Game: Hungry Meem
Genre: Simulation
System: Nintendo Switch/Switch 2 (Also on Steam (Windows))
Developer | Publisher: Drecom Co. | Clouded Leopard Entertainment
Age Rating: US Everyone | EU 3+
Price: US $29.99 | UK £24.00 | EU € 29,99
Release Date: July 31st, 2025
Review code used, with many thanks to Drecom Co.
Hungry Meem is a city/colony builder simulation with adorable, cute creatures called Meems. They come in many different colours, shapes and sizes, but all of them are hungry!
Grab yourself a snack and let’s munch our way through Hungry Meem.
The History of Hungry Meem
Hungry Meem starts with a pop-up book story, explaining how these happy, carefree creatures were eating everything, including the life-giving World Tree. Luckily, one of the clever Meems created a Miraculous Pot, which enabled the Meems to cook enough food for everyone. The Meems’ delight in cooking and eating turned into light, which nourished the World Tree.
Unfortunately, one of the Meems, in their enthusiasm for cooking, managed to break the Miraculous Pot, and with it the Meems’ hope. This despair caused the World Tree and the Meems to start dying, and eventually, there was just one Meem left.
Amazingly, this one Meem found a World Tree seed and, when it tasted so bad that the Meem couldn’t eat it, the discarded seed grew into a new World Tree, and hope was restored. The story ends with the challenge: can we make the world of the Meems better this time?
Luckily, this cutscene can be skipped when you want to play through the game again. You can also watch the whole of the opening story on YouTube.
Learning What’s What in Hungry Meem
Hungry Meem starts with explaining, via on-screen notes, how to play the game. Learn how to scroll around the screen, how to select the main menu, and what the objective of the game is. Although these instructions are welcome (and very useful if you’ve never played a video game before), there are several pages to each note. It becomes a bit overwhelming and frustrating to keep reading and clicking through the notes, especially when I’m sure I’d seen some of them previously. I would much rather have just a quick note and then read the help screens from the main menu in my own time.
After fixing the Miraculous Pot, which didn’t evolve anything other than clicking on the damage pot and then reading several pages of notes, you get to meet Tohren. Tohren gives guidance requests throughout your Hungry Meem adventure, rewarded with useful items. This is your go-to place if you’re struggling with what to do. Sometimes you might complete build requests prior to Tohren asking you, in which case you’ll receive the reward straight away.
One of the useful parts of the long introduction tutorial is the ability to practise exploring the World Tree. This underground labyrinth contains cooking and building ingredients, as well as treasures to restore ancient structures. As the Meems wander around the area, the fog clears and reveals ingredients or treasures. However, it takes a lot of brain power to clear the mist and slowly the Meems will lose their mind. An insane Meem will behave badly, grabbing stuff from the bag and throwing it away. If they come out of the World Tree in this state, they might destroy colony buildings. Luckily, a snack or two will restore their mental state.
Although you can’t keep any of the items you collect in the tutorial (after all, the bag has holes in it), it gives you a really good understanding of what Hungry Meem is all about. Even when you are eventually let loose to play the game, you will still receive pop-up notes when you encounter or build something new.
The Daily Routine of Hungry Meem
Each morning, you will be told that the Meems are hungry, so you will need to ensure you cook a meal for the colony during that day. It’s game over if all your Meems die. Snacks are quick and easy to cook, and are needed for venturing under the World Tree. Eventually, you’ll be able to cook a feast, and this will level up the World Tree and release more recipes, build and expand the underground labyrinth.
You can visit the World Tree labyrinth as many times as you like within the Hungry Meem day. Meems develop skills as they roam around collecting items, whether that be rummaging in the grasses, or defeating enemies. The collecting bag can only hold a set number of items, depending on their weight. Once you exceed the weight limit, you can’t move the bag very far, but you can open it to dispose of items.
As well as enemies which attack the Meems, there are also Meanies who will steal items from the Meem or directly out of the bag if it’s placed too close to their purple mist. As you explore the underground area, you’ll find more Tohren poles, which will allow new access points to the World Tree labyrinth.
The items collected can be used to build houses, statues and other structures. Build a love nest and you can get your Meems to create eggs, which can be hatched, once the incubator’s repaired. You’ll need to breed new Meems, as Meems only have a limited life span of 15 days and it’s also an opportunity to gain evolved skills, depending on the parents.
Tohren will keep track of the day for you, and as night draws in, the Meems will eat and then sit in front of Tohren to hear about the day’s activities.
Gameplay
The controls are straightforward in Hungry Meem, and the screen movement can be changed to inverted, if that’s your playing style. Using the analogue stick to move the cursor over a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ seemed wrong for a console game, when a press ‘A’ or ‘B’ would be more appropriate. There is limited touchscreen functionality, with the ability to tap on items to view or accept, but no ability to swipe to move around the screen.
I didn’t experience any issues with Hungry Meem, although it would have been great to be able to fast-forward through the evening routine.
There are three difficulty levels: easy, normal, and difficult. Unfortunately, there is no way to skip the long introduction tutorial and vast quantities of on-screen notes on subsequent playthroughs. However, with 5 save slots, you can have multiple games stored. Hungry Meem autosaves, with a manual save via the main menu.
A Hungry Meem day takes around ten minutes. The game does not pause when you are looking at in-game build, cook or placement menus, but there is a pause option when you enter the main and sub menus.
Conclusion
I adore the art style of Hungry Meem, it’s vibrant, and whimsical. The concept of the game is great, and there is clearly a lot of passion in how the game has been developed.
The bombardment of instructions gets less as you progress through the game, making Hungry Meem flow better and more pleasant to play.
Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot 
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