It is unwise and foolish for the learned person to shy away from stories that are unhappy, unsavory or otherwise upsetting. After all, much of the truth and the historical facts of our own humanity are drenched in the blood, tears and anguish of victims and would-be villains. It is important, though, to recognize framework and setting. For example, if I were merely to say “a person died today,” it is a morbid and rather stark statement to give, even if it is true. The lens through which we view the unfurling of horrible moments is dreadfully critical to the audience and, in this case, the player. With all that in mind, we dive into the horror and the fantasy that is The Hungry Lamb: Traveling in the Late Ming Dynasty.

Set against the end of the Ming Dynasty, our story centers around Liang, a bandit/highwayman who works in a multitude of criminal enterprises, not worried about getting away with robbery or murder. While Liang is a bit reluctant to engage in human trafficking, he convinces himself these four kids that he will escort across China are worth his efforts. One of the girls, Mai Sui, reveals that the children are on their way to the Swine Demon, who devours children as a sort of celebration. While Liang has heard of such practices, he is nonetheless appalled to learn he is helping enable one, and begins to work out, mentally, how to keep these four young ladies from ending up as the meal for such a barbaric demon. But Sui seems to have many secrets within, and her own demons might be the end of her journey, if not everyone’s.

As a visual novel, the number of choices that exist in The Hungry Lamb are sparse but pivotal. While several are moments that lead to your untimely demise, more than a few are simply junctures to see how Liang’s relationship with Sui progresses and develops. Building and enabling the two characters to have the right balance of respect and affection for each other leads to multiple endings of different kinds of sad, and the True Ending is one that is, ultimately, the least sad. The mechanics of The Hungry Lamb include a flowchart that documents your unlocked paths and even allows you to easily restart at a chapter without needing a save game, which is exceedingly helpful for moving forward with trying to unlock everything.

From a technical standpoint, The Hungry Lamb is a reasonably well presented visual novel. The save slots are plentiful and considerate, the voice acting is strong and an interesting change from the normal audio of Japanese VNs, and the art styling has a personality all its own. The translation and blocking is a bit rough, however, as typos and missing punctuation do haunt this game perpetually. While I never encountered a phrase or line that was so wonky that I couldn’t understand, there was always a bit of oddity that permeates the way the lines were read. If you’ve ever done any machine translation, you’ll understand the feeling: the point is getting across but it comes across like we went the long way to reach this conclusion instead of the direct path.

The problem with The Hungry Lamb is the…everything. I wish there were a kinder or more diplomatic way to speak, but this might be one of the most unpleasant visual novel experiences I’ve ever had. I’ve played games with elements of murder, sexual assault, kidnapping, torture, and every other crime you can tabulate, and I’ve come to realize it comes with the territory. For whatever reason, people love when visual novels have incredibly messed up moments that leave you feeling unclean or cursed, like you’re a damn video game wendigo. You only have to look as far as classics like Steins;GATE or Doki Doki Literature Club to see the most awful things you could imagine manifested onto unsuspecting characters.

The Hungry Lamb, by contrast, should be relatively tame in comparison. Don’t get me wrong, the setup is rough; you literally murder someone to start off the game before knowing anything else about Liang or his life. Then there’s the whole matter of child trafficking, which, thankfully, didn’t make me feel great about anything in my life. Couple in the cannibalism and the constant returns to murder and talk about murder, and it’s dark as anything. But many visual novels have zero issue with going into the grisly details of awful moments, sometimes letting them go on for WAY TOO LONG (looking at you, Nurse Love Syndrome). It’s a badge of honor to basically let someone know you got all the endings of Katawa Shoujo because it means you had to view some really messed up stuff.

The thing is, a majority of these visual novels can couch the horror between moments of relief and relaxation. You don’t worry about the end of the world in Yu-NO because there’s fascination with time travel and some silly punnery to break up the tension. The whole madness with Archetype Arcadia was softened by putting it in an alternate world of dystopian illness AND mixing in a ton of video game tropes thanks to the world setting. With The Hungry Lamb, there’s something inherently depressing about using a period in history where things were just bad and that’s it. A majority of the peasants during the later half of the Ming dynasty were starving from famine, and the actions that take place within the game world are very much reflected in historical basis.

This in and of itself wouldn’t be awful, but the tonality and way it’s presented make the game feel even more grim than it actually is. For example, there are tones that work throughout The Hungry Lamb in terms of color palette and design. While, yes, there is filth and darkness everywhere, a stylistic approach would be to create more of a neutral backdrop in the forests and buildings to help balance out the negative tones, sort of a inverse Batman: The Animated Series approach. Instead, absolutely everything is saturated with dark tones that bring the severity of certain things down. Instead of accenting when something is particularly awful (like discovering a cannibal kitchen of sorts), it just becomes monotone in terms of “everything sucks.” 

Moreover, the dark effects of the visuals are then attached to the story itself, which, in my opinion, has no redeemable characters. Liang is not a good guy because he decides that maybe selling four young girls to be eaten is a tasteless move. He is acting reflexively out of a moral code that seems to be taking effect at the wrong time. His companions, particularly Tongue, are remorseless opportunists and that almost makes them more acceptable because there’s no backpedaling throughout. The NPCs that you encounter, from royal guards who seek to cut you down to rebel resistance fighters who also want to cut you down, all have their own shades of ugliness that never fades, even when you find out what motivates them or what side they’re on.

The Hungry Lamb also decides that the player clearly isn’t juggling enough morally reprehensible information, because why the hell does an eleven year old start flirting with a fully grown adult man? Why do we need to have a LOT of text talking about her undressing and getting into a bath where only Sui and Liang are occupying? Why complain that you’ve only ever seen your father naked? Why are people mad in the comments that this game is “censored” and they don’t get to see a nude child? I’m emphatically appalled because it adds nothing to the story. Everyone in the human trafficking circle could have had a nice bath without talking about anyone’s nude body and then we could have had exposition afterwards, like we did every other time.

What makes The Hungry Lamb most tragic is that the bones are there of what this story wanted to be and could have been. Sui is clearly a traumatized victim who has developed into a child matured too soon, and needs help and support. Liang may want to change, but the way he goes about his redemption feels self-serving and almost narcissistic. This period of time doesn’t get enough attention outside of history class, so the attempt is appreciated. And yes, I get that constantly talking about eating children is necessary to hammer home how bad eating children is, but you can say “maybe we shouldn’t eat children” ONE TIME and no one will argue with you! And whoever is arguing with you is probably also complaining that the game is censored, because I saw a lot of blood and horrific stuff in this “policed” version.

I feel The Hungry Lamb is for a specific audience, though I can’t quite align with whom that might be. It’s not thrilling enough to land in constant VN recommendations, it’s got uncomfortable relationships which will put most people off, and the endings never hit the high note that satisfies everything. The twists are pretty recognizable from a distance, the voice acting is good, the character designs are alright and the pacing is decent. So many things rubbed me the wrong way and it makes it very easy to delete it from my PC concluding the review. Dive in if you must because of morbid fascination, but you’ve been cautioned: it’s a downward spiral without anything to make the trip worthwhile.

Graphics: 6.5 Flashbacks are done in an interesting scroll style. The world is rough and dark most of the time, and the characters are unique but not necessarily memorable.	Gameplay: 6.0 The number of storyline choices are few and far between, and frankly obvious depending on the ending you seek. Most of the game is listening and reading (as a VN should be), and the flowchart mechanic does make jumping around quite easy.
Sound: 8.0 Really solid voice acting, particularly from the hostages. Musical moments were startling and emotional, and grit and hostility never came to me as clearly as it did with this voice cast.	Fun Factor: 3.0 It never felt like I was going to be in a good place once the game was done. Depressing boardering on nihilistic, being a small part of a broken system on the edge of finally turning things around should feel uplifting, but I was always in the dirt.
Final Verdict: 5.0

The Hungry Lamb: Traveling in the Late Ming Dynasty is available now on Steam.

Reviewed on PC.

A copy of The Hungry Lamb: Traveling in the Late Ming Dynasty was provided by the publisher.