Developer: Digital Melody Games
Publisher: QubicGames S.A.
Platform: Switch,
Tested on: Switch
Hungry Baby: Party Treats – Review
As most people know, you shouldn’t really wake up your baby at the middle of the night to stuff him with ice-creams and candy like you are the witch from Hansel and Gretel, ready to eat delicious fat children. Hungry Baby: Party Treats was wondering why not, and decided to make an entire game around this theme. So get ready to drip, drop, and die towards some poor resting child’s tummy.
Story
Hungry Baby: Party Treats doesn’t really have a story, only a goal. There’s a giant baby who wants to be fed as soon as he wakes up, and you are the treat that’s going to feed him and also… has to wake him up for some reason? Okay, maybe the story doesn’t make much sense, but it’s not the first game that decided to just throw itself out there. There are no cinematics or other types of storytelling included either.
Graphics
The graphics in Hungry Baby aren’t that bad actually. There are plenty of Party Treats to choose from as you will pick them as your character, and also the rest of the appearances are pretty high quality and comparable to popular mobile games for the general public such as Candy Crush. It’s cartoony, it’s graphically fine. Maybe the animations are a bit stiff, but this also fits into the same line of those type of mobile games that don’t have to be as fluent as some triple-A games.
Sound
The sound, on the other hand, isn’t very good. If anything, it tries to annoy you and taunt you whenever you make poor choices. If you die, words like sarcastic ”oopsies” aren’t uncommon, and the sound effects don’t make much impact. Even the menu song where somebody is ”singing” the words Hungry Baby in the background seems to have something to get on your nerves.
Gameplay
Hungry Baby: Party Treats is mostly a party game, and besides that, it can really be only classified as a trial and error game. It’s not a puzzle game, it’s not heavy on adventure or action. The entire game is literally built around one gimmicky trial and error option, namely walking on a tiled board as you bump into invisible walls that kill you and make you respawn at the original starting point. Is that as boring as it sounds? Yes. Yes, it is. Even though whatever kills you will mark the tile you stepped on as a ”death trap”, there’s still no way of knowing where to go. Mostly.
The goal in the campaign mode while running head first into frustration is to pick up multiple alarm clocks scattered around the playing board. If you picked them all up, the baby at one side of the board is waking up and you are ready to throw yourself into its abyssal mouth. Now, you do have some powers you can use which are unlocked by walking around. If you hop enough times you unlock one and you can use it to, one time only, plant a checkpoint that you will revive at once or use a scanner that shows you what is on the tiles surrounding yours. The powers are fairly useless though, and you will be guaranteed to die quickly anyway after having used one.
All this is accompanied by an even more frustrating feature that seems to be ripped straight out of a mobile game. Stars. Like the stupid gimmick wasn’t enough to annoy you, the game has a timer that, if you complete the level really fast (a.k.a. by knowing the exact layout when you replay the level) gives you three stars for being a sheep that prefers the dopamine of three stars over playing a good game.
The best thing about the gameplay is that the multiplayer either has you suffer together in an attempt to complete the campaign or lets you battle it out in slightly different mini-games such as trying to reach the middle of the level as fast as possible. During those battle-games, at least the frustration of the game has a point, which is to laugh as you see your friends getting worked up. You can also add bots but they are no fun since you must be extremely lucky to beat them due to poor unbalanced programming.
Conclusion
Hungry Baby: Party Treats is graphically alright and maybe can bring some people a tiny bit of fun when played with multiple people on the couch, but other than that it’s a giant bummer. The gameplay is just revolving forever around a single gimmick which is unfair and not even fun, just frustrating. If you are very masochistic it’s maybe the game for you, but if you like a fun solo game, this is definitely not something you should pick up without hesitation
No Comments