Boiling a work of art down to its marrow does it little favors. But these often flippant remarks can be useful for communicating what a game is at its core, whether to sell it to someone or scare them away. I recently heard Blue Prince described as “a 3D mystery dungeon game” from someone who hadn’t played it. These are all words that may apply to it, but they used them derogatorily as an excuse to not engage with it further. Even here we used to assign an irreverent “genre” to a game, where else could you see the original Assassin’s Creed described as a “Repetitive Stealth Adventure” back in 2007?
When I first heard about Consume Me, it was “the dieting and eating disorder game.” While not inaccurate, it’s actually an autobiographical, time management heavy, teenage life sim. What begins as a game where you manage what’s on your plate and decide which classes to study for, Consume Me concludes in what I can only describe as: life. People grow up, dreams and goals are forgotten, but our experiences have already shaped us.
I love this game, zits and all, let’s flashback to high school.
WarioWare instantly comes to mind when trying to describe the gameplay of Consume Me. Almost every interaction with the game is performing a 10-30 second minigame. The game makes its statement clear from the opening scene: you’re in charge of protagonist Jenny as she struggles to get out of bed, brush her teeth, and prepare for the day ahead of her; the player is responsible for all her actions.
Most of your time playing will be deciding how to manage Jenny’s time over the course of a week. You’re faced with a wall of goals on Monday and must tackle them all, along with a flurry of optional goals. Free time offers up the most choices: should you do your laundry so you have some clean clothes, study for that upcoming test to pass a goal, or call your boyfriend to boost your stats? There’s a variety of ways to produce additional free time, often at the cost of stats. Staying up late gives you an extra hour, but you can also stay up “laterer” or even “laterest” for maximum time management. Watch out though, you may wake up with a migraine.
But the main thrust of the gameplay and plot is managing Jenny’s diet. There’s a content warning at launch to warn the player about the struggles both mentally and physically Jenny will face, and that its depiction of dieting is not endorsement. Calories are measured vaguely in “bites,” and the central minigame in Consume Me has you trying to fit tetromino-shaped food into a grid. Overeating (filling in extra spots) may put you over the bite limit, and undereating (leaving required spots blank) leaves your gut stat wanting. In a pinch you can toss bite-filled food to your dog, but you’ll often be in trouble.
You can reduce daily bites by exercising, a both awkward looking and playing minigame; this may be my least favorite mechanic in the game, as nailing some of the exercise positions are tough. Some of the challenges can be smoothed over a bit by wearing a different outfit or performing a no-time required exercise. Consume Me really opens up in the mid-late game with the number of options you have available to you during free time.
Consume Me’s art and animation style is also reminiscent of WarioWare and its ilk, with Jenny’s portrait stretching, morphing, and details being removed as necessary to fit the mood and tone of the scene. There’s a modern manga-like aspect to it of several different art styles portraying Jenny that are all obviously her in context, but look wildly different without. It fits the overall themes of the game perfectly and along with the writing, is often genuinely hilarious.
As for the writing, I was concerned that the dieting and weight management would be played with too heavy of a hand, but it is handled fairly deftly and intelligently. You and Jenny always have a requirement to stay under her daily bite limit, but there are cheat days available and most of her negative self-talk is limited to the beginning of the chapters. I think overall Consume Me strikes a successful balance in handling these issues.
It’s also a straight up very funny game. Jenny and the rest of the cast are full of clever remarks that feel relatively timeless though the game is set in high school in the 2000s. Combine that with the animation style and cutscene direction and Consume Me gets a rare win in the category of games that sustain the laughs throughout the course of the game. It’s also touching, with a scene set in a church that may be one of my favorite video game sequences ever.
Consume Me’s chapter-based structure breaks the game into convenient (approximately) one hour chunks. I played one chapter a day for about a week, and it felt like the perfect way to (ahem) consume the game. The time management began to feel challenging near the end, but the minigames themselves are never very tough. The writing and animations really bring this game home though, I’m looking forward to a replay someday to achieve my A+.
