A totally harmless llama...
Hungry Lamu is a short indie game that released in June 27, 2022.
Your objective in the game is helping to fill the stomach of the eponymous llama named Lamu. Despite the friendly-sounding premise, the game is actually a horror game following the trend of games that seem child-friendly but turn out to be scary as you follow the protagonist trying to find their friends and escape the park while being followed by a starving llama.
The game was created by Kulu and is available for free on its itch.io
page.
The developer also released a sequel called Sea Mongrel.
The game has examples of:
- Ambiguous Innocence: Lamu's part of the game suggests that he genuinely can't tell that he's doing bad things and just believes his "friends" are fully on board with being eaten. Then again, he uses some pretty sadistic methods to get his victims out of hiding and can go out of his way to destroy their car so the last remaining camper can't escape him, suggesting that part of him is aware of what he's really doing and enjoying every second. On the other hand, Lamu's writings in their lair paint a different picture of them, as someone who's desperately trying to convince themselves that they're not doing anything wrong.
- Ambiguous Situation: The newspaper from the Roadkill ending states that Lamu has human-like teeth. Whether Lamu is a llama abomination or a human killer hallucinating victims as fruit is unclear. The Old Stories ending reveals that it's both.
- Animalistic Abomination: Lamu vaguely resembles the animal he is attributed to while possessing a disturbing human-like face. A result of genetic experimentation.
- Ax-Crazy: Lamu sees his world as sunshine and rainbows when he is actually gruesomely maiming and killing everything in his path. In the children's book found in his cave, it gives insight on his mental instability such as the phrase "they are fruit" written all over a page, which indicates that he's trying to cope and reassure himself that he isn't doing anything wrong.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Lamu kills the player if the option of wrecking the car was taken in the "Full Course Meal" ending and in the "Old Stories" ending where he finds the player in his cave once they're done reading his book and jumps at the player to kill them.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Lamu kills the banana, later revealed to be a dog named Mochi, by culling it with a rock.
- Balloon Belly: In the "Full Course" ending, Lamu is depicted with a large, round belly shortly after he devours the player character. Although he leaves a hand behind.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Lamu sees nothing wrong with eating someone fully sentient, but only if he's given permission beforehand. He also dislikes "rude" fruits, which means fruits who absolutely refuse to be eaten.
- Car Fu: In the Roadkill ending, the last camper manages to escape into the group's car and floors it. As they drive down the road, Lamu makes one last-ditch attempt to attack the camper by leaping out at the windshield... unfortunately for Lamu, the camper keeps on going.
- Disguised Horror Story: What starts as a cartoony game simply about feeding an anthropomorphic llama drastically changes to a 3D Survival Horror setting where you have to escape the park before Lamu gets you.
- Earn Your Bad Ending: Most players will get the good ending first (running Lamu over) rather than the bad ending (getting eaten by Lamu) since you have to go out of your way to smash the player's car to get the bad one. You can get the good ending just by playing regularly. An update added an ending with a poor outcome if you seek out Lamu's cave instead, but while it's easier to find than the broken car route, it's still harder to find than the good ending.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: Mochi tried to protect the campers from Lamu, who is a human-faced llama serial killer, and acts hostile towards his presence, which he interpreted as her refusing to be eaten and being "rude". Sadly, the emphasis on tried, as Lamu kills her with a rock.
- Fictional Document: Lamu's favorite book, "The Llama is Hungry", is based aroud a Llama who spends his day eating food. Within the book, there is red writing from Lamu that reveals his backstory and a newspaper clipping about Eric Bronze, a quack doctor whose animal-human genetic modifications are proven to be false, and the back of the clipping reveals that Lamu was Bronze's son who he experimented on.
- Foreshadowing:
- If you go down to the bottom of the map, you'll notice a "fruit friend" hidden behind a tree, but you will be unable to interact with them. Sure enough, once the gameplay shifts, you take control of this lone survivor.
- The "fruit" release red spurts upon being eaten, hinting at how they're actually living beings in real life and are only fruit from Lamu's perspective.
- Karmic Death: The one who died is Doctor Bronze, who was killed by his own son, who he turned into a monster.
- Light Is Not Good: Lamu is a brightly colored friendly-looking llama — and a Serial Killer who hunts down and eats anyone he finds in Lamu Park.
- Madness Mantra: In one of the pages of the fictional children's book, "The Llama is Hungry", found in Lamu's cave, the sentence "they are fruits" is repeated over and over in red writing belonging to Lamu. This indicts that Lamu is trying to believe that he's only eating fruits, which are actually living beings outside of his perspective.
- Meat-O-Vision: Or rather "Fruit-O-Vision". Lamu perceives the world around him as bright, sunny, and cheery (even when it's clearly not) and all the inhabitants are friendly fruit people playfully teasing to be consumed. Lamu sees the world this way in an attempt to sate his endless hunger without guilt.
- Multiple Endings: Whether or not you choose to destroy the car as Lamu will affect the ending.
- Full Course Meal - The protagonist fails to use the car to escape, due to Lamu having destroyed it previously. Lamu catches up to them and eats them like he did their friends.
- Roadkill - The protagonist reaches the car and drives away, Lamu hot on their trail. The protagonist collides into Lamu as they escape, leaving the police to take the unconscious Lamu into custody, refusing to disclose details of the nature of the killer while assuring the public his murderous spree is over.
- Old Stories - This ending was added in an update after the game's initial release, found by interacting with a book in Lamu's lair after the perspective change. After reading the book, the camper finds Lamu standing behind him. Lamu almost lets the camper go, but attacks at the cave's entrance. The writings in the book, as well as the newspaper clipping shown afterwards, all but outright state that Lamu Was Once a Man before he was experimented on by his father, who Lamu killed (along with his mother) before running away to the forest.
- Narrator All Along: Its heavily implied the mysterious narrator in the first part of the game's is actually Lamu, talking to himself in the third-person.
- Nightmare Face: Lamu is revealed to have one once the perspective changes to the final camper, with a vaguely human-like face and lips spread to show teeth that are just as human-like.
- No Name Given: The final camper's name, unlike the rest of the group, is never revealed. Even the newspaper story in the Roadkill ending has their name redacted.
- Off with His Head!: Lamu takes the heads off his victims whilst noticeably leaving the rest of their bodies accounted for.
- Railroading: Neither Lamu, nor the final camper, can wander off in the forest until they complete the task at hand.
- Room Full of Crazy: Lamu's lair, from the final camper's point of view. Children's books are all strewn about the place filled with ramblings about how his victims are "only fruits".
- Self-Made Orphan: Shortly after his transformation into a human-faced llama monster, Lamu kills off his parents and flees his home.
- Serial Killer: Lamu goes around killing people and devouring them in Lamu Forest Park by biting off their heads, giving him the title "The Lamu Killer". Before he arrived in Lamu Forest, he also murdered his parents.
- Subverted Kids' Show: It's a game about a monstrous llama abomination going on a killing spree.
- Super-Persistent Predator: From the perspective of his victims, Lamu qualifies as this, stopping at nothing until everyone is devoured.
- Too Hungry to Be Polite: Inverted. Hungry Lamu always asks for "permission" before eating anyone; those that refuse he deems "rude" and they get eaten anyway.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: Lamu sees the dog and the player's friends as being sentient fruit he assumes wants to be eaten. The scribblings of "They Are Fruit" in Lamu's favourite book suggest this to be a self-defense mechanism for what's left of his sanity.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: The first half of the game you play as Lamu from a top-down perspective, with everything being drawn in a cartoon-y style and a narrator giving you instructions. The second half switches to a straight-up first person Survival Horror and you play from the perspective of the lone surviving camper whose friends and dog you just murdered and ate as Lamu.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Doctor Eric Bronze, a quack doctor whose studies into genetic modification resulted in the creation of Lamu, who killed him and his wife and went on to become a serial killer feasting on campers.
- Wham Line: Even though Lamu has eaten all three of the "fruit friends", Lamu's hunger is still not satiated.Narrator: Oh? What's that, Lamu? You're still hungry?
