Hordes of Hunger bills itself as being a survival arena slasher, and while you do indeed run around murking a bunch of enemies in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and you do level up as you go, it’s a bit more hands-on than most in the genre. That’s not a bad thing at all, but it means that, to me at least, it feels more like a roguelike Dynasty Warriors game… sort of.
You take control of Mirah, a woman on a mission to kill just about everything she sees, because they’re all really hungry and trying to eat you. It basically means there are a lot of monsters to attack, and while they start off just sort of running at you, they’ll quickly end up trying to explode you, debuffing you with magic, and leaping across the map at you. It’s a simple enough premise, and it’s a simple enough game as well.
Instead of the auto-attacks of a Bullet Heaven game, you have to hold down a button to unleash a string of standard attacks, which will have you Geralting around the map with your sword swinging, or whatever other weapon you end up crafting. You also get a heavy attack which requires focus, which you get from hitting things, and a special attack which charges up over time. You’ve got a dodge and parry too, which end up feeling very relevant if you want to actually stay alive.
The dash is especially good, because healing is hard to come by, and one of the level up perks you get lets you heal for each enemy you dash past, which can keep you alive pretty comfortably. Things don’t get a huge amount more complicated than that, which is fine, although some of your level-ups can buff your other abilities, like granting a lightning strike to your jump attack.
With all of that at your disposal, you have to run around different levels completing missions, like destroying cranes or beating up bosses, and just keep doing that for each level. You’re going to die a fair bit – it is a roguelite, my friends – as getting surrounded is fatal, and because each and every new level brings some new enemy to ruin your day. The ones with shields can only be hurt by heavy attacks or special attacks, or lightning bolts.
It’s a fun little loop, as these games so often are, but it’s not doing much beyond that, and the progression feels a little sluggish. A lot of Survivor-likes are sort of carried by the sheer absurdity of your weapons and the things you can weave together, but Hordes of Hunger is a bit more grounded in it’s overall look and feel. That leads to the gameplay feeling a little bit more muted, and because progression is slow on top of that, with you buying passive buffs and crafting weapons sometimes, it just isn’t very inspiring.
