If you accept the received wisdom that the Game awards are the Oscars of the interactive industry, then you could say the Independent Games Festival is its Cannes, and the Seumas McNally Grand prize its Palme d’Or. So you’d assume the release of this year’s winner would be widely and loudly trumpeted. Not so. Consume Me’s apparently underwhelming early sales and surprising lack of reviews speak more to ongoing issues of discoverability (and busy critics struggling with an autumn glut) than the game itself, which is an absolute delight.
Admittedly, it’s easy to make it sound like something you should play rather than something you’d really want to. Developed over a decade by Jenny Jiao Hsia (with collaborators AP Thomson, Jie En Lee, Violet W-P, and Ken Snyder), Consume Me is a quasi-autobiographical story about an Asian American high-schooler attempting to lose weight while navigating the stresses and pitfalls of teenage life. It involves efficient management of energy and time. A content notice warns about themes of bullying, fatphobia and disordered eating. It’s also – somehow – one of 2025’s funniest games.
