“The Demon Chef has stolen the treasured ingredients of Gourmet Town and has hoarded them in his castle… Sounds like a quest for Buffet Knight, a gluttonous hero with a big appetite! Using his ability to inhale and swallow food, join […] his adventure to return peace to Gustation Kingdom.”
The difference between hunger and appetite is only gradual for some people. Even the titular hero of this role-playing game, the “Buffet Knight”, does not seem to be able to distinguish between the two states very well. Whether it is a plate of cheese, a mountain of meatballs, a pan of vegetables, or even just a few clumps of grass – when he opens his mouth wide and starts inhaling, little is safe from his greedy maw. However, this very ability can be quite useful for his upcoming adventure. Whenever he has sucked in at least one object, he can either choose to swallow the mass and thereby regenerate one health point, or spit it all back out in the form of a ball. If the latter option is chosen, then this ball can attack enemy monsters or smash specific parts of the environment, such as crumbly stones.
Unlike many other games created with the RPG Maker, “Buffet Knight” does completely without the usual random encounter battles thanks to this creative combat system and lets all action including all fights take place on the ‘overworld’. Especially nice is the fact that no conventional grinding has found its way into the game. To level up and thus add another heart to the health bar, the pot-bellied main character simply has to inhale a certain amount of stuff instead of painstakingly collecting experience points. The ability to inhale even larger objects, on the other hand, is granted automatically after important events like defeating the minibosses, due to the story.
The plot itself starts off as genre-generic mishmash – the “Buffet Knight” is tasked with retrieving the valuable secret ingredient from the clutches of the Demon Chef – but an ominous witch gives the protagonist a choice, allowing for two different endings. This brings us back to the beginning of this article: Where exactly is the boundary between appetite and hunger? You will have to figure that out for yourselves. [PLAY]
