Video Game / Eat Me

In this castle, you'll eat or be eaten.

My dear child, listen, and I'll feed you a tale. It begins with dinner denied. No bread, no butter, not even dessert. A mean repast by the meanest measure, enough to make a stomach grumble and an ill will stew. Enough to leave a tongue yearning for sugarplums.

You know what's next. It's what happened. An offer, something sweet, something simple, and you swallowed. Children are such trusting people. What you ate grew into a hole deeper than mere hunger: it swallowed you. Now, just as you were served, you shall be served again.

— Opening narration

Eat Me is a 2017 Interactive Fiction game by Chandler Groover. You play a child who starts off locked in the dungeon of a castle made of food. The actions permitted to you are mainly limited to moving around, examining things, and eating.

Play it online here.

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Contains examples of:

• Adaptational Villainy: The Sugarplum Fairy, who in the original play is friendly, is the Big Bad here.
• Anthropomorphic Food: All the castle's inhabitants are made of food.
• Attack on the Heart: Jenny Lettucehead is killed by eating her heart.
• Autocannibalism: You can eat yourself, but you'll just pop right back.
• Backstory:
  • As told in the west tapestry, the castle was once besieged by an army of mice led by the mouse king.
  • As can be seen from examining the castle, it is the place known in Arthurian Legend as Castle Charyot.^note Or more commonly "Chariot", but the game uses the "Charyot" spelling. As told in the east tapestry, Morgan Le Fay took control of it from its hosts and held it for a hundred years before it was taken back in a bloody battle.
• Big Eater: The hole in your stomach demands to be filled.
• Black-Hole Belly: You have no problem eating beings larger than yourself.
• Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce: The scorpion peppers. If you eat one, you start dribbling smoke and lava until you can put out the fire in your mouth.
• Body Horror:
  • Dame Demitasse is made of coffee cups, and every time she moves, her china splinters a little more.
  • Frypan Fredrick is made entirely of breaded frog's legs, his only facial feature a mouth with "human teeth in the hundreds".
• Bookcase Passage:
  • A secret passageway connects the dungeon's east cell with the buttery. In the cell, it's hidden behind the pastry maiden, and in the buttery, it's hidden behind the largest barrel.
  • A secret stairwell can be found in the baron's fireplace, leading down to the great hall.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: The game's description states: "May contain dairy, carnage, puzzles, nuts."
• Character Narrator: The narrator is actually a character in the story, revealed in the end to be the Sugarplum Fairy.
• Combat Tentacles: Jenny's vines lash out, keeping you at bay.
  Had she the inclination Jenny could squeeze you into a paste. Vines wrapped around your ankles, legs, coiling tighter till your torso's compressed and your head pops with a champagne cork's freedom. Hands, arms, animal limbs are clumsy logs next to her vegetable tendrils.
• Dead Guy on Display:
  • The fens outside the castle are filled with human corpses impaled on skewers planted in the ground. Examining them tells you:
    Enemies all, and planted for a cautionary wood. Challenge the castle: here's what will happen.
  • The fur of the defeated mouse king can be found in the chapel, adorning the altar.
    You wouldn't think a rodent would have such sumptuous fur, but this royal fur's better groomed than any mortal king's coiffure. It's found a higher purpose here than its skinned bearer could have given it.
• Decadent Court: In the first ending, the Sugarplum Fairy's court is seen, hooting and hollering in delight as the player character is turned into a roasted pig.
• Drinking on Duty: The gatehouse guards are implied to have been drinking at their post. One is asleep with empty bottles next to him, and the other is throwing up in the garderobe.
• Eat Me: You have to get yourself eaten by the Baron in order to eat him.
• Eldritch Abomination: The main character has shades of this, what with their all-consuming hunger.
• Eyeless Face:
  • Frypan Frederick has no facial features apart from a mouth.
  • Jenny Lettucehead has ears and a mouth, but no eyes.
• Faerie Court: The castle is implied to be inhabited by fairies who are ruled by a queen.
• The Fair Folk: The castle's original hosts are implied to have been fairies — the dangerous sort. As told in the east tapestry, Morgan Le Fay took over for a time and entrapped them with magic, but was eventually ousted. They are very much still present and are seen in the cup ending, described as having grey faces, hairy hands, and glittering wings.
  [examining tapestry]
  … as though mortal enchantments could entrap a race older than human blood.
  
  [examining hosts in tapestry]
  There's no babe born will rule what rules under the ground, behind the sky, beyond humankind's ken. A familiar in thrall's merely a doom sat at the door. A queen with mortal blood will never keep this castle's seat.
• Featureless Protagonist: As the game tells you upon examining yourself, your most important feature is your mouth.
  Forget your other attributes. You ate them when you first arrived, which is why you were invited.
• Fire-Breathing Diner:
  • A harmless version if you eat a flambeau — smoke pours from your nostrils.
  • If you eat a scorpion pepper, smoke pours from your nose and ears and your mouth glows orange-hot.
• Flavor Text: In addition to the descriptions afforded through the 'examine' command, you can also smell things for more descriptions.
• Floorboard Failure: The solution to dispatching the heavy durkha guard is to weaken the floor, causing him to fall through.
• Food Porn: The descriptions of food and the act of eating are extremely detailed.
• Forced Transformation: In the first ending, you're transformed into a living food, with the reveal that the inhabitants of the castle underwent the same fate.
• Fractured Fairy Tale: It takes some elements from the The Nutcracker, but is considerably darker and more twisted.
• Get It Over With: When Dame Demitasse is lying fractured on the floor after two other Quartet members have been eaten, she is resigned to her fate and tells you to get it on with.
  "Don't think I don't know what comes next," Dame Demitasse tells you.
  …
  "Drink me," orders Dame Demitasse. "Do it."
• God Save Us from the Queen!:
  • As told in the east tapestry, Morgan Le Fay — referred to as a "traitor queen" — once held the castle, entrapping its hosts with magic.
  • The fairy queen is ultimately behind the suffering many undergo at the castle.
• Hint System: You can use the command "think" to get hints.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
  • A couple of corpses in the dungeon; one is impaled on a judas chair, which has a spike in place of a cushion, and one is impaled on the spikes of a pastry maiden.
  • The human corpses covering the fens are impaled on long, two-pronged skewers that have been planted in the ground.
• Jagged Mouth: When Dame Demitasse opens her jaws, her porcelain face splits open into jagged fangs.
• Lemony Narrator: The narrator talks in a very flowery style, extolling foods and flavours in lavish detail, expresses opinions on things in the story, and calls you/the player character by endearments and diminutives such as "darling", "dear", and "child".
• Level Ate: Everything in and around the castle is made of food. Even the sky is edible.
• Literal-Minded: The player may attempt to interact with something that was not meant literally, in which case the narrator will clarify.
  • Inside the Baron's shadow:
    Well, dear, you're in a pickle now.
    >eat pickle
    It's a figurative pickle, my darling.
  • Standing at the castle gateway:
    You stand before the castle's only gate. Through this passage must pass all seeking admittance or leave, whether they be the fairest or most squalid amongst us. […] Walk northward, noble guests, to the courtyard; slink eastward, servants, serfs bearing supplies, through that low kitchen door. All to their stationed ranks.
    >examine guests
    A rhetorical flourish, my dear. I paint them in your mind that you might picture how they come and go: aristocrats with trains and banners marching into the courtyard; meanwhile lower orders must needs access their own quarters, and here's a side door to their serving realm.
• Locked Door: The door to the chapel is sealed shut. The floor in front of it is the key to opening it; the heavier you are, the more the floor sinks while standing on it. You need to eat all six courses to become heavy enough to unlock the door.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Frypan Frederick's mouth has "human teeth in the hundreds".
• Multiple Endings: There are two possible endings.
  • In the first, reached by drinking from the cup in the chapel, you transform into a living food like the other inhabitants of the castle and are inducted into the court of the Sugarplum Fairy.
  • The other is the Golden Ending; by eating the shadow in the Baron's stomach and attacking the narrator in the chapel, you gain your freedom.
• Onion Tears: The solution to the ghost puzzle is to use the onions to make her cry.
• Plant Person: Jenny Lettucehead, who's made of salad, has vine limbs, and eats soil.
• Posthumous Character:
  • There are a few mentions of Pierre Canard, the former fifth member of the Amuse-Bouche Quartet, who is implied to have been eaten by the others.
  • The mouse king, as depicted in the west tapestry, once led an invasion of his army against the castle. They were defeated, and his fur put on display in the chapel.
• Pun: A couple instances of antanaclasis:
  • In the intro text, the narrator describes a lack of dinner as a "mean repast by the meanest measure". The first "mean" is meant in the sense of "ungenerous", while the one in "meanest" is meant in the sense of "unkind".
  • If the player persists in eating the mound of filth, the narrator comments:
    Whatever's gotten into you, my dear, I couldn't guess. Now more filth's gotten into you, at any rate, as you swallow what's in your mouth again.

    The first "gotten into you" is meant figuratively, while the second is meant literally.

• Rage Against the Author: In the rebellion ending, you attack and overpower the narrator, and after a stalemate, win your freedom. During the stalemate, she keeps her narration brief and outright refuses to provide more detailed descriptions, stating, "I've served you enough lavish words."
• Rat King: As seen in the west tapestry, the mouse king is seven mice with their tails entwined.
• Scary Teeth: Jenny Lettucehead has sharklike carrot teeth.
  There's a wedge carved into her head, and in that wedge are carrots set in triple tiers whose points, were they in any other mouth, might shred a human body into ribbons in less than a trice. Be thankful you're not nightsoil: then you'd have different luck.
• Schmuck Banquet: This is the overarching plot. Nearly everything (and everyone) you meet is made of food, and you can't enter the last area until you've fattened yourself up enough and made yourself a sufficiently poetic target for a Forced Transformation.
• Swarm of Rats: Examining the mice in the west tapestry paints a picture of their army's invasion.
  Mice fringe the tapestry[…]. Imagine those threaded hordes come alive, scaling the battlements, pouring through every cranny, crack, crevice, and you'll have half an inkling's half what this castle withstood until the vermin learned their proper rank again.
• The Speechless: Frypan Fredrick is the only member of the Amuse-Bouche Quartet who is seemingly unable to speak — he only ribbits.
• Swordfish Sabre: The havarti guard wields a swordfish as a sword.
• Torture Cellar: The dungeon is full of torture devices, including a judas chair, a rack, and a breaking wheel.
• Torture Technician: Master Pokerounce, the warden, is in charge of prisoners and the torture thereof.
• Transformation Horror: In the first ending, the player character is transformed into some kind of living roasted pig. The narration doesn't skimp on describing the crackling of your cooking flesh.
• True Sight: In the first ending, as the player character transforms, they begin to see past the magic of the castle to their true environment and the audience that has been there all along.
• Vine Tentacles: Jenny Lettucehead is a salad-based Plant Person with vines that will lash out, keeping you at bay.
  Had she the inclination Jenny could squeeze you into a paste. Vines wrapped around your ankles, legs, coiling tighter till your torso's compressed and your head pops with a champagne cork's freedom. Hands, arms, animal limbs are clumsy logs next to her vegetable tendrils.
• Was Once a Man: The first ending reveals that the inhabitants of the castle you ate were all once human like you. This is first hinted at with the shadow and the woman you find inside the Baron; the shadow is an all-consuming force of hunger, much like the hole you carry, and the woman, through her garb and scent, is implied to be the original form of the giant cow.
• Would Hurt a Child: The dungeon is filled with the corpses of children.

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