PC Gamer - UK (2022-07)

Setting up shop in an appropriately

squalid building, the murderous

couple at the centre of this is Percival

and Hildred. Percival, a tailor instead

of a barber, spends his day selling

clothes and murdering

his clients. Hildred

runs the pub

underneath, using the

bodies Percival sends

her way as the filling in

the meals she makes.

You manage their

working day, with your

attention split between

the two equally.

Controlling them is

straightforward, as you simply scroll

up and down to see each floor of the

building and then click on the object

you want them to interact with, but

the challenge theoretically comes

from juggling their differing

demands. Hildred might need you to

deliver some fresh pies, while

Percival needs a hand mopping up

his latest murder mess. For a game

with such ugly subject matter, it at

least manages to conjure some

effective visual touches, from the

steam trails of freshly baked pies to

the queasily vivid mutilations that

Hildred performs when making

steaks out of patrons. If only the

attention to detail in these animations

was matched in the rest of the game.

Ravenous Devils struggles to make

anything engaging with this darkly

appealing setup. For starters, there

should be something taxing about

dividing your attention between two

businesses, but the tasks between

them are so limited, you never feel

under pressure. Percival’s main jobs

are to murder and make clothes – as

well as getting the ability to grow

vegetables later on – while Hildred’s

focus is prepping and selling meals,

with a smattering of different recipes

that can be unlocked when you buy

new equipment. What also makes the

strategy feel stale is

that the flow of

customers is pretty

predictable, especially

later on when I knew I

would get three people

a day to murder with

Percival, making it easy

to know when to divide

my attention between

the pair, rather than feeling like I was

making split-second judgements.

This absence of peril can be felt

across the entire game. Because your

day won’t start until you actually

open up the store, you can take as

much time as you need to prepare,

stocking up on everything you need

and processing bodies away from the

hustle and bustle of a regular day. You

can even get a cat that will hunt rats

for you if you’re running low on meat

to sell to customers. While the tasks

you complete in this downtime won’t

completely get you set, it does feel

like you’re making an already gentle

challenge even milder.

SHOP OF HORRORS

There’s at least some intrigue with

the upgrades you can unlock for your

little boutique of debauchery, such as

hiring a server to gather orders rather

than making Hildred scurry up and

down stairs, or unlocking a

greenhouse where you can grow

vegetables, but they never manage to

change the core flow. Despite the

occasional visual flourish, the strategy

never truly grips; you never feel like

you’re moving off auto-pilot once

you’ve got the hang of it.

Away from the action, the game’s

story has a similar problem with not

fulfilling its potential. While the

narrative has a grimly amusing edge

• a mystery man blackmails Percival
  and Hildred into killing people he
  wants to eat – it’s blunted by
  lacklustre writing that relies on tired
  clichés and unpleasant characters.
  While no one would expect to enjoy
  the company of a pair of homicidal
  chefs, the couple aren’t funny enough
  to amuse, nor believable enough to
  intrigue. With a sharper story or
  more incisive strategy, this could have
  offered a grimly entertaining take on
  restaurant management sims.
  Instead, Ravenous Devils just ends up
  feeling undercooked.

46

Unfortunately Ravenous

Devils’ fun concept is

squandered through

rote strategy and

charmless writing.

VERDICT

T

aking inspiration from an unusual source, Ravenous Devils is

a cooking strategy game with a twist – the meat you use

comes from the people you kill. However, it’s so keen for you

to get the joke that there’s a reference to a barber in the

opening. So just in case it wasn’t clear, this is Sweeney Todd:

The Game. Sadly, the promise this concept inspires is fleeting, as you

discover that running a capitalist cannibal empire is surprisingly dreary.

SWEENEY SHOD

A nice concept with bad ingredients makes for a disappointing dish in RAVENOUS DEVILS

By Ben Tyrer

It struggles to

make anything

engaging with

this darkly

appealing setup

ANATOMY OF A KITCHEN

Here’s how the sausage is made... literally

NEED TO KNOW

WHAT IS IT?

The answer to the

question, “What if

Sweeney Todd was a

cooking game?”

EXPECT TO PAY

£4

DEVELOPER

Bad Vice Games

PUBLISHER

In-house

REVIEWED ON

Intel i5-4690K, GeForce

GTX 970, 16Gb RAM,

Installed on SSD

MULTIPLAYER

No

LINK

bit.ly/3kXSohp

1

GRINDER

This ominous

contraption gobbles

up bodies and spits

out mince. Hildred

keeps mentioning

how little she

actually cleans it,

which is surely going

to impact her

establishment’s

hygiene rating.

2

OVEN

Where meat

and flour are

transformed into the

best pies (that are

made from humans)

you can buy. While

that kitchen might

look unwelcoming,

what with all the

viscera, at least the

ovens work well.

3

BODIES

Surely every

London kitchen has

a hole for where the

bodies can pile high?

While it might not

look like the most

sanitary option, rest

assured that with

business booming,

they don’t stay there

for too long.

1

2 3

Ravenous Devils

REVIEW