funny

I’ve yet to fully consume Consume Me, so please take that headline with a pinch of salt (not too much, because apparently salt can cause short-term weight gain). Still, I thought I’d rush out a quick “on sale now” piece before the weekend because this game is extremely good, and I worry based on the Steam stats that it’s being overlooked.

It’s a fast-talking, mildly anguished pocket RPG about a high schoolgirl, Jenny, who is trying to lose weight while balancing schoolwork, domestic duties, an emerging social life, and her domineering mom. It broadly consists of household tasks and Coming Of Age Milestones couched as a bunch of Wario Ware-style timed minigame puzzles. Among other antics, you’ll fold laundry by clicking on cue, manage a (dis)interest bar during a terrible date, apply your make-up as though doodling yourself in Kid Pix, and surgically arrange food on your plate while passing carbier morsels to your absurdly squishy dog.

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The developers are Jenny Jiao Hsia, AP Thomson, Jie En Lee, Violet W-P, and Ken “coda” Snyder. They offer the following cautionary note: “Consume Me is a semi-autobiographical game that depicts dieting, disordered eating, and fatphobia. If you are someone who struggles with or has struggled with disordered eating, it’s possible that Consume Me will be a stressful or even upsetting experience and we won’t begrudge you for giving it a pass.”

I myself have never had an eating disorder, but to borrow a phrase from Eddie Izzard, I am familiar with the experience of sliding up to the mirror and thinking “well I wouldn’t fuck me”. The mirror is indeed home to the Furies in Consume Me – it’s where Jenny gets her quest assignments from her comically unforgiving reflection. I laughed a lot during my first hour with Consume Me. I think I’ll probably cry a bit at some point, too. But even if I reach one of the less-good 13 possible endings, I don’t get the sense I’ll regret the journey.

Consume Me’s visual wit is balanced by a startling emphasis on resource management that is also a critique of the gamification of wellbeing. It’s divided into days, which are divided into scripted and unforeseeable events such as trips to the shops, random hot boy encounters and above all, mealtimes. These see you trying to put enough stuff on Jenny’s plate to fill her Gut gauge, without taking too many Bites. In my current save, I started out piling up objects subject to real-time physics, but then I had Jenny glean a few tips from a dieting mag, and the eating minigame evolved into a process of slotting together random Tetris blocks.

Image credit: Hexecutable / Rock Paper Shotgun

Overeat, and you may wish to burn off the pounds by exercising in Jenny’s room. Exercise takes the form of dragging an elasticated Jenny around with the cursor to fit various poses. Many of the minigames and cutscenes involve the clownish deformation of Jenny’s body. It’s amusing, and also a bit painful to watch. Consume Me does a great job of leaning into Looney Tunes slapstick while making clear that the portrayal contains an element of self-loathing.

As for those resource gauges, you’ve got to worry about your energy (used for physical labours like walking the dog), your mood (strongly affected by hunger), and your cash reserves (see also, buying a new swimsuit before the big neighbourhood pool party). While the minigames may seem flimsy, there’s a bit of strategy to distributing your time efficiently and unlocking activities, buffs and outfits that juice your stats. Again, though, this feels like critique, not an earnest equation of levelling-up with self-improvement. The developers caution in a brief foreword that Jenny’s fortunes may take a turn for the worse even if she masters all these life-hacking gambits.

Image credit: Hexecutable / Rock Paper Shotgun

The character art and interface design are sumptuously daft, with chunky Walkman buttons and a colour scheme suggestive of a virtual pet game, which I guess this sort of is. The audio is possibly even better: there’s different music for each part of Jenny’s day, and the sound effects fit the visual gags superbly. Above all, Consume Me is fast. Even when it’s dealing with more difficult stuff, like your mom body-shaming you, it rarely prolongs a scene for more than a few sentences.

Find the joyful, slightly upsetting thing on Steam. If you want a second opinion, Oisin had some quick thoughts on a demo in May. I suspect one reason Consume Me hasn’t yet made a splash is that it’s launched in the same week as various other brillo experimental games.

In particular, there’s Baby Steps from Bennett Foddy and co, which comes at similar subject matter from a very different direction. I’ve written previously about how that outwardly depressive game sort of celebrates the experience of inhabiting a disagreeable lump of flesh. I get the feeling Baby Steps and Consume Me will make natural companion pieces. We’ll hopefully have more thoughts on both down the road.

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