Hungry Ghosts is a charming hand drawn game, where players defend themselves against hordes of ghosts using various desserts and drinks.
Hungry Ghosts is a charming hand drawn game, where players defend themselves against hordes of ghosts using various desserts and drinks.
Hungry Ghosts started out as doodles in a notebook (as most
of my ideas do) of creatures that could serve as ennemies in
a different project. Because I could not create the project
as a first project due to its scale, I had to come up with
another 2D game. This is when I had the idea of revisiting a
game I really enjoyed : Plants vs. Zombies, and fusing its
gameplay with roguelike mechanics, and using the
"living desserts" ennemies as the main theme for the game.
Now, players must beat a series of progressively
harder, procedurally generated levels, to win the game and
unlock new content. Losing means starting over the series of
levels.
This not only adds another layer of strategy to the
gameplay, but it also fixes the few issues of players always
playing the same strategy or the gameplay feeling stale
after a while.
The main innovation of Hungry Ghosts lies in the mix of both
Roguelike mechanics with the simplicity of Plants vs
Zombies' tower defense gameplay. This allows for more long
term strategies, where players might be weaker early on to
have a pay off in future levels. To match the ghosts getting
stronger each level, there are different dish families
(honey, fire, drinks,...) that have different synergies to
scale up in power as the game goes on.
Additionally, the procedurally generated levels and the
randomly offered dishes/upgrades entice players to change
strategies and adapt to get stronger, making each game even
more different.
When a player wins a game in an area of the mansion, they
first unlock a harder difficulty for that same area, along
with a new character (one per area of the mansion). Each
character has a unique power that changes drastically the
gameplay, and players may choose whichever they want at the
start of a new game.
After beating the harder difficulty of
an area, they unlock both the next area (with new ghosts and
mechanics) and an even harder difficulty for more advanced
players. This ensures players are free to choose how they
want to play the game and that each game is different.
On top of that, the game offers additional challenges
(achievements) to unlock new dishes that can be offered
during a game.
The story is very light hearted and comedic as the game is
more casual, with a colorful cast of characters each with
their own theme and story that somehow ended up in the same
mansion at the same time.
The characters are made to add a lot more humanity and
personality to the game itself, and allow players to
identify to them and fall in love with their personalities.
