Fear & Hunger - Survival Horror Rogue-Like Blobber *qualifier overflow*

[whatsapp gaming]

Better IMO - myself and other people have already provided general impressions, but specifically to your questions:

-Termina barely qualifies as a roguelike in comparison to F&H, as you immediately have access to a save point. Saving comes at a cost - it advances time, which in turn advances certain events and character fates, but as a result the game feels more like a structured and considered puzzle and less of a random experience.

-Speaking of randomness, F&H had mild random generation due to varying map presets and randomized item drops. Termina has a fixed map with no randomization (and a great, interconnected and sprawling one at that, with alternate routes etc etc) and the item RNG has been made a lesser factor through there being more reliable ways of getting important items such as recipe books, and a few different item shops.

-The dank lore and writing are still on an ESL level, but I personally find Termina's setting to be much more inspired and coherent, and the text noticeably more polished and confident (though still awkward.) Finishing the first game is not at all required, and if anything I'd play them in reverse order since that one is a far more obtuse experience. Opaque? Both or something idk

Thank you for your insights, and thank you for your reply. I'm now considering playing Termina, but how is it from a bugs/performance sense? Any noteworthy bugs and such?

 

[oscar]

Liking this a lot. Feels a bit more open-ended than the first game (seems to be quite a few alternate and optional routes). Less RNG dependent as well. The new saving system means you feel a bit more open to experimenting (though you have to ration your saves carefully due to them burning your limited time, no savescumming here).

Surprisingly if anything it feels less 'edgy' than the first one. Less sexual and gross out horror.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

If you need to stop playing to return to real life, it is possible to save and quit without loosing time or other resources in the game?

 

[Lithium Flower]

Fuck me, I am honestly a little sad by how many people I expect will just bounce off the second game due to associations with rpg maker, JRPG, roguelikes, etc - because if the first game had little to do with any of the above, Termina is an even more distinct experience. And it keeps blowing me away.

The game is many times the size that it initially appears - the amount of hidden routes and mechanics is insane. I completely missed the primary way of getting skill points - don't be shy fucking around with weird altars in dark basements, gang. Replayability seems to be through the roof.

Just to give people some idea of the scale without spoiling much, the starting areas in the city outskirts are divided from the city proper by a gate that requires two keys from different locations to open. Except beyond that first obvious option there are at least three other ways of bypassing the gate that no one tells you about. One is entirely random - finding bolt cutters as RNG drops - but the other two are intricate alternative paths through side areas that require different skills or abilities to access, and that you may or may not find yourself winding through later in the game.

This is a little insane - the first game had a vertically interconnected world of a sort, but it was far less impressive of an achievement considering we are dealing with a 2d plane here, hence each layer felt relatively compact with some notable exceptions. In Termina the world sprawls out horizontally (though verticality remains a factor via underground passages, etc!) and, barring non-euclidean interiors, appears to be designed coherently ala Dark Souls. A brilliant achievement especially considering the game has a single developer.

The character interactions and little moral choices that fold out are really interesting - in a future playthrough I want to keep as many people alive as possible, but this go around I am basically operating like a psycopathic murderer, pulling along characters that have useful abilities and picking off the rest when I manage to jump them alone. Whichever way you go, there are rewards and benefits for either keeping a healthy roster of bodies spare (that is if you manage to recruit them - some will be far more distrustful of you than others) or hunting them down like cattle.

There is also a surprising amount of writing and abilities reliant on information - getting the mind-reading skill will give you more insight into characters during dialogues, there are extended descriptions of characters you can only get from having Daniel the Doctor diagnose your dead enemies, context-specific party banter (make sure to use the Party Talk skill in various areas, your companions will usually have something to say.)

Also, game is downright scary sometimes, IMO much more so than the first game. The city proper has some really fucked up buildings.

My favorite moment so far, and probably one of my favorite examples of lovecraftian horror in a vidya game:

Spoiler

In Prehevil there is an unmarked apartment building with a completely unremarkable exterior. Go in and the door is barred behind you. You are left to explore a puzzling and fucked up apartment complex, filled with puzzles mostly designed to waste your time, keep going back and forth between rooms, draining your mind and body. The puzzles unlock a passage into an alternate, warped version of the apartment complex that is essentially an end-game dungeon - only upon recovering a mysterious artifact from said dungeon will the door finally unlock.

Its a cruel trick but made an effective horror device by just how mundane the house appears from the outside. Though I did (barely) survive, like in a good lovecraftian tale, I had the sense that my fate was all but sealed the moment I stopped through the building's threshold, and it felt powerless knowing that I did almost nothing to fall into this hunter's snare.

If you need to stop playing to return to real life, it is possible to save and quit without loosing time or other resources in the game?

No, but the character/inventory menu pauses the game so you can just hit ESC and minimize the motherfucker, I doubt it takes up much CPU resources running in the background - that's what I do when I need to take breaks (ie only for eating and sleeping every once in a while - I've bought a plastic kid's toilet that fits into my obesity-proof chair so I that I can void my bowels without diverting my attention) from the game.

 

[Lithium Flower]

lol this fucking game

if you pick the yellow mage, his character creation vignette is a fucking text adventure version of the first game

its possible to die in character creation l m a o

 

[oscar]

It's insane how obscure some really fucking vital mechanics are. Like cutting heads off with the bone saw to sacrifice for soul stones. Should I be killing off my fellow competitors or helping them? Who fucking knows?

Odd and very unique vibe playing this because there's so much going on under the hood and very little concrete information yet (even for fairly basic stuff). Even scouring threads on 4chan and whatever there's still so much I don't have a clue about.

I also don't think I've seen games that let your protagonist be as flat out evil as this game. You could do some quite disturbing stuff in the first game (trading a little girl to a pedophile etc) but here from the very start you can be a complete son-of-a-bitch. While the protagonists of the first game seemed to be good (uh other than the necromancer) people doing increasingly fucked up stuff just to survive here you can be a total psycho from the start.

It's very effective and genuinely a little sickening.

 

[lightbane]

s (ie only for eating and sleeping every once in a while - I've bought a plastic kid's toilet that fits into my obesity-proof chair so I that I can void my bowels without diverting my attention)

Truly scary part of the post here.

 

[Lithium Flower]

Fuck my mother, I am still on the second phase of the 2nd Day and just lost a GODLY run (had my dude with a Bremen elite trooper breastplate, everyone else kitted out in chainmail armor, two meat hammers in the party leading to frequent crits, etc...) The worst mistake you can make is trying to do a DPS rush to the torso of an enemy you have never faced yet instead of going for the safe strat of taking out the arms (or alternatively, nuking from orbit with murky vials.)

However, this is the one game where instead of shooting me down, defeat energizes me - since every run where I explore somewhere new gives me crucial information and I can do it more optimally next time. Also true for roguelikes, but unlike a roguelike, here the presence of a saving system gives you the ability to push forward and create a bridgehead, which is a very satisfying feeling.

There are alternate ways to save your game beyond resting, which do not advance time:

Spoiler

-Single use Books of Enlightenment, ala the first game
Cost: trade 3 contestant's heads with Pocketcat, alternatively randomly found on Bookshelves

-Drawing a sigil of the God of Fear & Hunger on a Perfection Circle spawns a statue you can use for a one-time free save.
Cost: mutually exclusive with sigil of All-Mer on the same circle (so it's a choice between save or teleport.)

Spoiler

The perfection circle on the 2nd floor of the Prehevil bookstore is good for this since it's not that far from either the speakeasy or the train, both of the latter being superior portal locations

-Could be others I have not discovered yet.

Odd and very unique vibe playing this because there's so much going on under the hood and very little concrete information yet (even for fairly basic stuff). Even scouring threads on 4chan and whatever there's still so much I don't have a clue about.

Official discord seems to be the best place to get information, though it's obviously very chaotic and occasionally misinformation. That's where I tend to look when I am desperate to know something, perhaps you will have luck there.

 

[Psquit]

Decided to buy the games cause they were shilling Terminus on 4chan (again). Playing the first one cause if the second one is better going from 2 to 1 is going to be hell... the main problem is the backtracking cause I avoided magic ( Won't let knight waifu lose her virginity or engage in weird cannibalistic rituals). Eventually, I had to use the mod to save cause it becomes tedious to find a bed (You can get the book but that's waaaaaay later into the game).

Once you get some peeps with you, the fights become manageable but the puzzles can be brutal (Like sacrificing the Homunculus you created to fight pyramid head without skin), how I'm supposed to know all this shit? I tend to forget most of the important details cause in the next room there is some weird creature that wants to put the anal bleeding status effect in my character!

The thing that keeps me playing the game is the oppressive atmosphere and the unknown (like what's gonna happen next). Fear & hunger is a hard recommendation not because of its themes or depictions of violence but rather the Rng system & the trial and error approach.

 

[oscar]

The game does give you the sense of each playthrough you feel a bit more confident and prepared. I guess you got to roll with that the first playthrough is inevitably going to kick your ass and probably end up in a soft fail state (feeling that with my boxer run at day two with no party members, lost af).

 

[Lithium Flower]

Careful with the film reel boiz, bitch-ass game froze on me when I turned on the projector - I checked the discord and that appears to be a relatively common issue that dev is working on. On the plus side, that was the only crash or lock up type of bug I've had so far.

 

[Psquit]

I rage quit my journey in Fear & Hunger 1, got butthurt about my little girl dying against the condemned one or whatever the fuck that pyramid-head wannabe is named. Started 2, and after 9.5 hours i managed to gather enough intel... to survive day 1.

Spoiler

Should I be worried about cutting the heads of everything I kill to cash in for soul orb & fragments?

 

[═█═]

Do you need to beat the first game to get the most out of the sequel?

 

[Zariusz]

Just bought it and i already played this shit for over 12 hours restarting runs until i saved in quite cosy circumstances and then from that place again restarting runs, exploring prehevil.

I like how now game gives you more ways to controll your run, certain items are op af and easy to get without relying on rng for example: bloodsucker ring - regens 5-6 hp per hit, for Marcoh who hits unarmed two times or multi hit weapons its great and you dont need rng, you can get it for free in the 2nd floor of department store or buy it for 8 rust colored pearls from a special summonable merchant, salmonsnake stone - protects you from losing limbs, burning and bleeding, hardened heart - if you have more hp than 1, hits will leave you at only 1 hp combined with ring of wraith that regens 8 hp... you can guess how this goes and you can get it for 99 schilings in certain store, bonesaw - you can cut of heads of dead enemies and later sacrifice them in certain altars for 1 soul stone shard each, 3 shards = 1 stone so after cleaning all of the Old Town you will probably max your char's skill tree, Betel ring - regens your mind and you can get it for free from Church of All Mer, probably there is more items like that though i know only these.

Game still finds ways to kick you in the balls of course: Death Masks - those motherfuckers are tanky af, attack two times per round with hits that remove your limbs and make you bleed, The Mob - those fucks can ambush you in West Prehevil in many places, 3 enemies, stronger versions of common ones, you cant target their limbs, one has a gun, one has 3 hit attack that removes your limbs, one hits decently and gives you bleed, certain house in Prehevil that traps you until you get certain item from its depths, did i say that its filled with hordes of tanky enemies that hit hard and that without tons of small keys or lockpick skill that open more manouvering room you will probably have to fight lots of them, if you are unprepared you will be grinded to dust and i thinks its somewhat mandatory to finish this dungeon.

Termina gives you greater amount of ways to manage difficulty than F&H while still being challenging and interesting.

 

[bataille]

Don't forget the real horrors of the game: references to COVID, twitch streamers, and the dev's discord friend who stars in a prominent role as his fursona.

 

[lightbane]

Don't forget the real horrors of the game: references to COVID, twitch streamers, and the dev's discord friend who stars in a prominent role as his fursona.

Aren't you confusing this with Caves of Qud, who did just that?

 

[bataille]

Don't forget the real horrors of the game: references to COVID, twitch streamers, and the dev's discord friend who stars in a prominent role as his fursona.

Aren't you confusing this with Caves of Qud, who did just that?

It's from the second game, Termina.

 

[notpl]

Don't forget the real horrors of the game: references to COVID, twitch streamers, and the dev's discord friend who stars in a prominent role as his fursona.

Too scary for you?

 

[lightbane]

Don't forget the real horrors of the game: references to COVID, twitch streamers, and the dev's discord friend who stars in a prominent role as his fursona.

Aren't you confusing this with Caves of Qud, who did just that?

It's from the second game, Termina.

I'll have to take your word as I won't play the second game anytime soon as I still have to finish the first game.

 

[bataille]

Don't forget the real horrors of the game: references to COVID, twitch streamers, and the dev's discord friend who stars in a prominent role as his fursona.

Aren't you confusing this with Caves of Qud, who did just that?

It's from the second game, Termina.

I'll have to take your word as I won't play the second game anytime soon as I still have to finish the first game.

Spoiler

Better not mention the "writing" that surrounds this character, Rancid the Sergal.

 

[Zariusz]

 

[Lithium Flower]

Don't forget the real horrors of the game: references to COVID, twitch streamers, and the dev's discord friend who stars in a prominent role as his fursona.

I am assuming you did not play the game but rather skimmed the same 4chan threads as everyone else. Those moments are in and the fursona is definitely terrible fanfiction material but it appears for literally one short boss fight and then fucks off from the game. The "references" to Covid consist of a single fourth-wall breaking dialogue line said by a character who is deliberately addressing the player.

Not saying the game's writing is high-art by any means. Quite the opposite, to the extent that makes me wonder why people are that bothered by a few cringe moments in a game full of narrative awkwardness. The whole script is ESL tier, plot is very derivative, the characters have flavor but lack complexity, and yes there are several wacky references - considering this is also an accurate description of ATOM RPG, which IIRC is a post-modern masterpiece according to yourself, Termina might very well interest you.

#shotsfired
#calledthefuckout
#yesiaminasexualrelationshipwiththedeveloper
#iamnotreallybutitsfunnytothinkthatisntit

To the no one wondering, I did beat the game weeks ago, clocking in at 40 hours (should mention, this is with probably 6-12+ hours of AFK time) to achieve ending A. Overall mixed feelings, definitely an improvement over the first game in terms of the gameplay for all the same reasons as have already been discussed, but the build up to the ending is pretty weak and the "end game" is rather sparse. Miro has been known to add a lot of content post-release, so there is that.

 

[Jasede]

The writing is garbage, it's the oppressive atmosphere and the Elvira-style difficulty curve that is the strength ("help, everything is cutting my legs or head off!")

I haven't played Terminal yet though, just the first one. Wouldn't can it a great "game" but it's very interesting and worth checking out - which is exactly how I felt about the old Elvira games so it's nostalgic.

 

[Lithium Flower]

To the unacquainted, the games' ESL writing style is not only awkward garbage but is also simultaneously kinda like epic as fuck brah. For instance, there are no rags in the world of Fear & Hunger, only "cloth fragments." You don't just get stomped to death in the first game, you get "crushed with great pressure." An NPC companion from same game, who is basically a mix of Morte and Ignus from PS:T as envisioned by an adolescent Berserk fan, pronounces with great pathos that his enemy will be "CRISPED" before burning them to death. It definitely has that bootleg mistranslated 90's JRPG charm to it, in spite of being completely fucking stupid at times.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Elvira-style difficulty curve

Man I don't think her curves were that great.