Dungeon Munchies is a cute indie platformer/hack and slash carried by its fun and quirky cast of characters and surprisingly solid writing and dialogue. The plot shifts (sometimes at breakneck speed) between lighthearted/melancholy/existential dread but manages to hit all these points fairly well, particularly the lighthearted segments. It's one of those games that made me sad it was finished because I knew I would miss the characters. What didn't make me sad I was finished was the combat and platforming, which became a bit of a slog towards the end, though I expect this is partially driven by the fact that I beat the game over ~15 hours in just two days while bored on a work trip. Combat in the earlier levels was more traditional metroidvania where you had to be careful to dodge, watch your opponents attacks, etc. Later in the game, while the weapons and combat styles you had access to became more fun and well designed overall, normal enemies became largely trivialized due to the excessive damage you could easily output. Bosses, on the other hand, were not trivialized because they all had crazy bullet hell segments backed up by fairly long invincibility (?) periods, which made them a bit frustrating. I put a question mark there because I never fully figured out that mechanic - bosses would essentially receive a large shield which would go down on its own, and sometimes, but not always, your attacks would also lower it, and sometimes, but not always, attacking the boss was required to end the phase (challenging to do in some of them). Combined with movement being a touch janky, boss battles could get frustrating fast. Earlier, I referred to the game as a metroidvania earlier, but it isn't really. The game itself is very linear, you can essentially only move forward through levels with the occasional hidden side area to collect a new weapon/food recipe, there is no true sense of exploration or backtracking as you might have expected. As well, the platforming itself is generally very forgiving. There really weren't any challenging jumps or anything, and damaging traps and the like can pretty much be brute forced. Regarding the food/weapon crafting, don't go in expecting to be cleverly making recipes or finding secret ingredients. You can pretty much make anything as long as you don't purposely avoid killing things while running through the levels. I understand it might sound like I'm listing more bad than good points here, but I have to stress I did enjoy the experience overall, I wouldn't have played the game to completion otherwise. Even if I was a bit annoyed during a bossfight or occasionally while mowing down enemies (which still was mostly satisfying), I was motivated to keep going to see what crazy story beat would happen next, or what funny dialogue I could expect around the corner. Or just Grill in general. I liked Grill. And Clifford.

Playing this game made me feel like a fucking crazy person. Zombie working as a Chef Spirit's apprentice? That premise is right up my alley, but all the positive praise I've seen makes me feel like I played a completely different title.

LIGHT Spoilers

I am genuinely struggling how to properly convey my feelings on this title as I just finished earning the platinum and I just feel off about the whole thing. My brain wants me to rate it even lower but I have to give credit to a stellar idea and some impressive sprite work from many of the enemies. I would say most of the enemies are excellent from a visual design perspective. Because of all of this I did start the opening section pretty positive. It really wasn't until I made it through the games first chapter that everything started to fall apart.

I just hated everything else about this game. I hate its characters and boring presentation. I found its story muddled like a coffee shop script writer struggling to cut any bad ideas from the final product. It feels like they had three ideas for different games but since they only could make the one title they put their favorite ideas from all three. The tones don't match and it all feels like it would be a contender on a "worst of the year" anime top 10.

I found its combat and builds under baked as the screen filling attacks from most enemies push you into a box of just making a screen clear build to progress. The controls and player movement just don't feel right with a controller. I never was pushed to be creative with my meal combos. I found one thing that worked and it got me all the way to the end on the hardest difficulty. When I switched things up it just didn't feel effective. Some of these issues may be mute if playing on keyboard and mouse, but that doesn't stop the game from feeling too limited while trying to simultaneously offer so many choices.

I found the music range from decent to pretty forgettable. I actually can't speak on most of the OST as after the first chapter ended I put on my own playlist of fitting anime music.

That is kind of it. It's level design is mostly linear. It's ending kind of just happens and its over. Got my platinum trophy and everything. This game is at its best when it is doing the cooking thing and its enemies encouraged experimentation. The moment it switches lanes to its hi-sci-fi screen filling attacks I was out.

Honestly, take my words with a bit of salt as I am 100% an outlier here. At the time of writing I am the only person on this site to rate it a 1.5 and the game currently has 5,662 reviews Overwhelmingly positive on Steam. Trust me I wish I was one of those people.

You know how even at the best restaurant sometimes a bad meal sneaks by and gives a patron food poisoning? I'm that patron, and after this experience I won't be returning for seconds.