Consume Me is a very personal exploration of growth in high school, but one with universal themes that make the game feel autobiographical in nature. Per creator Jenny Jiao Hsia, it’s a game for anyone who felt “stupid, fat, lazy, and ugly” in high school. As a transitional period, it would be a rare person who escaped high school without feeling any or all of these things, at once.
In a new demo, the power and impactful of Hsia’s work is clear. As Hsia says, this is a project that focusses on her personal experiences with disordered eating and dieting throughout high school, as well as the pressure she faced at home. It’s not a game designed to encourage dieting, and the negative impact of Hsia’s outlook is firmly outlined as the story advances.
As everyone knows, growing up is hard. There’s no meaningful competition in discussing who has it harder, but it’s fair to say young girls face an increasing wall of pressure as they age. Body changes mean weight suddenly becomes a concern, as does clothing. You need to be stylish, and thin, and attractive – or you might end up alone.
Sex and sexual attraction comes into play. There’s pressure to abandon childish things, to become mature, to become a lady. To see the world through a whole new lens. To even think further ahead, to becoming a mother. But what is a mother? You’re just a child, and suddenly you’re thrust into this world of responsibility, of sexuality, of sky-high expectation.
Consume Me charts this journey, following a young girl (a facsimile of Jenny herself) as she transforms from a young, carefree child to a responsible adult ladened with chores, new crushes, a desire to learn makeup, and most horribly – a pressure to stay thin by dieting.
As Hsia explores in the game, she (and many other girls like her) faced all of these challenges growing up, with mounting pressure making her feel stupid, lazy, fat, ugly, and unloveable. Consume Me dives deeply into these feelings, questioning why this is such a universal experience, and providing such a degree of relatability that playing through its demo hurts.
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Jenny is a young girl who just wants to feel herself. You can see her expression of self in her outfit changes, and the way she gains confidence from looking cool, bright, or cute. But this selfness is put into question at nearly every interval in Consume Me – her mother questions her diet, and her own thoughts betray her. She wants to be cool, but she doesn’t want to leave her childhood behind. She was to be thin, but she loves snacking.
Her life is a series of conflicts, with her desires warring with the expectations placed on her. She wants to eat just the right amount, and nothing more. She wants to exercise, but she has to do chores. There’s only so much time in the day, and if you go to bed hungry, it’s game over.
Consume Me well-represents the pressure facing Jenny, and that push-pull in her day-to-day life. In the demo, the primary goal begins with dieting, but then expands to buying a bikini, to attend a party where Jenny might realise her greatest desire to look and feel cool. The pressure of dieting then becomes a sharp pain, as you must balance new needs and desires with an ever-growing checklist of tasks.
Go shopping. Walk the dog. Clean the bathroom. Study. Exercise. Study while exercising? Avoid snacking too heavily. Hit your calorie count. Listen to your mother. Listen to yourself. It all becomes overwhelming as the big day approaches, in a way that makes your heart race, as much as it aches.
There are brighter spots, in bright, pastel-coloured visits to the Mall, where you can spend your hard-earned money on delightful little trinkets and accessories. Girlhood isn’t all bad, and there’s plenty of delight in letting your responsibilities go, if only for a moment.
For those who’ve experienced it personally, Consume Me will be a deeply impacting game. I recognised myself in nearly every part of this experience. In the pressure and worry of feeling and looking good. In the pressure-relieving trips to the shops, and hanging out with friends. Even into adulthood, a lot of these feelings have chased me. It’s part of the fabric of growing up, and you can rarely shake it.
This game really is special, and one that feels essential for young girls growing up, and for those who grew up as a young girl. To see my own feelings replicated so well on screen – in pace, and gameplay pressure – healed a little part of me. I can only imagine that was Hsia’s intent. To clearly, unashamedly explore girlhood and its many ugly moments, and to normalise the feelings so many of us quietly share.
Consume Me now has a demo available on Steam. Pay attention to the game’s content warning before jumping in to experience it for yourself.
