To-do list for the Consume Me review: write a to-do list, get yoghurt from the store for a snack later, make some tea before writing, research the history of minigame collections, come up with a zinger for the title, describe how the game made you feel, compliment the zany visual style, explain—ah, something serious came up. But I haven’t finished writing the to-do list!
Whatever, it’s good enough. Guess I’ll have to skip the tea too. It’ll lower my mood by a lot, though. I’ll get less done with a low mood. Maybe I’ll skip the snack instead? My hunger would go down, but I ate more yesterday, so I guess that’s fine? Yeah, let’s go with that. Oh, and don’t forget to remove this part from the review. It’s actually embarrassing to think this would work as an intro. Do better.
Consume Me is only partially about food. About 20/80 between the Consume and the Me. It is a fictionalized recollection of the struggle with health, time, and the self of a young adult via a management/minigame-style gamification of her to-do list. This style of game will be familiar to most players out there; you probably encountered it before in bits or as a whole, be that via a mode in some AAA title or while clicking through games on your browser once upon a time.
Importantly, however, I think Consume Me is extremely well-suited for casual play. It has that quick pace, and the controls are based around swiping, timed presses, and block puzzles. Wide appeal and familiarity should allow it to reach far. It deserves to.
That approachability makes way for layers of, well, everything you would want out of a game, really. There is so much heart in its characters, such creative visual representation of stories and events, and the minigames fit perfectly into the pace of it all without losing out on the intensity of the management side. The loop works wonders for the plot, and the interactivity fully enriches each step, propelling you forward without a single dull moment. All the while, for those more familiar with games like it, Consume Me has enough interesting twists to catch you off guard. It balances everything as if miracles really do exist.
Sometimes you will run into a repeat of one of its random events, but each chapter of Jenny’s life recontextualizes it. Say she finds some money on the side of the road. When her mom provided for her and paid her for chores, the event felt superfluous. Later, it provided an opportunity for a selfie as part of an extra goal as she grew more social and outgoing in part due to newly gained confidence from dieting and a sense of self-control. Finally, when cramming for tests and living without her mom, with no way of making money in sight, any amount was a godsend that could be spent on one more cup of coffee, giving her an extra time slot to study on that day.
From that description, you can probably tell that things will not be all that peachy. Counting bites eventually comes back to bite you. As a backbone for all the change Jenny goes through, reaching a goal is never good enough. There is always more, always another reason to overstimulate and ruin another week of your life in hopes the next one will be better.
You will start out matching food items onto some blocky/puzzly tiles, doing wobbly yoga, speedreading, doing laundry, desperately making time for video calls or texts. You can get better at each, leveling up as you do or refilling your status bars, but their main appeal for me is variety. This goes back to that perfect balance, but I really cannot overstate how wonderfully that range of activities complements the story and the emotions running through me as I play.
Many minigames appear to have been built off Jenny Jiao Hsia’s previous work, short games posted online or created during game jams. Consume Me is a larger work with several contributors, including the co-director AP Thomson, Jie En Lee, Violet W-P and Ken “coda” Snyder, but as a semi-autobiographical title, it is also a clear culmination of this cultivated, personalized game philosophy. It really feels like it understands itself as well as the space it operates in, confidently and unabashedly achieving one fantastic moment after another. It looks silly and zany, sounds wonderfully wobbly and enthusiastic, and feels simultaneously cute and acute.
A few years ago, I played In Stars and Time, an incredibly special title that, looking back, I think I did not give enough credit. I wrote about how it “desperately needs to find its audience sooner rather than later, as it deserves that sort of recognition perhaps more than any title I have played this year.” Since then, I have strived to never make the mistake of undervaluing experiences like that again.
This is one of those times where I know I cannot back down. My gut is telling me that Consume Me will be celebrated as one of the most special experiences of so many people’s lives if it gets the chance to reach them, and it needs all the love it can to get there. Do not wait for it to make the rounds. Make them yourself.
Mateusz reviewed Consume Me on PC with a provided review copy.
