Like any food labels that should mention nut allergy, the Hangry demo should come with a warning that it may eff up your computer. Alright, let’s calm down on the drama a bit, but I could not get this running on my desktop without dreadful framerates, and it also crashed my Steam Deck. Hard.
Game Pill’s upcoming action RPG is possibly the most graphically demanding game I’ve played on PC of late. Bear in mind that I can play Flight Simulator with settings that can reflect my Chevy Chase, yet with this game… no. So, it was time to bring out the big guns and run it on my laptop—with decent results.
Hangry is similar to Arboria in appearance – if the underground and vegetation were replaced by the cast of Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs. It’s a third-person game where you’ve been sent to acquire some ingredients. Fear not, those scared of real-life quests: the ingredients are mostly living in a vibrant alien world.
Hangry Demo
It’s essentially a combat game where you go about beating the locals with your hams, with a passing resemblance to Beast from The X-Men. And a quiff. The food-based enemies are relatively easy to fight, but when some aliens drop into play, “lasers” are introduced, and gameplay is a little more difficult.
However, while Hangry dismisses those with low-specced PCs, it’s not so much towards simple folk who like to mash buttons. Button-mashing works here – both for the basic enemies and the boss-like creatures. The key here isn’t evading but locking onto the enemies and hoping for the best, as the camera angle can be choppy when the enemy towers over you.
Visually, it’s stunning (hence why it slows down on my lesser desktop and not on the Steam Deck). Combat isn’t unique, yet it is very satisfying and enjoyable, and the highlight of the demo outside of the graphics. As for exploration, a radar system assists in locating the ingredients, though expect a lot of wandering around. Again, it’s pretty, so the sights are pleasant to the eye.
What’s Cookin’?
Perhaps somewhat of a surprise, once you’ve gathered all the ingredients and returned to your ship, you can make a dish using a mixture of shoulder buttons and the normal ones in a QTE-based sequence. Between the combat and cooking elements, the cutscenes throughout are fantastic and a gentle nod to the old PC games that used to blow us away with cinematics.
Hangry is one to watch, but as mentioned, be forewarned that it’s pretty intensive on some lower-spec PCs, and it couldn’t run on the Steam Deck even to get the chance to lower the settings. This might be better on console, but whatever – it’s one for your radar, at the very least.
