Lambgoat Plays Munch

Somewhere along the way guided by capitalism and an insatiable greed from C-suite and the investors that control them, video games have been harder to enjoy as a hobby and artform. Triple-A mainstream games and even some well-intentioned double-A efforts launch with predatory microtransaction bloat and/or in unfinished states due to deadlines, the completion of which will only get patched months or even years later, or sold to you in DLC - if you even get the opportunity to do that. For a medium that’s supposed to be fun, I’m straight up not having a good time more often than ever before lately. 

That’s what makes you want to root for a game like Munch and its developer/producer Mac n Cheese Games so hard. Here’s a full-blown indie game with lots of passion and pedigree behind it, namely former art leads that worked on Cyberpunk 2077, inspired by some true greats that came before it like Hades and Maneater with a vivid metal aesthetic similar to Brütal Legend. This small, scrappy European team have delivered a fun and relatively unique action roguelite during a time where the market is flooded with those types of games. Competition is very high, and the danger of sinking to the bottom of the ocean of offerings on digital storefronts is… unappealing to say the least. 

On paper, Munch has everything going for it: a low barrier-to-entry in the form of budget pricing, compelling and solid gameplay that beckons those “just one more run” feelings to derail your sleep schedule, and interesting art direction and aesthetic. Even the metal aspects of Munch are purely a bonus - you don’t have to like metal and its aesthetics to enjoy Munch, though, especially in terms of the soundtrack handled by Clifford Meyer (Isis, Red Sparowes, Palms), it certainly helps. 

The most metal-minded players will also catch a lot of references buried in Munch, as you’d expect from a project like this. There’s references to Metallica and Pantera in flavor text, and some monster designs are straight up inspired by the genre. Probably my favorite monster in both design and gameplay is Painkiller, a very obvious and intentional reference to one of the best metal albums of all time. It’s even referred to as “chromium-plated boiling metal” when you evolve into it. There’s other little catches like the guiding voice of sorts for the game, Headbanger Elder, having an uncanny resemblance to Lemmy Kilmister, or the god Öre looking like the prototypical metal warrior complete with axe guitar. Dude’s looking a little Nathan Explosion-y - I can’t hate. 

Munch’s story is nothing extravagant, but certainly influenced by the likes of Hades, revolving around fictional metal gods and their relation to the dark world the game takes place in. Eldest alpha god, Ördo, is like Zeus in that his reign is absolute and brutal. Even his more compassionate wife, Tiamat, wasn’t able to stop him from imprisoning his own god kin who each not only represent each of the game’s three main elements - Ore (yes, same name as the god), Flesh, and Nekro - but also an instrument in a rock or metal band. Öre (the god) represents Ore (the element) and carries a guitar as described above, Flaesh has a bit of a dommy mommy vibe going on and constitutes the Flesh element along with being the drummer of the trio, and NeKro (or Ne+Kro depending on where you look) are Ördo’s twin goth daughter singers portraying the Nekro element. You can find and free them throughout runs of the game to help them fulfill their mission of beating the brakes off their father, and their freedom is imperative to getting the true ending and fighting the final boss. 

You play as Ozzy the Chaozborne, a cute, flying, and hungry bat-like monster of great destiny to bring about the end of Ördo’s order. The bulk of Munch’s main gameplay systems revolve around three elements mentioned before: Nekro, Ore, and Flesh. The enemies generally all fall under one of these classifications, as do the pickups harvested (“munched”) from decimated enemies that you level up with, and therefore so do the monster traits you gain on level-up as the evolutions you grow into. It’s simple - pick mostly or all Ore traits during your time as Ozzy, and you’ll transform into the first Ore creature, The Anvil, my favorite of the first evolutions with its ranged attacks and unique design (it’s literally a big-ass anvil with limbs, a hammer in one hand and a giant razor blade on a chain in the other). It only takes three level-ups to evolve on each era or level you play, and whatever you evolve into the first time has its own branching second evolutions, meaning you can evolve into The Anvil with the Ore element first, but then pivot to Flesh for your second and final evolution to get Steelforge, a mounted monster that is the epitome of power and havoc. All you have to do is commit to a certain element’s traits in order to guarantee the monster you want. 

In a roguelite game like this, having that sort of control over your gameplay is paramount since much of the rest of the game is procedurally generated and randomized to a degree, for better or worse. Each era is visually and structurally identical with a small handful of biomes like a desert where mostly Nekro enemies lurk, gore-infested fields that Flesh monsters love, volcanic and crystalized valleys that house Ore fodder, and forests that usually hide a town inhabited by human followers and zealots of Ördo. The layout of each era’s map is random, but it’s easy enough to go to any area if you want to focus on a particular element for traits and evolution build. What’s always random are what traits you’re offered with each level-up and you may not always get the best options if you’re going for a particular playstyle. 

Luckily, you can mitigate that a bit and take some more control back with an enhancement that allows you to reroll a trait when you level up. Enhancements are bought with chaos echoes, the game’s only currency, before each new run. All you have to do is play the game - the longer you play and the more you do, the more chaos echoes you’ll get. Munch is pretty generous with them too. I’ve almost maxed out each enhancement after around ten runs that last an average of 40 minutes. They do anything from increase your starting health or movement speed to allowing one revive upon death or spawning what is supposed to be a helpful Sacrificial Headbanger follower that’s supposed to grant you food, but they never seem to work for me. Either way, the statistic increases are very important to your survival and progress - spend those echoes! 

The game has a moderate challenge to it. There’s not much in the way of hitstun which means you can wallop on enemies, but that doesn’t stop them from attacking you back or doing their own thing. This means bobbing and weaving in and out using your dash to avoid damage and swing back in to finish enemies off. You can inflict three different “altered states” or debuffs to enemies: Bleed makes enemies lose health over time, Stun locks them in place for a short time leaving them open to big damage, and Curse seems to apply one of the other two afflictions randomly. These can all stack too so you can pick new traits for your monster and make it a powerhouse of damage which is key to handling big groups of them or the eventual bosses you encounter. My favorite traits were ones that gave me an extra dash (one is not enough for some slower monsters), created a doppelganger of my monster that then either exploded or Cursed enemies close to it, or allowed me to increase my maximum health simply by munching on elements. 

As you evolve your monster and grow, the game’s isometric camera zooms out a bit to give you a grander view of things, but also fit your creature in frame better. This makes some visual definition tougher sometimes like seeing an enemy your monster is covering or if some terrain is able to be walked around, but other than that, it’s welcomed. The minimap is nice too - each biome has its own distinct coloring so you know where to go if you have plans, and various icons tip you off to where bigger and tougher “elite” enemies are or key structures that are important to objectives. It gets a bit cluttered sometimes, but that usually just means you have some stuff to clear out to free up the space. 

Of course I have to mention the music which is overall pretty good. Each monster you play as has its own theme, influenced and referencing a key band or genre from metal’s complex history. Naturally, Ozzy’s theme is based on the galloping drive of Black Sabbath and all the catchiness that comes with it - one of the riffs is a dead ringer for “War Pigs”. Nekro monsters tend to have more of a black metal influence - I love the blast beats and tremolo guitars of Canopyus’ theme. Flesh monsters have a smattering of sounds like Krakenstein’s industrial touches (get it, Krakenstein? Rammstein?) or the dense groove metal of Gutpuncher’s song. Ore monsters are probably my favorite. Painkiller’s track is literally just a Judas Priest tribute and a very good one at that, while Motorsaurus’ song is, you guessed it, Motörhead-esque speed metal firing on all cylinders - the perfect song for a T-rex monster with cannons for hands. Seeing Clifford Meyer’s name attached to Munch was eyebrow-raising at first, but he did a great job of emulating tons of different metal and delivering a vibe for each monster. 

There’s a lot you could nitpick at with Munch, it being a brand new launch title with a very small dev team (and made on Unity, a development engine known for its issues). Various bugs and issues earned it an initial overall review score of Mixed on Steam, but has since settled to “Mostly Positive” - I’d personally place it somewhere between those two designations. A lot of the bugs are cosmetic like flickering textures, your monster disappearing after being resurrected, or even the character models in the game’s Guide not displaying properly or at all. I also encountered ones like my monster (Painkiller specifically) freezing in animation after using one of its abilities - I could always dash out of it and back to normal, but it was a very consistently recurring bug. Speaking of, I could not remap buttons on my Xbox controller either. The option is there, but it seems changes you make aren’t honored for some reason. I’ve played a lot of open-world games in my time so this really ain’t shit to me, but a more picky and rigid player will definitely find a lot to complain about and they may get turned off by them. 

The biggest actual game-breaking bugs I’ve encountered are arenas that are supposed to spawn and lock you within a circle while you fight a few waves of enemies during certain objectives sometimes spawn without you in it, potentially softlocking the game and killing your run unless you have the right monster abilities that can reach enemies beyond the prison and kill them. Often in most of my runs, the enemy AI wouldn’t trigger for entire groups either. I guess that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s certainly unintentional and makes the game way easy when you can bully enemies that don’t even move or attack you. I also got to the fight with Ördo and somehow broke a fight with a miniboss that didn’t allow me to progress and beat the game. Clearly, there’s a lot more work to be done. 

Critically speaking, the devs absolutely should have taken one more huge influence from Hades: its decision to launch in early access. With that, early adopters - the reasonable ones anyway - could have had a hand in assisting Mac n Cheese Games with squashing bugs, suggesting new features, quality of life updates, and more. It’s what made Hades the meteoric smash success it was, so much so that Supergiant Games are creating Hades II in the same way, and it’s what could have made all the difference in the eventual delivery of a final, polished product in Munch. I harangued on this sort of thing in the beginning of this review, but the difference here is I actually have pretty good faith that they’ll turn this around in due time, and I didn’t have to pay $60+ for it. 

That said, the devs do indeed have plans - there’s already been two decent patches aimed at addressing a lot of problems and just making the experience better overall. They’re aware of many more issues for future patches too, some of which mentioned above. This review itself was delayed a few days because I wanted to give them the opportunity to follow through on these telegraphed patches and so far, so good. This isn’t some “launch and leave” asset flip scam like you often see on Steam, this is, in spirit anyway, a full-fledged game with a great concept and purpose executed well enough to justify. While the initial offering could have, and honestly should have, been more solid, what they missed out on they seem intent on making up for, another nod to the team’s history with Cyberpunk 2077, the devs of which had to put massive work in from its abysmal launch to get it to where it is today. 

At this point, I think it’s pretty fair to cautiously recommend Munch at its current early adopter price of $14.99 USD until November 18. Even the base price of $16.66 (cute) isn’t asking much when you factor in its aspirations and passion to make it better over time. We’ve all been swindled by games three or four times that price or more in recent years - at least this time you know purchases go directly to devs and their work and motivation to polish, fix, and tweak with no publisher interference. 

Munch is fun, charming, and inspired. If you’re understanding and appreciate the scrappiness of ground-level indie games, I’m confident you’d have a good time playing it as it stands now, but also watching to see where Mac n Cheese Games takes it from here. It definitely deserves a shot and I absolutely hope they achieve all their goals with the project to make it a hit among genre diehards. 

Review code graciously provided by Mac n Cheese Games. Munch is out now on PC via Steam for the introductory price of $14.99 USD. It will be $16.66 after November 18. You can listen to and purchase the game's soundtrack through Steam itself or Clifford Meyer's Bandcamp. Follow Mac n Cheese Games on Instagram, Facebook, X, and TikTok.