The Hungry Lamb: Traveling in the Late Ming Dynasty

The Hungry Lamb is one of the games that truly stay with you. Set during a famine in Ancient China, it's a deeply emotional and symbolic story that’s dark and brutal at times but also very emotional and pleasing at times. I think they've nailed the atmosphere perfectly as you feel dread, a sense of urgency or even disgust as you play through. It gives you perspective on how different people like the rich, commoners and bandits (and more) were affected by the famine. It dives into a lot of dark and mature themes which could have easily made the game take a turn for the worse but they handled it quite well. I think it does a great job at conveying that people can go to any extents for survival. The characters are really well written, especially the protagonists! The story keeps you compelled throughout, which is decently rare in VNs lol. The length of this is just about perfect. I LOVED the storytelling, the soundtracks (peak) and the voice acting in it!! (I played in jp) Overall, I would highly recommend this game but there are moments that can be difficult to get through (due to how disturbing/graphic they are). It's definitely a steal for its price!

Concerns: - Suspicious 11yo girl & 26yo male protagonist content e.g. scene near the river or lake was it (?) :P, bathing room, another one with changing shoes, etc. There is no explicit content, but sane person cannot just leave these implications unnoticed - Plot is too long and dragged, dwelling on the same hunger/revenge/being-a-jerk theme quite quickly lets player run out of patience and go for using magical Ctrl skip tool (says the one who gathered 20+ huge jigsaw puzzles) - Painful to proceed the story cause the choices are generally like "attach first and die"/"wait, don't kill and live" or "give a coin to a beggar and get girl's approval"/"don't and get killed", such a diversity Positives: - Art is quite good on special images, though I wouldn't say the same about sprites of random unnecessary secondary characters and ink paintings where anatomy was visibly bad - Game is very easy to get 100% achievements with the quickest skip mode - the only reason I got all achievements - Runs flawlessly on Ubuntu 22.04 Could be better: - Music, the moment with the drum beats during their theater white-sheet show was unbearable and tracks in the background were quite off-putting Notes: - I have 12 play-hours recorded only because I kept game running in the background for quite some time - Smart people are the ones who refunded the game after the first several chapters

This visual novel is set during the famine in ancient China, really emotional, dark and deep story. It explores topics of how the world changed for worse; people changing and revealing their true colors because of the hunger, but, it's hard to judge since they are at the end of the line and searching for survival. This novel not only explores the life of middle/lower class people, you can also have a small vision about the rich people and how their life is. Main story explores the topics of vengeance and forgiveness; for example, if a person ruined your life, would you be willing to forgive him if they changed for the better? Characters are good, well written and their backstories are well elaborated, really good character development. This visual novel has a lot of choices so it has multiple endings. Personally i liked all the endings, it gives you different perspectives about the "what would've happened if". Art is amazing, the drawing style really goes well with the OST and since this is a story about ancient China, it really gives you the vibes. Overall pretty good visual novel, amazing art, good OST, and amazing story.

In Malthusian times, leisure was a luxury that others paid for. At the end of this game, you will see how trickle-down theory doesn’t work in a world where a widespread famine eating people alive. Sure, you can enjoy art, politics, religion, philosophy, at the cost of the many. But remember that the poor harvest in the 1780s led to famine and ignited the French Revolution, and the Irish Potato Famine fuelled its independence 76 years later. There are four levels of soldiers' willingness to fight or run: fear of punishment, shame before comrades, anger at the enemy, and enthusiasm for a cause. The famine and seeing many people die of hunger would be the last cause. In agrarian societies, famine triggers peasant uprisings, leads to large-scale rebellions. If you ever time-travelled back to a world with famine and you are the one sitting on the throne, either feed everyone for free, or pack up your bags, pick up a sword, and hide...that’s the best advice learnt. Btw I like the skip function in the game. It makes you feel like flipping through the pages of life, a rapid mental replay of some key moments, each scene was a vividly clear, and her innocent voice carries so much emotional weight, with both love and hate – the strongest emotion a person can have, all throw onto the same person. It’s nothing like those Korean or Thailand drama, nothing sweet and crazily dramatic. It has a depth, and you will find it interesting to peel back layers of lies and deception, only to find that she is too complicated to fall in love with, but still, don’t want her getting hurt. The storytelling of this game is one of the tops on the market.

Amazing! This is the kind of game whose story stays etched in our minds and hearts for a very long time. With wonderful characters, beautiful art and a very well-written script, "The Hungry Lamb: Traveling in the Late Ming Dynasty" shows the best and worst of the human species. A game with different endings based on the player's choices throughout the story, but all of them are very emotional and make us reflect on many problems, which unfortunately still exist today. I highly recommend it!

The hungry lamb is a hidden gem. I usually can't bring myself to play novels but this one hits differently, maybe it's the tension, maybe it's the depressing story. But one thing is certain, the story is captivating and will leave you in tears. Notably, the story takes place in a period of famine and during the journey you will see how this may bring some people into insanity. Perhaps for some it's better to sell their humanity then to die starving. What you as the player chose to do will reflect your destiny in the game. But that aside, I would recommend this game if you like gut wrenching stories that don't shy about sensitive topics.

A short, but beautiful and heartbreaking story. I really loved it.

Uwoogh Famine in serious the story is quite nice and the playtime is quite long which is good although i would love to have more branching path. overall great game

The Hungry Lamb is such a W game. The story’s way more complex than I expected — loved how it all unfolded.

enriching story and character. it stays relatively in line with real historical events, so believable character backgrounds, turn of events & successfully able to transport the player to the story's time period. wish there were more moving animation to be more captivating though

The author has admitted that to cater to its audience, this work inevitably incorporates many elements that appeal to otaku. However, in terms of its subject matter, it can still be regarded as a milestone in domestic galgame. And I'm really looking forward to its sequel.

This world is cruel and unforgiving, yet so beautiful

Dark and gripping story, really like the 2 main characters and even the side "lambs" are quite nice

Loved this game I tried many timed to find out if there were other options but I'm not to sure now the ending where she goes to drown herself, why can't we have an option to stop her and both live peacefully! I finally got the last two stories unlocked and finished it ..... Damn it I almost cried twice for the ending auuuuuuuuugh.... >_< MASTER PIECE for me. Better than other ones we see now in my opinion!

This VN surprised me because I wasn't expecting a historical piece set in the late Ming period. I'm Chinese so we've only learnt about the droughts and rebellions from textbooks at school. The Ming faced the Manchu invaders from the North, internal peasant rebellions and there were a myriad of natural disasters. Considering the later massacres that were carried out later by the Qing, I would not definitely not fancy being alive during that period. Through the lens of civilians living during a time of famine and chaos, you get to experience the worst in humanity when food security no longer exists. There's a saying called 民以食為天, which translates to "People view nourishment as the heavens." and in times of famine, you can really see how society was literally falling apart. The values and rules which have held Chinese society together, disintegrate when you can't even afford to feed yourself. Perhaps we, as people living in an era of relative abundance and prosperity, should acknowledge and reassess our biases towards judging inhuman acts performed in this game. You can really feel the despair and hopelessness throughout the entire game, which is something very few games actually portray accurately. Of all the period pieces out there, a story about an outlaw trafficking 4 little girls was what I least expected. My favorite aspect of the VN were the interactions between it's characters, namely the MC and the four little girls (or lambs). Leveraging the paternal protective instincts of men is nothing new in games, you can look as far back as the original bioshock, telltale's the walking dead and the last of us. There is something about seeing a hardened, morally complicated man interact with the otherwise, innocent and naive children, helping them navigate throughout a doomed world that strikes a chord with people in general. Hence why the aforementioned games I listed are generally well regarded. Although you have nothing to gain and everything to lose by being nice to the girls, I say the scenes with the girls at the later half of the VN had me in tears because it was so beautifully written. Seeing the girls ending up with futures made the journey well worth it and the farewell scene was absolutely heartbreaking. That said the story is not without it's fair share of issues, which prevent this game from reaching the same heights as "Murder on the Yangtze River". The main issue was that the pacing towards the true end felt very rushed. It took me 7 hours to get both true endings and it simply was too short. In comparison, the pacing before the end felt natural and added alot of bonding and depth to the characters. I know this game is priced lower than typical VNs, but honestly I would prefer paying a bit more for a complete experience. It's mildly frustrating that the devs know how to pace their story and give us great character moments, only to rush things towards the end. They could have fleshed the revenge arc more and given us even more interactions between Man Sui and Liang. The lack of a satisfying epilogue certainly did not do this game any favors. The whereabouts and conditions of the girls were only ever briefly mentioned through text. I would have loved a moment like the end of "One life (2023)" were we get to see how well the girls are doing with our own eyes, instead of it being delivered through a few lines of text. Had they given the latter half the game the same amount of attention and care, this would have been a masterpiece of a game, but as it stands now, it is still worth a buy. It's a great game, but with some flaws.

A beautiful, heart-wrenching story that will keep you enthralled until the end!

insane game with insane story

in fucking tears rn (I finished it on the switch)

Touching

6/10