REVIEW: ‘Life Eater’ Is A Mixed (Body) Bag (PC)

Life Eater, coming from developers Strange Scaffold, describes itself as a horror fantasy kidnapping simulator. It’s deliberately uncomfortable to play, as you stalk and get to know your potential victims’ schedules day in and day out. I kept waiting for something to justify or explain the discomfort, but after finishing Life Eater, I’m genuinely unsure how I feel. The gameplay is monotonous and usually boils down to mindless clicking. The narrative ultimately doesn’t feel rewarding and leaves big questions open. Given the subject matter, I was hoping for more. It does have its moments as some chapters are interesting. They fully take advantage of the premise. But far too often, Life Eater falls short due to gameplay that just gets boring and frustrating.

Life Eater takes place over 10 chapters. You control a character whose name is blurred. The protagonist operates on behalf of Zimforth, an unknown god that demands a yearly blood sacrifice. If there isn’t one, the world will end. Zimforth sets upon the main character once annually, speaking to them and picking one, or many, sacrifices. The protagonist accepts his duty, losing his humanity in the process—hence the lack of a name.

Early on in the narrative, we meet Johnny. Johnny gets kidnapped quickly, seeing the protagonist as a person rather than an instrument. The main character meets Johnny in a cage in his basement, making him an unwilling participant in the yearly sacrifice. Your enjoyment of the story will entirely depend on your connection to these two characters. They’re both voice acted really well, and the writing is solid enough. The issue is, it’s difficult really caring about either one. The cutscenes at the top of each chapter look fantastic, but they’re too brief to really connect with the central characters.

The story itself doesn’t hold many surprises. It goes pretty much the way you would expect it to. It’s uncomfortable and depressing all the way through, which isn’t surprising, given the setup. However, Life Eater doesn’t do anything interesting with the premise. While it’s trying to tell a story about murder and sacrifice, there’s no moment where it feels like more than that. No message or fulfilling resolution makes the ride worth it. The player is continually put in uncomfortable positions, but why? If the inherent point is the discomfort, the game doesn’t push far enough. At the same time, if there’s meant to be a reason FOR the subject matter, it never evolves more than it’s central conceit of kidnapping and cutting out the insides of the victims. It doesn’t help that the gameplay is similarly frustrating.

Each year starts with a mission from Zimforth. One year you may be tasked with taking out someone trying to make ends meet working multiple jobs. Another year will have you stalking and sacrificing other terrible people in the community. It starts simple enough, but in the final few chapters, you’ll need to put the master the timeline to choose from a few different people to send them to their gruesome fate. Fail to choose the right one, and the chapter restarts.

To find the right victim, you’ll work a lot with an editing timeline, not unlike popular video editing programs. Time blocks are mostly greyed out. You have a set amount of time to try and pick the right victim, otherwise the world ends. Uncovering pieces of the timeline costs both time and suspicion. Going through the victims’ garbage may cost an hour and raise their suspicion meter by 10%. If the meter reaches 100%, you’ll get a warning from the police. Do this three times, and it’s game over.

There are a handful of ways to bring the meter back down at the cost of time. Masks get rid of suspicion when committing an act. You start with a finite amount of masks in each year, but sometimes none at all. By going through each timeline, you’ll learn about all the potential victims and their schedules. Once you get enough information, you’ll be able to abduct them, leading to a ritual screen showcasing the victims’ innards.

Here, you’ll be given six criteria to follow for a successful ritual. Does the character have black hair? If so, break rib number 11. If not, take out the left lung. Do they live alone? Do they commute? Following the directions correctly will result in successful ritual. This gameplay has a few issues. The first time you encounter the ritual is exciting. You’ll realize you should have paid more attention to the timeline. Every ritual that follows ends up having the same directions, and some are barely ever used. Different directions that change each time would have helped, making you really study and understand the victim you’re performing this awful task on.

Because the rituals don’t change, you end up just looking for a few specific parts on each timeline. All the rest is inconsequential. If the point of Life Eater’s discomfort is to make you feel like you’re peering into each person’s life and kidnapping them, it fails due to the lack of any variety. Once you see one timeline, each that follows doesn’t feel new anymore. The uneasiness of studying your victims gets lost in the repetition found on every timeline. You may be looking at options like pickpocket or plant a bug, but it may as well be option 1, 2, or 3, all pushing towards abduction. Occasionally, the task from Zimforth shakes this up in fantastic ways. Two levels, one focused on an already dying man and another on a pair of siblings, make you really dive deep into the lives of the victims and those around them. This type of creativity would have made the gameplay feel more fresh throughout.

The other major issue is, once you do an action, there’s no way to reverse it. Click something by accident? Misread a prompt and click the wrong thing? You fail, and you’re back to the timeline’s original state. This leads to mindless clicking through the timelines as you try to uncover enough information to lead back to the ritual. The victims and schedules don’t change, leading to an annoying cycle of clicking anything to get by until you can move on. A lot of the game feels like that as it continues: Mindless clicking looking for specific variables that aren’t that much different than what came before.

Another source of frustration is that Life Eater doesn’t tell you a lot about its systems or mechanics. The game will tell you that some blocks on the timeline will show up in pink, allowing for special functions that cost less time and suspicion. That’s great. But why are there red ones? Green ones? Clicking on them does nothing and there’s seemingly no reason for the variation. Clicking on the wrong organ in a ritual makes an X pop up on top. Get three, and the ritual’s over. But, getting one thing wrong leads to the ritual failing anyway, so what’s the point? It does ultimately help you refocus on that specific lead the next time through, but those Xs are never explained.

Once you complete the chapters, there isn’t anything else to engage in for the time being. An Endless Mode button unlocks, but clicking on it pulls up a coming soon message. It’s a cool idea to extend the idea of the game, but I’m curious to see how it’ll be implemented given the specific nature of each year. It’s something I’m curious to see when it’s ready.

Performance on the PC was always rock solid and the Steam Deck was satisfactory. The game is currently unverified, but it is entirely playable with some hiccups. The cursor gets lost occasionally using the built in controller, but using the touch screen solved those problems. Steam cloud saves across the two platforms were inconsistent, so picking one and sticking with it was definitely the way to go.

Life Eater takes an interesting premise but loses itself in monotony. When it shines, it’s exciting. You feel yourself slipping into the protagonist’s shoes as an unwilling participant who can’t say no. Most of the time, it’s a lot of the same, looking for variables that don’t change on timelines that always look the same. The discomfort the game wants you to feel becomes secondary. Yet, it loses itself in a conclusion that isn’t satisfying and gameplay that doesn’t change.

Life Eater is available on PC on April 16th via steam.