FEAR & HUNGER
RUN I : Cavarra, Mercenary
Part I: {this post} | Part II: {here} | Part III {here}
RUN II : Cavarra, Mercenary
Part IV : {here}
RUN III : Casca, Knight
PART V : {here}
RUN IV : Casca, Knight
PART 6.1 : {here} | PART 6.2 : {here} | PART 6.3 {here} | PART 6.4 {here} | PART 6.5 AND 6.6 {here} | Part 6.7 {here}
RUN V-VI : Raziel, Barbarian
PART 7 : {here} | PART 7.1 (ENDING E) {here} | PART 7.2 {here} | PART 7.3 {here} | PART 7.4 {here}
In 2016, a lone finngolian stuck in his snow swept yurt decided to start a youtube CYAO, loosely inspired by Kentaro Miura's Berserk manga. It failed, but it led to him mucking about in RPGMaker for two years straight, and at the end he released his first title: Fear and Hunger. The dungeon crawler has become infamous for its violence, debauchery and other shenanigans, so I figured an LP would fit right in. Let's get started.
Actually, before we begin, I will admit that I've had about a dozen attempts at this game, all ending prematurely without any significant progress. I'm aware of how to navigate the opening stage, what tricks to employ against the first two types of enemies, and what the Pinecone Pig is. I've also spoiled some of the endings for myself, but I'm oblivious on how to reach any particular one.
Let's begin, for real this time.
PART I : A STAB IN THE DARK
The opening throws us into the main menu, full of gloomy artwork complementing the strange, disconcerting theme. Give it a couple of seconds to start up.
We choose New Game, and are given the class selection screen, of which there are four in total. Mercenary, Knight, Priest and Outlander (Barbarian).
We go for the first option on offer, taking the name Cavarra, and proceed. The game gives us a stern warning and then asks for the difficulty setting. We're complete soy so we go for the easiest difficulty level (which ain't at all easy, as you shall see).
And soon we are given the introduction. Our protagonist stands in sight of a derelict fortress, the dungeon of Fear and Hunger. Soon we will have to brave its depths, but first we must clarify some of our backstory.
I have absolutely no clue what the soul of the endless means or what it's supposed to do in-game. Perhaps we'll find out as we go along.
The game is already licking its lips at the prospect of fucking with us. The choices at the start matter, and they matter quite a bit, since the wrong choices will leave your character shy of several invaluable skills. I go for burglary, which leads us to learning a new skill:
Had we gone for an honourable life, we wouldn't have learned it.
Next comes our choice in a losing battle. Were we honourable, or were we cowardly? We were cowardly, because honour does not pay. And so we learn another skill, Escape Plan.
The game is signalling to us to RUN if we feel that a fight cannot be won, in a very roundabout way. Cutting your losses loose is the best choice; the alternative is a quick death.
Knife.. dirty.. i hope that's not a euphemism.
Anyhow,
The mercenary company in question would be the Band of the Hawk, given the similarities that their leader (cutting his hand off in the main menu) bears to Griffith, but I digress. The mission is indeed a strange one. Could they not send in their own troops and pull him out? We'll worry about that later. Here comes our most important choice yet.
It's bait. The game is offering usvaluable supplies on a silver platter with one hand, but it's holding the golden platter behind its back with the other. We abnegate all those valuable supplies and rush to our job, and..
Cool. Dashing means we now get a significant boost to movement speed, allowing us to outrun enemies. Without it, we would be caught and forced into combat several times per map, each of which would have a non-trivial chance of ending us.
With all that out of the way, we can finally start the game. We find ourselves in a clearing surrounded by fog, with the rockbed giving way to wilted grasses. A dead horse lies to our left, a feast for maggots and crows. Interacting with objects presents us with several different options. They are determined by our skills. We can beat a dead horse
)), investigate it or leave. Investigate = loot, if there is any. Behind us comes the sound of barking. We pay no heed to the barking and scour the area, interacting with the barrels and the crates to find some loot. Meat, carrots, a stick and a pinecone. Hmm, pinecone...
Suddenly we hear the barking again, and the sound of panting. We decide not to linger. The dead horse might be of interest to a hungry dog, but I'm not sure they won't see me as the tastier treat.
We take a deep breath and enter the dungeon. Darkest Dungeon lied to us: this is a lot darker. So dark, in fact, that our sanity metre begins to slip from the moment we enter, and will continue to drip away unless we find a good light source or go back outside. Immediately to our right is a desk with some papers. We shuffle through the pages: the ramblings of a madman.
Cringe
Unfortunately, the dogs are probably outside by now so we are stuck here and the only way is forward. Avance! Underneath the scattered pages we stumble upon a book. The book of fears rattles off every known fear known to this world.
![URL]](https://images2.imgbox.com/34/19/cyrgn58Q_o.png[/URL])
And once we go into the character menu, we see that we have..
Fear of ghosts! Unfortunately, every run is going to be blessed with one phobia as far as I know. These fears will negatively impact your stats when you fight certain types of enemies, but they won't prevent you from fighting. We also have a quick look at our equipment and everything we've collected so far.
2 coins and 3 torches. Not great, not terrible. We strike one torch to light up the area and prevent the enemies from getting the drop on us in the darkness. Even with dash, I don't trust my reactions to prevail. Where now? To our left is a door, and I decide to try it.
It opens with a creak.
A strange scene greets us. To our right, in the corner of the room, a monstrous humanoid thing sways in the liminal stretch of my torch's light. Either its eyesight is poor or its mind is addled, because our presence does not register. To our left is a cage, with a child trapped inside. A red haired girl sits sobbing softly behind the metal bars.
Fortunately I know lockpicking. Quietly, the lock comes loose, and the girl creeps out of the cage. Without a further word she falls in line behind me, becoming a follower. Our first companion!
Slowly we creep to the table, our arm at the ready to draw our scimitar at first sight of trouble from the monstrous figure. However, he remains placated and we nab some papers from the desk. Some tinderboxes fall into our hand as well as we're caressing the tabletop. Without wasting any time on reading them, we turn about and flee the room.
Back in the hallway, we light some of the wall torches with our newfound tinderbox, giving us minor reprieve from the oppression of the darkness.
Where to now? Forward, or northward, to be precise. The girl diligently follows us without murmuring a single word. Perhaps she's a mute.
Here we stumble upon a small library. Several bookcases covered with cobwebs and smattered with rat droppings offer us knowledge, but in order to attain it we'll have to grapple with this game's most divisive mechanic:
Finding the good stuff is a literal coin toss. IF you hold down Shift when tossing the coin, you'll toss 2, cutting the chance of failure to 1/4. The 2nd coin is drawn from your pool of expendable lucky coins, so it is a very limited resource. You think to yourself, "huh, that's a pretty bold design choice". Yeah, it is, but it's also the mechanic for saving the game...
Anyways, HEADS.
I win
A big book! With pictures! Alas, this will have to wait till Part 2.
RUN I : Cavarra, Mercenary
Part I: {this post} | Part II: {here} | Part III {here}
RUN II : Cavarra, Mercenary
Part IV : {here}
RUN III : Casca, Knight
PART V : {here}
RUN IV : Casca, Knight
PART 6.1 : {here} | PART 6.2 : {here} | PART 6.3 {here} | PART 6.4 {here} | PART 6.5 AND 6.6 {here} | Part 6.7 {here}
RUN V-VI : Raziel, Barbarian
PART 7 : {here} | PART 7.1 (ENDING E) {here} | PART 7.2 {here} | PART 7.3 {here} | PART 7.4 {here}
In 2016, a lone finngolian stuck in his snow swept yurt decided to start a youtube CYAO, loosely inspired by Kentaro Miura's Berserk manga. It failed, but it led to him mucking about in RPGMaker for two years straight, and at the end he released his first title: Fear and Hunger. The dungeon crawler has become infamous for its violence, debauchery and other shenanigans, so I figured an LP would fit right in. Let's get started.
Actually, before we begin, I will admit that I've had about a dozen attempts at this game, all ending prematurely without any significant progress. I'm aware of how to navigate the opening stage, what tricks to employ against the first two types of enemies, and what the Pinecone Pig is. I've also spoiled some of the endings for myself, but I'm oblivious on how to reach any particular one.
Let's begin, for real this time.
PART I : A STAB IN THE DARK
The opening throws us into the main menu, full of gloomy artwork complementing the strange, disconcerting theme. Give it a couple of seconds to start up.
We choose New Game, and are given the class selection screen, of which there are four in total. Mercenary, Knight, Priest and Outlander (Barbarian).
We go for the first option on offer, taking the name Cavarra, and proceed. The game gives us a stern warning and then asks for the difficulty setting. We're complete soy so we go for the easiest difficulty level (which ain't at all easy, as you shall see).
And soon we are given the introduction. Our protagonist stands in sight of a derelict fortress, the dungeon of Fear and Hunger. Soon we will have to brave its depths, but first we must clarify some of our backstory.
I have absolutely no clue what the soul of the endless means or what it's supposed to do in-game. Perhaps we'll find out as we go along.
The game is already licking its lips at the prospect of fucking with us. The choices at the start matter, and they matter quite a bit, since the wrong choices will leave your character shy of several invaluable skills. I go for burglary, which leads us to learning a new skill:
Had we gone for an honourable life, we wouldn't have learned it.
Next comes our choice in a losing battle. Were we honourable, or were we cowardly? We were cowardly, because honour does not pay. And so we learn another skill, Escape Plan.
The game is signalling to us to RUN if we feel that a fight cannot be won, in a very roundabout way. Cutting your losses loose is the best choice; the alternative is a quick death.
Knife.. dirty.. i hope that's not a euphemism.
Anyhow,
The mercenary company in question would be the Band of the Hawk, given the similarities that their leader (cutting his hand off in the main menu) bears to Griffith, but I digress. The mission is indeed a strange one. Could they not send in their own troops and pull him out? We'll worry about that later. Here comes our most important choice yet.
It's bait. The game is offering usvaluable supplies on a silver platter with one hand, but it's holding the golden platter behind its back with the other. We abnegate all those valuable supplies and rush to our job, and..
Cool. Dashing means we now get a significant boost to movement speed, allowing us to outrun enemies. Without it, we would be caught and forced into combat several times per map, each of which would have a non-trivial chance of ending us.
With all that out of the way, we can finally start the game. We find ourselves in a clearing surrounded by fog, with the rockbed giving way to wilted grasses. A dead horse lies to our left, a feast for maggots and crows. Interacting with objects presents us with several different options. They are determined by our skills. We can beat a dead horse
)), investigate it or leave. Investigate = loot, if there is any. Behind us comes the sound of barking. We pay no heed to the barking and scour the area, interacting with the barrels and the crates to find some loot. Meat, carrots, a stick and a pinecone. Hmm, pinecone...
Suddenly we hear the barking again, and the sound of panting. We decide not to linger. The dead horse might be of interest to a hungry dog, but I'm not sure they won't see me as the tastier treat.
We take a deep breath and enter the dungeon. Darkest Dungeon lied to us: this is a lot darker. So dark, in fact, that our sanity metre begins to slip from the moment we enter, and will continue to drip away unless we find a good light source or go back outside. Immediately to our right is a desk with some papers. We shuffle through the pages: the ramblings of a madman.
Cringe
Unfortunately, the dogs are probably outside by now so we are stuck here and the only way is forward. Avance! Underneath the scattered pages we stumble upon a book. The book of fears rattles off every known fear known to this world.
And once we go into the character menu, we see that we have..
Fear of ghosts! Unfortunately, every run is going to be blessed with one phobia as far as I know. These fears will negatively impact your stats when you fight certain types of enemies, but they won't prevent you from fighting. We also have a quick look at our equipment and everything we've collected so far.
2 coins and 3 torches. Not great, not terrible. We strike one torch to light up the area and prevent the enemies from getting the drop on us in the darkness. Even with dash, I don't trust my reactions to prevail. Where now? To our left is a door, and I decide to try it.
It opens with a creak.
A strange scene greets us. To our right, in the corner of the room, a monstrous humanoid thing sways in the liminal stretch of my torch's light. Either its eyesight is poor or its mind is addled, because our presence does not register. To our left is a cage, with a child trapped inside. A red haired girl sits sobbing softly behind the metal bars.
Fortunately I know lockpicking. Quietly, the lock comes loose, and the girl creeps out of the cage. Without a further word she falls in line behind me, becoming a follower. Our first companion!
Slowly we creep to the table, our arm at the ready to draw our scimitar at first sight of trouble from the monstrous figure. However, he remains placated and we nab some papers from the desk. Some tinderboxes fall into our hand as well as we're caressing the tabletop. Without wasting any time on reading them, we turn about and flee the room.
Back in the hallway, we light some of the wall torches with our newfound tinderbox, giving us minor reprieve from the oppression of the darkness.
Where to now? Forward, or northward, to be precise. The girl diligently follows us without murmuring a single word. Perhaps she's a mute.
Here we stumble upon a small library. Several bookcases covered with cobwebs and smattered with rat droppings offer us knowledge, but in order to attain it we'll have to grapple with this game's most divisive mechanic:
Finding the good stuff is a literal coin toss. IF you hold down Shift when tossing the coin, you'll toss 2, cutting the chance of failure to 1/4. The 2nd coin is drawn from your pool of expendable lucky coins, so it is a very limited resource. You think to yourself, "huh, that's a pretty bold design choice". Yeah, it is, but it's also the mechanic for saving the game...
Anyways, HEADS.
I win
A big book! With pictures! Alas, this will have to wait till Part 2.
Last edited:
