Oh boy do I have a treat for you iOS owners out there. A free game that is brilliant, doesn’t try to con you out of any money and doesn’t have a single ad in it anywhere. Not only that, but it also features the most spectacular Engrish you will ever see, as evidenced by the screenshot which accompanies this post.
The game in question is HungryMaster by xionchannel. I found it completely by chance while browsing titles related to Square Enix’s catalogue on iPad, and downloaded it out of sheer curiosity. I was expecting it to be a five minute novelty, to be deleted immediately afterward.
What I instead found was a wonderfully silly, addictive little game whose use of touch controls puts big-name developers to shame.
The premise is simple and insane. Delica is hungry and walking in the woods one day when she comes across a talking white cat called Saten [sic]. Saten offers to give Delica magical powers for some reason I feel is somewhat lost in translation. Said magical powers allow Delica to defeat monsters by turning them into food, which kills two birds with one stone.
In gameplay terms, the player controls Delica by touching on the screen anywhere, and she follows. In order to use her new-found magical girl powers, the player must draw a line starting from her and running through enemies. The player can lock on to as many enemies as they can draw a line through while a brief timer is running, then they explode and turn into food when the player releases their finger. Delica can then collect the food by running over it. Collecting more food in rapid succession gives a combo bonus, and the main objective of most levels is to collect enough food to deliver to houses scattered around the map. There are occasional boss fights, too, where twenty pieces of food can inexplicably be used to set off a bomb.
It’s as gloriously ridiculous as it sounds, but the gameplay is very solid thanks to the excellent touch controls. The whole thing is presented on the iPad or iPhone screen in portraitwise orientation, features 80s-style pixel art and scanlines. It’s like holding a forgotten 80s arcade machine in your hand — the sort you only ever found at that one arcade at that one seaside resort, but would always insist on going to whenever possible because that hidden gem of a game was just so good.
I’m very happy that I’ve found such a hidden gem on iOS. Check it out for yourself here.
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