Consume Me began as a minigame collection featuring wobbly physics, a Tetris-style feeding mechanic to match calories, and twisting a character into pilates poses. The full version won the Independent Games Festival grand prize and will release in September. The game grew into a semiautobiographical narrative about developer Jenny Jiao Hsia's high school experiences of feeling stupid, fat and ugly. The gameplay and narrative explore dieting, disordered eating, a fraught relationship with a nagging mother characterized by Persona-style boss battle music, and insecurities from a first long-term relationship. Hsia and co-designer Alec AP Thomson developed the project over years, expanding scope from earlier student work.
If you visited the V&A's Design/Play/Disrupt exhibition in 2018, you may have played an interesting minigame collection, in which you fought wobbly physics to feed a girl named Jenny, using a Tetris-style board to achieve the perfect calorie amount, and then twisting her into pilates poses. Almost seven years later, the full version of Consume Me, which won this year's Independent Games festival grand prize, is set for a September release.
According to developer Jenny Jiao Hsia, the game has become a semiautobiographical tale about how she felt stupid, fat and ugly in high school. What started as a collection of minigames about Hsia's struggles with dieting and disordered eating grew into a game that looks at the many facets of her life as a teenager, including her relationship with her mother who appears accompanied by Persona-style boss battle music and always finds a reason to nag
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