Consume Me

High school, what a time it is. It’s supposed to give us some of the best times of our lives, but at the same time you’re just so, so incredibly busy. And then there are all of the pressures: you have to get good grades, you have to have a social life, there are all the many extracurricular activities that take up a lot of your free time, and you’re supposed to look your best self at all times out of fear of becoming the butt of the joke. I think most people go through this experience, but how many of us make a video game out of it?

Enter Jenny Jiao Hsia, who dealt with all of these struggles herself. Under pressure from her parents to become the best student – and young woman – she can be, like the girl from across the hall, she sets out to live her best life. In her case, that also means eating a lot of delicious snacks. But that’s no way to become as beautiful as you can be, is it? Not according to her mom, at least. So on top of everything, Jenny now has to diet, as well as juggle all of her other responsibilities.

In Consume Me, you take charge of Jenny’s life. This is done through really fun, WarioWare-like minigames. You’ll be studying, eating, exercising, and, of course, you can’t forget about your chores. This might not sound like the most interesting take on a video game, but thanks to some wonderful presentation and a heartfelt story, you’ll soon forget all about that. Especially because the video game version of Jenny – who is also the developer of this game – is just so relatable.

Her struggles feel real, and that’s because they have been! Consume Me is an autobiographical game, taking us back to Jenny’s actual youth, showing us everything she had to deal with as a teenager. From trying to impress her parents to dealing with a rival at school to hopefully finding love, everything that you associate with your teenage years is here, and most of it has actually happened.

But it’s not just the fact that this is non-fiction that makes it relatable; it’s the way the game tells its story and how Jenny reacts to everything that will have you feeling all of her emotions. For example, we all know how good it can feel to do a successful fitness regime, so when Jenny all of a sudden gains this extremely muscular physique in the mirror, it feels like we’re staring at ourselves in that moment.

Gameplay also feels very varied, depending on how you fill your days. There are minigames galore here, and none of them ever outstay their welcome. Eating, for example, sees you filling a field of squares with bites to eat. You have to make sure you don’t eat too many bites – the game’s substitute for calories – in one day, or you’ll fail your dieting goal. Luckily, there’s your trusty dog you can feed certain food items to, so you can try and find that perfect balance, but it’s not easy.

Other minigames include what I like to call ‘ADHD reading’, where you’ll try to focus on reading your book or magazine while being distracted by your thoughts and everything going on around you. There are fitness minigames, and even your chores are gamified, whether it’s walking the dog, cleaning the bathroom or doing your laundry.

Consume Me’s presentation brings it all together, with the game’s beautiful cartoony visuals edited as if you’re watching an Edgar Wright movie. There are also hints of Dicey Dungeons in here thanks to the quick cuts, the animated facial expressions and the amazing soundtrack. All in all, this game delights in so many ways.

And that’s not something to be taken for granted, as the game deals with something pretty serious. Counting calories, or bites in this game, is considered to be quite the dangerous thing to do. It can easily lead to eating disorders and a very unhealthy lifestyle. The game does a good job of translating the effects of doing this on the rest of your behaviour, as sometimes activities will be locked due to a lack of energy or guts.

There are times when the game did lose me a little bit, although I think that’s mostly because of my own expectations. At the start of the game, you feel like you are Jenny, and the decisions you make are yours. But with, for example, the introduction of religion, Consume Me made me realise that this wasn’t my story but Jenny’s. This isn’t an inherently bad thing, of course, but it felt a little out of place with what the game was doing up to that point.

To be fair though, that’s the only point of real critique I have. Did I struggle a little and have to restart a couple of chapters because I wasn’t reaching my goals? Yes, but that never felt like it was the game’s fault. On the contrary, the game even gives you the option to level up before you restart a chapter, making sure it remains accessible to anyone who wants to discover Jenny’s story.

In the end, Consume Me hits in all the ways I had hoped it would ever since playing the demo. This is a game ten years in the making, and so much has been spent on attention to detail. It’s an important story to be told, and there’s plenty to be learnt from Jenny’s experiences. I wish I had learnt as much from my teenage years as Jenny has ended up doing, and seeing the ending and how this game came to be was such a joy. Just don’t forget to eat your veggies!