I was once a tester for this game, hence my playtime. I've only played about 3.5 hours of the final product, according to Steam. I tried to push myself and get further into the game but I had to stop.
HANGRY is a hack and slash game featuring uninspired dull gameplay, a terrible progression system, questionable design/balancing, forgettable characters, and a visual style that I don't find very appealing.
Nearly every tutorial is dumped on you at the start of the game. No intro cutscene, nothing. Lots of live pop-up tutorials that you need to read. The complete opposite of "show, not tell". Then suddenly, the game gives you the next mission and now you're on your own. There’s still many things not explained to you, which they should. You can pause and read various tutorials and "tips", but I don't think the average player wants to sit down and read blocks of small Arial font text.
The combat is mindless click spamming, and the occasional dodge roll. There's also a stamina bar, for some reason. Heavy/combo attacks use stamina. Stamina drains super quickly while regenerating incredibly slow. You get 2 finisher moves you can use: biting and cleaving. You have to get enemies to low health and make sure they're stunned. (every enemy has a stun meter that depletes if you leave them alone too long). You can bite enemies for health and stamina. You can cleave to gather more ingredients. But yikes, if you choose to eat enemies to get back resources, you can get random de-buffs as a result of eating something not good for you or something. Great way to encourage using the unique mechanics that are critical to survival. You can find wild plants scattered around each area to eat and heal. But they're hard to spot unless up close. You also get a berserk mode, which lets you perform faster and stronger attacks in exchange for draining your health. You can use it once you charge an incredibly slow meter, and you can't even exit it until you finish off an enemy by biting them. I think? Eh, I dunno. I almost never use it 'cause it's too busy slowly charging up.
Enemy design varies from mediocre to frustrating. Attacks are horribly telegraphed. You will get randomly hit a lot if you just rush enemies. Which sucks because the combat system flows a lot better if you can just rush enemies down, constantly eating enemies to regain resources to keep rushing enemies. Sometimes I would get hit when enemies just turn in my direction. Enemies can whack you within milliseconds, You are capable of being staggered and getting knocked down. Which sucks. Some enemies have annoying attacks like trapping you momentarily on the spot, giant AOE attacks, projectiles that are hard to look at. Every "boss" is just a much tankier version of a normal enemy. For some reason in every single area where food monsters dominate, the most common enemy I run into are these stupid gun wielding robots. They are weirdly tanky, do decent damage, shoot annoying laser beams, and you can't yield resources from them.
And what’s better than a good ol’ slow trailing system to pair with the combat. Every single main quest requires you to go out to a specific area, enter a mode that limits vision, slows you down and does not let you fight. Then find a starting point, then follow trails to find point A then B, then you can fight the enemy with extra health. You can’t skip anything, the game does not let you. It’s all slow and tedious. The side content features mostly annoying fetch quests. I did get a couple escort quests where I had to defend a baby slowly marching a marathon. I also got a quest where I had to get x amount of kills in a certain amount of time. Unfortunately, if you wanna get stronger you gotta engage with the side content, which I don’t want to do. The combat is clunky and dull. And there’s plenty of downtime.
But what's the progression system? How do become stronger? You manage 9 different skill trees. Not joking. And you unlock more as the game goes on. These skill trees are not even remotely interesting, visually or contextually. They're all linear and offer very small/niche upgrades. The very few "significant" upgrades are locked away towards the ends of these skill trees which require lots of resources and require you to reach the endgame. And when I say "significant" I mean kinda significant upgrades to… stats. The only upgrades I can remember that were actually interesting was a healing ability that lets you consume all your energy to heal. (you should have it by default). A second dodge roll out of your initial dodge roll. (which I remember liking a lot, you should get this by default or much earlier on). And then there’s a small handful of upgrades to the weapons… where you get to use the unique attacks in the berserk mode just.. normally in combos. If that didn't make sense then don't worry it's not that crazy. What sucks is that nearly every upgrade only gives you a small boost in stats. "Gain 20 movement speed". "Max health increased by 50". "Max energy increased by 3”. These guys also love their percents. “Consumable items are 33% more effective”. “Increased resistance to negative effects by 10%”. “Hitting an enemy from behind increases your crit chance by 15%”. There’s also a comical amount of upgrades that offer a small benefit when a niche condition is met.
ALSO, every skill tree has its own kind of XP that you need to gather and level up, which is hard to keep track of. You collect 2 kinds of currencies and collect so many different ingredients from every enemy, which is stored in one big mess in the menu.
You can use ingredients in the weird cooking system ‘cause why not. You use recipes you collect. You time button presses, click on various shakers, stir with a spoon, and balance meters. All in varying orders. It sounds confusing. It’s actually very easy it’s just not fun. You can actually spend some currency to skip the process which I find funny.
I haven’t even mentioned the areas you explore. You supposedly “explore the galaxy” but in reality that’s 4 barren wastelands each with a different coat of paint. Every new weapon you unlock allows you to break place-holder looking barriers to unlock more dead space.
The UI is confusing. And it often looks like it’s placeholder stuff or it doesn’t fit in the game. For some reason, a lot of the UI is so skimpy and awkwardly thin or small. I hate the very thin fonts that are used, especially when lots of text is being displayed in big chunks.
Visually it looks alright at best. Looks like the devs went for a “realistic approach” and a “cartoony approach”, but they didn’t commit enough to either. I notice it most with the enemies. They just don't look that great. Also, the same enemies are found in every area, just re-skinned.
The characters are forgettable. You play as an obnoxious brat, you work with a narrow-minded clout chaser. You’re friends with an alcoholic who sounds exactly like Awkwafina, which I guess you're supposed to like? And there’s a friendly robot who’s pretty boring.
I remember going through the entire story as a tester. I didn't think it was anything special. What really sucks is that the presentation of the story sucks. You go through only dialogue boxes with mediocre voice acting. Characters who are talking/are important will randomly, awkwardly, and comically zip in and out. That's it. Nearly everything is TOLD to you through exposition. This game takes place in a cyberpunk metropolis where food is king and monsters roam the area which sounds genuinely AWESOME but you're shown NOTHING. The most you can see of this bustling city is peaking outside the dumpster area of your home base.
Pair all that with a forgettable soundtrack, and you have the video game of all time. There's a lot more to be done for this to become a okay game. If you want to try it, get it on heavy discount. But I think you can get MUCH better and bigger games for the same price or cheaper.
