When Life's a WarioWare Minigame: *Consume Me* Scraps Flaming Dragons for Reality's Brutal Charm
AI Gaming News Author · Polygon ·
Forget flaming dragons, *Consume Me* throws players into the high-stakes world of teenage life, brilliantly blending a Persona-like life sim with WarioWare-esque microgames to portray the chaotic, messy reality of growing up and the shifting nature of personal struggles, all wrapped in a genuinely authentic and irreverent package.
Right, so I’ve been tinkering with this story all morning, and bloody hell, it’s wilder than it first appeared. You know how we gamers, we’re always off saving worlds from ancient evils or parrying flaming bone dragons, right? Big, bombastic conflicts that make you feel like a digital demigod. But what if I told you the truly high-stakes battles are happening... in high school? And the enemy isn't a lich lord, but, well, yourself, caught in a swirling vortex of social expectation and growing pains? Sounds a bit bonkers, I know, but stick with me, mate, because *Consume Me*, the Seamus McNally Grand Prize winner at this year’s Independent Games Festival, just took a sledgehammer to that whole 'fantasy escapism' notion, and honestly, I reckon it’s brilliant. As brilliantly chaotic as a spell backfiring into a glitter bomb.
This deep dive into *Consume Me* is inspired by and expands upon a fantastic review by Giovanni Colantonio over at Polygon, who first got me scratching my wizarding head about its genius. They hit the nail on the head: why do games go through such lengths to invent grand conflicts when the everyday struggles contain higher stakes than any fictional war? You can’t exactly parry unrealistic beauty standards, can you, oh Tarnished one? *Consume Me* dares to make you confront reality instead, and fair dinkum, it’s a confronting, yet utterly compelling, ride.
Co-developed by Jenny Jiao Hsia, this unclassifiable game is a work of autobiography, translating the tumultuous teenage years into a complex life sim. It kicks off with a clear-cut premise, right after a content warning about eating disorders: Jenny, a teenage girl in New York City, becomes obsessed with losing weight. She adopts a stringent dieting routine, counting her 'bites' every day, all leading up to a weekly weigh-in. Drawing on the structure of games like *Persona*, you're tasked with choosing how Jenny spends her free time, balancing food intake with energy levels. At first glance, it feels like a familiar puzzle loop. You're trying to pack food items into a lunchbox, optimising shapes and bite counts, aiming to stay under a daily goal. If you overeat, you burn pounds with exercise; if you undereat, you risk a 'snack attack' that might blow a precious 'cheat day.' It starts off feeling manageable, a system you can get a handle on, maybe even take pride in mastering. But that, my friends, is a false sense of security. It’s the gaming equivalent of thinking you’ve mastered a new spell, only for it to sprout legs and run off with your trousers.
Just as I, or rather, Jenny, gets hyperfocused on this routine, *Consume Me* begins its slow, glorious turn into what the original review calls a '50-car pile-up.' Suddenly, Jenny’s life isn’t just about calorie counting. Her focus becomes split between a growing checklist of responsibilities: weekly chores, keeping up grades, and – once a boyfriend enters the scene – making time for dates to maintain relationship health. It’s a relentless, high-stress juggling act of social expectations and mounting tasks. And honestly, it’s beautifully messy, much like real life itself. Life rarely lets you fixate on one thing for too long, does it? Neither does *Consume Me*.
Each new activity isn't just a menu prompt; it's a bite-sized minigame, playful yet demanding. You might be trying to match yoga poses with wobbly limbs or folding laundry by timing button presses just right. This is where Hsia and co-developer AP Thomson really shine, entering a clear conversation with other autobiographical slice-of-life games like *Dys4ia* and *Florence*, but then brilliantly playing with the design language of *WarioWare*. Bloody hell, that’s clever! Jenny’s life becomes a fast-paced microgame collection where she has no time to think, yanked from one responsibility to the next. Every new development in her life piles something else onto her plate, creating an effectively stressful balancing act that only gets more overwhelming with each chapter. It perfectly captures that dizzying, fragmented feeling of being a teenager, pulled in a dozen directions at once, all while trying to maintain some semblance of control.
The life-sim systems here have the depth to support that mounting challenge. Every decision matters. Do your makeup in the morning, and you might get a perk to help you figure out the best activity later. Each outfit in your closet comes with a perk too, boosting your yoga or dog walk. You can even stay up late for extra actions, but at the cost of energy, which, naturally, messes with your diet. Every choice tends to have a trade-off, inevitably setting Jenny back in another goal. It's always *possible* to ace every objective, even the optional ones, but the game excels at putting you squarely in the mindset of a teenage girl stretched thin by society’s – and her own – expectations. It’s less about winning and more about surviving, navigating the chaotic energy of growing up.
What truly makes *Consume Me* stand out is Hsia’s unique perspective. It exists within a rich tradition of girlhood literature and feminist indie games, but it resists the urge to reduce Jenny to a troubled kid in a heavy-handed cautionary tale. We always see the story through her eyes, with the entire game presented like you’re flipping through her notebook – full of wit, bright colours, and playful doodles, even when the undertones are pitch black. She’s not hopeless or destined for a dramatic bottom-out. Her eating disorder doesn't define her; she’s just a young person figuring it out, like anyone else. This philosophy sends *Consume Me* into a refreshingly unexpected direction, trading structural clichés for honest self-reflection.
Jenny’s relationship to food and her body doesn’t lead to the dramatic conclusion you might expect. Instead, the dieting aspect gradually fades into the background as SAT deadlines demand her attention. Jenny changes. Her goals change, her fixations change, the nature of her disorder changes. She isn't bound to a script, even though she spends so much time wishing she could conform to one. And that, mate, is the genius of it. Why do so many stories about growing up feel the need to end in a big climax when real life is rarely so clean? As the game's epilogue reveals, detailing how *Consume Me* came to be, there's no symbolic turning point Hsia can remember; it all just happened. Life, much like a good magical adventure, doesn't always have a tidy ending. You never truly stop coming of age, so long as you keep wondering what more you can do tomorrow. *Consume Me* captures that beautifully, making it just another checked box on a to-do list that’s never truly meant to be completed. Brilliant stuff. *Consume Me* launches on Sept. 25 for MacOS and Windows PC.
Tags: indie games, life sim, narrative games, coming-of-age, autobiographical
Original article: Polygon