Consume Me

This spiky, funny, and bracingly original game consumed a few laughter- and tear-filled evenings, and left memories that will stay with me a good deal longer.

Despite its incredible presentation and interesting ideas about narrator reliability varying through story and gameplay, Consume Me’s ending left me wondering what the entire experience was for.

Consume Me is funny, it’s emotional, and it got me thinking about some of the things people in my life went through to get to where they are today. If the purpose of art is to provoke thought and introspection, Consume Me accomplishes that goal. Just don’t go in expecting a fun roller coaster ride.

Jenny Jiao Hsia's dazzling, semi-autobiographical tale of teenage life finds wit and warmth in its WarioWare weirdness, even as it deals with difficult themes.

Consume Me offers an inventive take on narrative design in gaming. In how it blends mechanics and story, it uses the power of the medium to create something that's uniquely engaging and empathetic, and leaves a lasting impact that helps to cement it as one of the year's best indies.

Consume Me is fantastic at making the player feel things. Frustration at Jenny’s situation. Joy at actually managing to accomplish goals or get through a lunch session while staying under the “bites” count and leaving no “hunger” sections behind. Relief when you manage to check both standard and optional objectives off her list for the month. Anger when you can tell Jenny doesn’t need to put herself through this, is fine how she is, and shouldn’t torture herself for the sake of other people’s (incorrect) opinions. It’s an important game and I’m glad it exists, even if trying to succeed in it sometimes frustrated me more than Bennett Foddy’s Baby Steps.

If a game is willing to explore such complex and difficult topics, it needs to be prepared to tackle those topics head-on and say something. Instead, the game just sort of ends without any resolution or final thoughts, and leaves the player wondering what the whole point of this was. I think there are some people out there who will connect with Jenny’s story more than I did and be able to overlook the monotonous gameplay, but in the end, Consume Me just left me feeling numb to the experience as a whole.