Fair Dinkum, This 'Katamari But Evil' Game Just Devoured My Brain (and My Enthusiasm for Games Showcases)
AI Gaming News Author · Rock Paper Shotgun ·
Dive into *In Full Bloom*, a demo that's like *Katamari* if it were a cosmic horror tasked with feeding an insatiable maw, brilliantly capturing the terrifying metaphor of endless consumption – a feeling not unlike covering a relentless games showcase.
Right, so I've been tinkering with a new game demo this morning, and bloody hell, it’s wilder – and more stomach-churning – than anything I’ve conjured up accidentally with a faulty spell. Imagine you’re just trying to enjoy a nice cuppa, minding your own business, and then BAM! You’re suddenly the cosmic babysitter to a ravenous, planet-sized maw that just wants *more*.
That, my curious mates, is the utterly bizarre, unsettling, and frankly brilliant premise of *In Full Bloom*. Swiss studio Obleak Games has cooked up something truly… singular. It’s called *In Full Bloom*, which I reckon is a 10/10 for ironic titles, because this greyscale, hope-sucked world is anything *but* blooming.
My journey into this digital abyss began, as many good adventures do, with a random tweet featuring a picture from Gamescom. A giant, toothy mouth perched atop a dark planet. Curiosity, as they say, kills the cat – or in this case, shoves it, screaming, into an eldritch gullet. And I'm bloody glad I followed that impulse, because while it didn't kill me, it certainly left a rather significant imprint on my grey matter.
So, what does one *do* in this charming little slice of existential dread? You feed it. You grab houses, vegetation, entire tower blocks with your mouse clicker, and you drop them into the great maw. It screams as it falls, disappears from view, and then you hear that sickeningly wet crunching. Its jaws immediately flare open once more, teeth and tongue dripping with anguish, demanding more. More. *Always more*.
Now, if you’ve ever rolled the Prince of All Cosmos around collecting increasingly ridiculous amounts of stuff in *Katamari Damacy*, you’ll get the *basic* mechanic. But this, mate? This is Katamari’s evil twin, conceived in a fever dream after too much late-night cheese and an existential crisis. The original article described it perfectly: "what would happen if the folks who do Katamari were like 'Right, how can we take everything that doesn't make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end in this game, and flip it so that's a feeling so overwhelming you won't be able to forget it'." Spot on, I'd say. Instead of a joyous, colourful ballet of accumulation, *In Full Bloom* transforms it into a grimy, greyscale descent into cosmic dread, turning satisfaction into terrifying appeasement.
And the *sounds*, oh the sounds! If you’re not a fan of people eating – which, fair enough, who is when it’s truly visceral? – then prepare for a full-body cringe. The demo has three stages: small mouth, big mouth, and bigger mouth. You start with the entity as a 'youngster,' making panicked baby squeals and gurgles amid the slurping and swallowing of its three-toothed maw. They get more intense if you stop shovelling food in, apparently, but honestly, they made me so uncomfortable that I couldn't entertain slowing down to find out. My sanity has limits, even for science!
As the creature grows, its diet escalates. That 'big mouth' stage sees it with a full set of human gnashers, munching down fences, trees, and yes, screaming houses. The 'bigger mouth' eventually devours entire cul-de-sacs, and even a bus that's doing merry laps around the beast (good luck catching that, I certainly couldn't). The movement of the creature itself is a lethargic, slow-burn kind of horror. Unlike *Katamari's* frenetic rolling, *In Full Bloom*'s sluggishness isn't a bug; it's a feature, dialling up the oppressive atmosphere until you feel trapped in this grim chore. The satisfaction of plucking up increasingly ludicrous objects is still there, but it's now laced with a terrifying dread, as you sacrifice whole moons to a continent-proportioned pit of despair.
But here's where my wizarding senses really started tingling. *In Full Bloom* isn't just a wonderfully weird, unsettling game; it's a bloody brilliant, albeit terrifying, metaphor. As the original author noted, it's a "top class metaphor for the mechanisms of capital, always desperate for more, demanding constant and unsustainable growth because as the game's description says, 'there is only one way'." It perfectly captures that insatiable, unending hunger for *more* – the relentless grind, the demand for constant, often unsustainable, growth. You’re feeding a beast that can never be satisfied, because, well, 'there is only one way.'
And you know what? While playing this demo, it reminded me of that feeling when you're caught in the absolute deluge of a major games showcase. Games, news, trailers, buzzwords – all fired at you like ice cream scoops from a machine gun, as one particularly astute observer (the original article's author, bless their digital soul) put it. You're meant to be a speedy vessel, just shovelling information from the stream to the virtual page, without much time to digest. It’s a rush, sure, but it can feel less like curating a magical library of wonders and more like frantically feeding a bottomless pit of content, hoping you don’t miss the one crucial detail that actually matters amidst the jangling Keighs.
Now, while the demo is a masterclass in unique atmosphere and a profound metaphorical punch, it's fair to say it’ll need a bit more meat on its bones (pun absolutely intended) for a full release in 2026. Right now, it’s carried a lot by the sheer novelty of its weirdness, which is saying something for a game that makes you deeply uncomfortable. But as a proof of concept? A digital mirror reflecting our own consumption-driven realities and the relentless pace of content creation? Fair dinkum, it’s a stroke of genius. It might not be 'fun' in the traditional sense, but it's genuinely innovative and makes you *feel* something profound, even if that something is pure, unadulterated dread.
Right, I think I need a lie-down, or perhaps a very, very small snack. Just for me, though. Definitely not for *it*. Oh god, I think I hear it gurgling again…
Original analysis and demo experience by Mark Warren, Senior Staff Writer at Rock Paper Shotgun, published August 20, 2025.
Tags: Indie Games, Psychological Horror, Metaphorical Gaming, Katamari-like, Game Development
Original article: Rock Paper Shotgun