“Am I a bad person?”

I found myself asking this question as the end credits rolled on Ravenous Devils, the new horror cooking simulator from Italian indie studio Bad Vices Games, and publisher Troglobytes Games.

The reason for this soul searching? Just how damn much I relished this murderous management title, which is essentially Sweeney Todd: The Game (the Victorian penny dreadful character and legend, not the musical).

Drawing inspiration from the Todd tale, and numerous other real-life incidents of entrepreneurs who made murder a key part of their business plan, Ravenous Devils centres on industrious couple Percival and Hildred, who set up shop in a sordid 19th Century city. He owns a tailor shop while she runs a pub on the ground floor of the same multi-storey building (bought from a celebrated barber, out of interest).

It all sounds above board, except that to combat high costs and maximise profit, the couple have adopted a special “waste not, want not” approach. Percival will stab some of his clients to death, stripping their bodies for reusable clothing before dropping their corpses through a trapdoor that leads to the basement kitchen. There, Hildred will turn the bodies into irresistible meals for her patrons, using her grandmother’s trusty recipe book. Scribbled in the margins of said book is the handy instruction, “The secret ingredient is crime.”

So, first up, Ravenous Devils is 100% an adults-only game. It comes with a warning about explicit violence and gore, which receives no stylised treatment to soften its depiction. Hildred’s dismembering of bodies with a cleaver is especially graphic. If you’re at all squeamish, or simply horrified by the game’s serial killing concept, Ravenous Devils is not for you. That said, if you have a strong stomach, and a taste for the darkest, most disturbing tales from the annals of crime, this deliberately, and joyously, depraved game will definitely hit the spot.

For players who baulk at the split focus and intricate control demanded by management games, it’s worth noting that Ravenous Devils isn’t the most challenging entry in the genre. Still, management sits at the core of its gameplay. Our villainous couple are out to grow their reputation and profits. The first part (which leads into the second) means pleasing customers, and this is aided by investing earnings into upgrades. For example, you can improve the technology of Hildred’s mincer so she gets more usable meat out of every body, or increase the number of mannequins in Percival’s shop to showcase more of his repurposed designs.

These options may sound practical, if gross, but there are other more “flavoursome” investments to explore. You can rescue a cat destined for the cooking pot, which will bring you rats for one of your most popular dishes. Alternatively, a gin barrel filled with complimentary booze keeps more impatient customers placated. Like I said, Ravenous Devils is delightfully wicked in terms of the vicarious pleasures it offers. There’s even a nod to another famous, bloody musical once you access the greenhouse.

When you have spare cash, you can even unlock different skins for Hildred and Percival – cosmetic skins, not Ed Gein skins, just to clarify. By the later stages of the game, unless you botch a few days of earnings, it’s possible to have unlocked most, if not all, of the upgrades.

Again, Ravenous Devils isn’t punishingly tough. In fact, it seems like an oversight not to have included difficulty settings. Right now Hildred can leave food in the oven indefinitely without it burning. It’s also impossible to be found out, which is a tad disappointing. Your actions become a lot more urgent if there’s always game-ending risk looming over you.

I tried valiantly to alert the authorities, but Percival’s clientele just won’t enter his back room while he’s manhandling a corpse in a pool of blood. The worst consequence is that repulsed customers mean the first link in your supply chain is broken.

Hell, Ravenous Devils could up the challenge by simply limiting the time players have before their shops open for the day. As it stands, if you have the resources, you can fully stock your mannequin and food displays, at your leisure, before a game round even begins. This ensures a smoother start, before the frantic mouse clicking, or controller-powered hotspot selecting, commences.

These are opportunities that Bad Vices Games seem to have missed, but perhaps it’s a case of scope beyond the small-scale indie devs’ intentions. A further indication of this is a kind of gameplay imbalance. You’ll have the most fun in the kitchen as Eva Green-esque Hildred expands her recipe set. Sadly, Percival doesn’t receive the same choices with his tailoring. The player never gets to decide what he refashions from the stolen clothes. Then again, Percival eventually must keep an eye on the fresh produce in the attic greenhouse, which is time intensive.

On matters of time in general, like a veteran chef, Ravenous Devils has an excellent grasp of serving size. It knows not to outstay its welcome. Helping to prevent things from getting too samey, the game is split into a month of days – giving you around 29 digestible rounds to amass your blood-stained fortune. Although you can continue serving and slicing up customers post-credits, you’ll complete the game’s storyline in a very tight 4 to 5 hours.

Although unexpected, there’s an overarching narrative to add a little something more to the Ravenous Devils recipe. Hildred and Percival start receiving verbose letters from someone who knows their secret. The price of the blackmailer’s silence proves that our couple may be mercenary but they aren’t even the worst people in this evil, exploitative city.

Sticking to the cooking analogy, Ravenous Devils’ story is more seasoning than a special secret sauce. It adds some meat to the characters, especially Hildred, but despite touching on some intriguing plot points, there’s no deeper exploration of these avenues. Then there’s the ambiguous ending, which is probably the least satisfying part of the game.

So perhaps, much like the food Hildred serves, it’s best to wolf down Ravenous Devils and not think too much about its individual ingredients. You will gobble up the game though. Missed opportunities aside, it nails its historical setting, and the morally twisted experience that players are there for.

One final note about Ravenous Devils is that there’s a downloadable demo – so you can see if it’s really to your, erm, tastes. The game is out now for all major platforms: PC (Steam, Epic, GOG, Microsoft Store), Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. Devour Ravenous Devils today.


Ravenous Devils review

It’s not perfect, especially as it turns away from intriguing avenues which would extend the gameplay and deepen its story. However, Ravenous Devils still hits the spot with its short and deliciously sadistic spin on the kitchen management sim. Massively entertaining if you have dark tastes, and a fascination with macabre crimes from the 19th Century.

 8
Ravenous Devils was reviewed on PC