual circle!
I'd help but I've literally never touched coding besides one time a guy literally Told me word for word how to do a thing...and that's about it. Also, Idea, Using dirt Ala pocket sand to force a miss from a single opponent's next attack? also, Maybe if you kill an enemy in the first area, maybe add the ability to use it as a sacrifice? Also is the girl mute? I assume so given she doesn't even have the talk ability, and I haven't seen her speak at all.

Edit- Nother idea, maybe if you *heh* 'Disarm' an enemy, add an option to force them to surrender...Providing it's an enemy that hasn't simply lost it's self preservation and/or become irreparably insane
Yea no worries. Coding of this game is such a mess at this points, that no one but me can probably make sense of it :'D

haha, you sure got ideas!! You can PM me stuff too so we don't flood the discussion here! ;) Dirt is a good idea. I wonder why I never came up with that!

Sacrifices need to be alive. I don't know about you, but I would never dare to offer something already dead to gods.

Who knows what the girl is?

Yes disarming and similar stuff like that will be possible with more human enemies. Most of the creatures in the demo have lost their mind long ago already. If you talk to the torturer character while in a battle - you can actually talk some sense to him... in a way.
Dragnfly
Beta testers!? No, this game needs a goddamn exorcist!
1809
I laughed my head off when selecting to love when the girl is in the party.
I had another idea while driving to work today. It would tweak game balance without removing content.

You only die when your HP reaches zero. Instas still happen, but they don't end the run. Instead, your mangled, defiled body reforms at the fort entrance - fully healed, but for a twist: the fort is willing to kill, but it's much happier to convert. To debase the life that intrudes in it. When you die by insta, you take some corruption, but you also get a point to spend on an upgrade for your character: increasing stats as your body mutates, taking less and less fear as you become acclimated to helplessness, learning to consume corpses or rotten meat without penalty to stave off hunger, developing claws or spells or derrangements to fight the entities of the fort on their own terms. And all the while you're becoming more like them.

The flipside, of course, to growing more powerful and less recognizable as anything that once was human, would be endings that change based on how much corruption you've taken. Take only a little, and maybe there's a grim, savage hope-spot in amongst the bleak. Take a lot, and you're the thing that eventually slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.

Doing this would let you seriously scale up the lethality on some later encounters, include lots more hp damage attacks, make hp rather than limbs the thing players desperately need to conserve (and thereby make blue potions matter), and echo that theme of anti-gameplay F&F is going for by having players die to grow strong. There would even be gameplay in that antigameplay, by letting players control how their body corrupts itself. It makes the player a willing participant, if he chooses, in his own monstrousness, which it feels like is already a core theme of the game.

It also makes runs longer, less prone to an abrupt rng end, and much more interesting. Players aren't going to try to save-scum a game where dying makes them more powerful. They're going to try like hell not to die if they don't have to, especially when the instas are things like the guard's stinger and Trofurr's sequence, but when they do die, it's not a setback. It's a horrible advancement.
author=Dragnfly
I laughed my head off when selecting to love when the girl is in the party.
"No." THE END
@Dragnfly, :D I was afraid it would just piss people off <_<

@kumada, hey we are on the same wavelength with this! That is exactly one of the core themes I want to push in this game. No one stays the same in these dungeons and you can take 'gifts' from gods that help you in your quest, but the consequences will show in your character physically. Although, I didn't consider the scenario where a player would actually manage to stay 'pure', that definitely needs to be considered!

I like your idea a lot, however, changing the core gameplay into more of a cycle would conflict with few life-saving features I had planned or at the very least diminish their role. But I think the concept you describe here can be implemented with certain degree.
If there's more features planned to increase player survivability and also insta-deaths are going to be toned down, a resurrection cycle might not be necessary (although I am still a huge advocate for progression that persists between runs in a roguelike.)

Re: the show love ritual, I am totally okay with F&F maximum nope-ing out of it, but a full game over seemed a bit weird and abrupt when a simple 'no, even I'm not crossing that line, pick something else' would've been sufficient.

My rationale for choosing 'show love' over slaughtering the girl was that, without an occult edge, neither of us was going to survive. If the ritual worked, there was a chance that both her and Mercenaryz might, and the courts could handle trial and execution when Mercenaryz got back to civilization.

Also, I was about 80% sure that the girl was a shoggoth.
author=kumada
Also, I was about 80% sure that the girl was a shoggoth.


Yeah there's SOMETHING with her, I'm fairly certain...But yeah, I'm in agreeance with you on how it's kinda sudden.
Hmm. I'll play around with the idea of something persisting with every run. Maybe it could be something as minor as getting all your previous character's loot or something. That's pretty standard nethack.

As for the showing love with the girl issue - I actually didn't imagine this many people would try it out :'D Just make love with the ghouls if you are in need! Necrophilia is ok. I actually got pretty good ideas on what to do with that love making part in the future releases, so the game over stuff is gonna be gone.
Dragnfly
Beta testers!? No, this game needs a goddamn exorcist!
1809
author=orange-
As for the showing love with the girl issue - I actually didn't imagine this many people would try it out :'D Just make love with the ghouls if you are in need! Necrophilia is ok. I actually got pretty good ideas on what to do with that love making part in the future releases, so the game over stuff is gonna be gone.


You underestimated the gamer's need to try every possibility:) If you give gamers a puppy and a blender, they'll try it out, not because they wanna see a puppy in a blender but because they wanna see what happens after, and because they wanna know if you thought of the puppy and the blender.

As for the girl, I figure she doesn't talk just because she's either too traumatized or she has no tongue.