Dread Hunger’s assassination mechanic is slow, brutal, and great for the game.

One of my favorite parts of social sabotage games like Werewolf Y Among us he is successfully fooling people as an undercover agent. In many games, these moments are swift and brutal: A poor, unsuspecting victim finds herself alone in a room with an imposter for just a minute, and things immediately go wrong. The creators of Terrifying hungerHowever, they force you to do things slowly. It makes the game much more difficult, tense, and generally better.

In Terrifying hunger, you embark on an 18th century ship that breaks down in the Canadian Arctic and you play as one of eight crewmates. Each has a specific role on the ship, as chaplain or cook. The characters are on a journey of discovery, but two of them are now slaves to a dark force trapped under the ice. The slaves must prevent the survivors from fixing their ship and getting it out of there by any means necessary. The survivors must gather supplies, fill the cauldron with coal, and successfully escape without dying of cold or starvation, or being killed by a wild animal.

Playing a slave is a bit overwhelming at first because you have so many tools in your arsenal. You could find as much coal as you can and then dump it into the icy waters of the ocean so that Neither you can have it. Or you could poison your friend’s rations, use a bone spell to summon dark magic, or convince a polar bear to hunt down the ship’s captain.

One thing you probably shouldn’t do is try to beat someone to death or stab them with a sword.

Image: Dread Hunger Team

Terrifying hunger It’s meant to be relatively realistic, and that means the murder is slow and messy, and there’s a strong chance that the guy you’re trying to kill is screaming the entire time. It’s definitely still possible to carry out an assassination, especially if you’re single-minded in a dark cave, but it’s not ideal. If you murder someone on the ship, you have to deal with getting rid of their body, and that is also difficult. All the world in Terrifying hunger it’s just full of blood, and they spray it all over the place like a piñata filled with strawberry jelly, making forensics a big concern.

The end result is a much slower but more cerebral game of cat and mouse. Is the guy crouched by the stove trying to cook for the entire crew, or is he poisoning our precious meats? In one game, my colleague Josh Rios was the cook and protected the stove with his life … which made things awkward because, as a slave, I had devoted all my time and resources to making poison. Josh’s paranoia increased and I was forced to hide in the shadows for a much slower and messier game.

On another occasion, I was able to lure a friend into an ice cave by promising them delicious hot tea at the end of the hall. Instead, they were beaten with a club of bones until they died, and it was very dramatic. When instant murder is not an option, things become much more chaotic and paranoid, and the results are fantastic.

Terrifying hunger It is now available on Steam in Early Access.