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Murder and baking are a surprisingly tasty mix in Ravenous Devils

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Phil Hornshaw
23 thg 1, 2024
A lot of games have funny, weird, out-there premises, but I don't know if one has ever turned my head as fast as that of Ravenous Devils, a "horror cooking simulator." I'm always on the lookout for new horror games, but I was immediately intrigued trying to guess what might be frightening about cooking sims, other than the inevitable The Bear-like blow-ups as the friends I team up with in games such as Overcooked scream at each other. "Get off my expo line, chef!"

It turns out that Ravenous Devils is often more of a black comedy than a scary game, but its horror premise mixes pretty perfectly with the cooking and management simulation genres. The game is a riff on Sweeney Todd, the story of a murderous barber whose victims are then baked into meat pies that patrons find delectable. Ravenous Devils gives you control of two businesses—a tailor shop run by husband Percival, who kills his patrons and uses them to supply the meat that his wife Hildred serves in her pub.

Though Percival might prefer murdering to tailoring, he and Hildred still need to make a living. In the tailor shop, your job is to create fresh corpses from anyone who comes in to get measurements, then send the body down a chute to Hildred's basement kitchen. Percival can't coax in more victims until he cleans up the evidence of his last encounter, and you need to mend and resell clothes taken from bodies to keep customers coming in. Meanwhile, Hildred has to create the mincemeat, sausages, and steaks that customers demand and cook them to keep everyone who comes into the pub full and smiling.
Murder And Baking Are A Surprisingly Tasty Mix In Ravenous Devils Pub
Constantly balancing all those activities is the real crux of the game, and soon carnage becomes commonplace as you zip between characters to make sure everyone's completing their next task. Timers everywhere let you know when food is cooked and customers are growing impatient, and as you improve your businesses with tables, decorations, and new dishes, things only get more intense and complex. I couldn't help but crack up thinking of I Think You Should Leave's Tim Robinson demanding "What have they done to us?" about the demands of capitalism as my serial killer couple got ever-more efficient at offing adversaries and pleasing customers.

The juxtaposition of the mundane and the macabre makes Ravenous Devils a guilty pleasure, as its managerial take on mayhem spices up the genre. There's a dark dissonance at play that constantly keeps the game going. You're following the story of a brazen (and not particularly bright) slasher couple as they veer closer and closer to being found out. At the same time, Table 4 wants sausage and we're all out, so it's time to get grinding, caution be damned. The mix might not be exactly what I was expecting from a horror cooking simulator, but what Ravenous Devils serves up is still a lot of fun. Sure, murder might be evil, but how else are we going to deal with the dinner rush?

Ravenous Devils is available on the Epic Games Store.