“Hungry Meem Review: Is This Quirky Colony Sim Worth Playing?”

I was afforded the privilege of playing Hungry Meem before its full release, a true honor of watching these little buddies running around like ants at my merciful bidding, aside from the breaking of buildings, demands for food, and pretty shiny (who could blame them for that?)  Why must you yearn for my driftwood so much?! Are you making an effigy to burn the next black moon?!   This game comes from Drecom Co., Ltd., and its debut was on the Nintendo Switch. Let’s get the snacks out and dish up how successfully that secret ingredient added to the feast.

Food is fuel for the soul.

I have played so many colony simulators in my life, it’s my favorite kind. Give me RimWorld, Dwarf Fortress, and thou shalt not see me again for at least a week. Hungry Meem. Now this beast, this delightful color boom.. has done something I have yet to see in this field, and it was delightful, I do declare. Your Memes are hungry, and you’re going to use them to feast, feast! Equipped with just a bag and dreams of complex flavor, you set off to fight your way through a hostile, shrouded world with only the skills you have on your chosen team of three.

Oh, and something about growing this important world tree.  The Hungry Meem may have eaten the last one,  and it kind of led to the end of the world, showcased in this absolutely stunning hand-drawn fable that had me quite fond of my creatures already. Look! It’s not their fault! They just wanted to eat! Everything! You can’t be mad! Look at his faceee! Once you recover from the pretty sight of that artwork, you are taught the actual gameplay, in which you pick up your bag, plop it on the floor, and watch Hungry Meem magic as they scramble to pick up various items for you to cook or craft with. If..they don’t eat them first, that is.

But wait, there’s more!

Of course, that’s not all to dig into; we haven’t even gotten this steak sizzle yet! Hungry Meem has got more spices and sauces to whip up.  You can only pick three adventures, and they all have a skillset that they’re either born with or learn by trial of fire in the field You can switch up these skills as they learn them, but much like Pokémon moves, if you replace one with another, then that’s that, that Meem will no longer use that skill- so while your breeding for the best evolutionary traits, try not to do what I did and forget the basics.  No matter how cool the coat system is.

Let’s talk about that. Another way Hungry Meem changes the formula is how your villagers change their bodies, color, and patterns depending on their skillset. At first, I wasn’t sure about that, as I don’t like my favorites becoming different. What the heck, buddy? That’s my makeup kit! But I ended up getting really interested in seeing what X skill would do. All the changes hit that mark between subtle and notable, so it still felt like my Meem, she/he just decided to get a new style- this was really fun! Especially with all the different species you can breed for.

Sugar and spice

Hungry Meem isn’t all cream puff and rainbow sprinkles; there’s some tart sourness as well. Your Meems can lose their sanity ducking into the fog, hidden riches from them, getting attacked, or straight-up robbed on the way home. When this gets too much, you suffer, they kick the bag, getting rid of one random item,  break buildings, and make me feel bad with their bloodshot faces! You just aren’t you when you’re hungry! Get them a snack! Cookies, pudding, anything to make the pain go away! You hit up the pot and brew up some treats.  Just don’t forget to feed them nightly…you saw what they did in the prologue with the rumble in their tummies.

I would be remiss not to mention some control issues I have with the spicy flavors. The arrow keys were inverted by default, and when I attempted to change them in the settings, they defied my will and stayed as they were. It wasn’t a big deal, you click and drag for the most part anyway, but that and lots of controls offering buttons for the Switch are worth mentioning. Still, neither of these made Hungry Meem less enjoyable.

The feast.

All this heat in the kitchen for the perfect face-melting reward…taking off the silver platter to reveal the feast! Every level offers you more buildings, more loot,  more land to explore, and more trees to admire.  Reaching this point was always nice. I enjoyed the music and the artwork that played for it, and knowing my little buddies were getting the best dinner of their week, eat up, bucko! Remember this the next time you kick down your house!

Overall, Hungry Meem is fun, simple, and pretty on the eyes- with just enough to make it interesting the second you let your guard down, making you scramble for the correct fire extinguisher, hoping to save what’s left of your masterpiece. A stake that personally loves as a flavoring, that sweet and sour sucker punch!  If you wanna follow the sent wafting down the street, take those floating feet down to steam and check out Hungry Meem’s demo! It’s a full course of course, will hit the street car on the 31St of July.