YMMV / Tribal Hunter

• Anti-Climax Boss: One hit kill attack aside, the true final boss fight against the Island Spirit can feel like this, as their mechanic of taking more damage the larger Munch is kinda undercuts the difficulty even if you have set it to Insanity, as they are pretty fragile even when the later 2 phases of the fight reduce Munch back down to his small form (or for the case of the transition to 2nd phase, reduce Munch's fullness by 1000). Even the final phase of the fight isn't all that difficult if you had brought a full stack of milks and had maxed out the upgrade for it, as you can get Munch up to 600 fullness and pound away at them, dodging when necessary.
• Awesome Art: The sprite work for the game is really well done, and the artwork done by other artists for the game is very top notch.
• Awesome Music:
  • Swashbuckled Serenade is a high energy pirate themed song used for the fight against Captain Killsha.
  • Her Ghostly Highness, for the boss fight against the Ghost Queen in the Shadowlands, is a jazz/techno song that really emphasizes the more "ethereal" feeling of the fight.
  • HEAVY METAL DRAGON is exactly as intense and hectic as the name would have you think, perfectly complimenting the absolute Lightning Bruiser that is Lord Darkdread and truly befitting of a final boss even if he isn't.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Anything that can inflate Munch, namely water dragons and air elementals. Water dragons at least have two different attacks that both inflate Munch, but one is a grab that's countered by eggs. The air elemental does not subscribe to such niceties, as its only attack surrounds it in bubbles, making trying to avoid it dangerous and putting Munch at risk of exploding - and the only way to get rid of them is with magic attacks, as they are immune to physical attacks.
  • The Bee enemies in the Hive are also dangerous for similar reasons. The fact they do both puncture damage and inflate/fatten Munch makes them a much bigger threat, especially in later stages where they can gang up on him.
  • The Ghost enemies in the Shadowlands aren't much better. While the lanterns that counter them are numerous, the fact that all it takes for them to possess Munch is for 2-3 of them to enter Munch's body leads to having to constantly do their small quicktime event while they force him to inflate himself with air, and this event gets harder the more curse is built up in Munch, to the point it can become impossible for Munch to excise the ghosts in time before he bursts.
  • Slimes bounce around, making them hard to hit. Getting in melee range puts you at risk of a slime forcing itself into Munch's mouth, making him bulk up considerably and also overriding your magic skills with a slow slime spitting projectile. The slimes can also force-feed if Munch is in mid jump, completely killing his momentum. A few levels have slime pits that have a ton of slimes and giant slimes that can swallow Munch and force-feed him slime at a rapid pace if he gets too close. Since slimes also double as an Asteroids Monster, failing to beat the smaller slimes in time can have them merge together and regain their form, undoing your hard work. Considering that slimes override your magic skills and don't digest naturally, don't be surprised to find yourself spending time spitting out whatever slimes you ingested just to keep yourself from exploding if you swallowed quite a few.
  • The crystals and later on ice-crystals are brutal. The hovering crystals are bad enough, and the wall-clingers can usually be ignored, but the ones that stay on the ground and shoot at you are nightmarish solely for the fact that they're immune to knockback, no matter how big Munch gets. This is especially gruelling in the Crystal Caverns, as unlike the Mountain Peak there are more often than not no enemies that can be eaten for fat to spend on the magic attacks they're weak to, meaning you have to take them down the hard way.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Pizza Tower of all things, with fans of both games drawing art of Munch getting involved in antics with Peppino.
• Game-Breaker:
  • In terms of close range is the Ground Pound move, as it can hit multiple enemies and knock them back. The best part of all this is if the enemy Munch lands on causes him to bounce, which just lets him use it again in quick succession. It can trivialize a couple boss fights if used properly, especially when amped with the Heavy Slam ability and having Munch at weight level 5. The fact it has such a deceptively wide range that hits from farther than you'd think is icing on the cake. The only issue is that one can't use it in tight spaces or during the first area of the game, but...
  • For those who don't want to put Munch at risk of being exploded/fighting in tight areas, there is the Egg Bomb, which is not only part of your starting arsenal, its related ability widens the area of the egg's explosion. While its cost is high in the early game (costing 25 fullness to use), it's effective in fighting enemies in cramped areas and is an effective tool in dispatching certain enemies, due to its property relating to enemies that leave their mouth open at certain times, which will incapacitate them (though you lose out on the XP for most enemies dispatched this way). Its charged variant makes the initial egg drop eggs on detonation, so if the first egg didn't do the job is very likely those eggs will finish it.
• Good Bad Bugs: Mashing the map button will reveal hidden areas as the map window loads and unloads.
• Heartwarming Moments: Near the end of the game, while exploring the Mountain Peak, To-Ri arrives to tell Munch that Yisya has gone missing after To-Ri took her to the mountains at her insistence. A while later at the end of the cavern, Munch finds Yisya near a shrine, glad that she's safe. Unfortunately the weather becomes rough and thus they have to stay in the cave overnight. The reason why she went to the mountains in the first place? To get Popper Mushrooms to help Munch in his quest, and she gives 3 of them. During the night, Yisya admits she feels a bit cold and Munch notes he's feeling hungry, and decides to solve both their problems at once by eating a few of the nearby pig enemies and letting Yisya rest near his belly. Munch then promises Yisya that he'll protect her as she falls asleep.
• Inferred Holocaust: Even if Munch successfully saves Mystic Island, hundreds if not thousands of its inhabitants are consumed by him in the process. The game chooses not to dwell on this fact.
  • Subverted, as in a pair of comics provided by the artist that works on the game, Munch only absorbs the fat from those he consumes and then pops them out as an egg.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Because the game is filled with furry characters that can be subjected to weight gain/ inflation and popping, it has gained a number of followers that play or watch others play the game just to see their favorite characters grow huge.
• Moment of Awesome: The True Ending is a culmination of one.
  • To explain, the first part of the ending happens after beating Darkdread in his castle. After being told by To-Ri that the entire island is starting to fall apart, Munch gets a feeling that there's something in the throne room. Heading towards the throne itself, Munch is told by the Spirit of the Island that beneath it lies the source of what is causing the island to fall apart. After smashing down a large chasm, Munch finds himself in the room where the evil half of the Spirit lies. She tells him that it is his duty to become the new seal (and doing so leads to a Bittersweet Ending). Instead, Munch destroys the seal, causing the Spirit to lash out at him, calling him a traitor before he's blown up by the resulting energy blast. After reforming himself (on the same way the game begins, no less), he tells the villagers what's happening and tells them that he'll stop the island's destruction by heading back to the mountain's peak to fight the Spirit. The Villagers give him their full support (and even better, shop items are free during this part), and as Munch heads to where To-Ri is to take him to the peak, an army of dark spirits block his path... only for them to be crushed under Lord Darkdread as he makes his entrance. Darkdread tells Munch that his mind cleared up after the fight and came to help stop the Spirit from destroying the island.
  • Then comes the conversation before the final battle itself. The Spirit explains that they're the reason the ancient civilization fell, due to them destroying the great tree years ago. She had only sealed away her evil half in repentance, only for Munch to point out that, as the Guardian Spirit of the island, it falls to him to stop the Vicious Cycle and make the Spirit go forward into actually repenting for her actions.
  • Cue the fight itself, with the spirit fighting with bullet-hell like shots, while also firing energy balls that turn into slimes for Munch to eat... Which leads into her weakness: Namely that, the bigger Munch is, the more damage he deals. Once you've depleted her health once, she then turns into a dragon for the 2nd phase of the fight, while also draining Munch of all of his current fullness, forcing you to go on the defensive until she fires energy balls that you can break to more slimes to eat. Once that phase is done with, the Spirit becomes an even larger dragon for the final phase of the fight while draining Munch of his fullness again, but at this point everyone in the island begins to help Munch by sending in food and warning him when the Spirit does their instant kill attack.
• Periphery Demographic: The game was designed to appeal to people (especially within the Furry Fandom) who have a fetish for things such as vore, weight gain, stuffing and inflation - indeed, ads for it were ran on FurAffinity for a good portion of 2021. However, the game also has fans who are not interested in those themes, and enjoy playing it simply for its fun, interesting gameplay.
  "It's genuinely good. I'd go so far as to say it sets a new bar for fetish-based gaming by taking its theme and running with it so hard that it probably burned half the calories it gained, sparing no effort in making a full-scale Metroidvania platformer-brawler out of it with innovative mechanics that could only have been brought into being by a complete lack of shame on the part of the developer and artist, and I for one salute this."

  — One of the earlier top reviews
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: Considering that the game has furry characters, weight gain, inflation, vore, and popping, many people play the game to see those features while ignoring the story.
• Self-Fanservice: Due to how flexible characters are with their sizes in the game, fan artists have gone to town with them:
  • By default, Munch is usually shown at his smallest size, which has him at his skinniest and no bigger than the average human. While Munch can grow really fat, he can't gain any visible muscles. Many fan artists have drawn Munch being a very big hunk and some even going for the Big Beautiful Man route by making him muscular and chubby.
  • While Killsha does have some chubbiness on her, she's more thick rather than fat or curvy. Fans of the shark pirate tend to draw her being as fat as Munch at his bigger sizes and others may draw her as a Statuesque Stunner with the curves to match.
  • Darkdread is a muscular beast of a dragon with a big gut to balance it out. Like with Killsha, fan artists will either make him really fat or make him even more muscular and give him muscular abs instead of keeping his beer gut.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: Kitora's flying minigame can be a bit addicting, especially since they're a good source for early cash grinding.
• Tear Jerker: The Destiny? ending. Munch sacrifices himself to re-seal the evil half of the Spirit of the Island, and the aftermath shows Yisya making multiple Munch dolls in the hopes that he'll come back, before breaking down in tears after her grandfather tells her that he's returned to the Island, having accomplished his duty. This stings even more due to the fact of the above moment in the cave happening a day or so before he seals himself.
• That One Attack:
  • The instant kill attack the True Final Boss unleashes in their 3rd phase, which can only be blocked by hiding behind a boulder that drops down in the arena. You're not told explicitly to hide behind this boulder until moments before the attack hits, forcing you to redo the fight from the beginning again. The update to the fight at least gives more time in-between characters telling you to hide and the attack hitting, but it is small.
    • Compounding on the above, the boss sometimes releases a mist during that phase which drains Munch's fullness, which can be active during the one-hit kill attack, meaning you're set back to square one in terms of fullness until more food drops, and while only one instance of the mist can be out at a time, the attack itself can blend in with the boss due to them sharing the same colors.
  • To a lesser extent, Lord Darkdread's firebreathing attack. As if having it suck you towards him wasn't bad enough, it almost always triggers when you're already up close and personal beating on him, barely giving you any time to react properly, and even if you do recognise it as a cue to lob an egg in his mouth doing so too close will trigger the attack early AND waste the weight you spent on casting said egg in the first place, leaving you down a massive chunk of health and much lighter, which runs the risk of dropping your size and thus punching power. The only saving grace is that once you counter it enough times he stops doing it.
• That One Boss:
  • The Fox Rival fights are all pretty rough, in their own ways:
    • The first one in particular has the issue with the fact that you don't have much health to go off of nor do you have any sort of defense whatsoever unless you've backtracked to the village to get the defense food buff, which only grants a 10% damage reduction anyways. His attacks hit hard and on higher difficulties can easily one-shot Munch even if he has maxed-out health. The only way one can deal with the fight is if one keeps juggling him by spacing out Munch's punches, but he can break out of it easily if one is not careful.
    • The second one comes right before the fight with the Ghost Queen in the Shadowlands and he deals more damage. As above you don't have much defense unless you took the opportunity to level grind at the last area of the Jungle, and even so you don't have access to the last bit of defense needed to survive his attacks until after the fight. And if you're doing a speedrun? Good luck.
    • The third fight would not have much issue if not for the fact that the trick mentioned above for his first fight doesn't work anymore, meaning you have to beat his small size legit. And the fact that said fight comes at the end of the Mountain Top means that the To-Ri statue is behind him or a far ways away where a bunch of enemies are between you and it. The fact he also pulls out new attacks with various bullet hell-like patterns does not help matters.
• That One Level:
  • Individual stage-wise, both "Mass-Catering Assembly" and "Snack Room Barrage!!" in Lord Darkdread's castle are a nightmare considering they bring back the food cannons from the beach midboss, and the stage is full of pig chef enemies who will gang up on Munch to feed him til he explodes. You practically have to slowly trawl through the stage using egg bombs to be able to make it out of these areas intact.
  • Area-wise, the Shadowlands due to the concentration of ghost enemies that inflict cursed fullness, which can only be digested by staying near the lamps dotted around the stages. Later stages can have multiple big and small ghosts at the ready to team up to make Munch inflate himself to bursting.
  • The Mountain Top is also a major slog, mostly dealing with both the massive amounts of platforming and tight areas requiring you to avoid spikes, and the enemies including elite versions of the Pig enemies from before, alongside ice versions of the crystal enemies that all have a mixed magic and puncture attack, meaning if you have been slacking on putting EXP to Munch's magic defense skill you're going to have a rough time.
  • The hidden chambers added underneath the castle in patch 1.0. Originally, when you broke the throne in the castle, you'd fall straight down to the island's core. Instead, you have to go through several areas that are filled with traps and fight a gauntlet of enemies before you can reach the island's core. It is likely that you will have very few, if any, healing items on hand by the time you get to the hidden chambers unless you managed to conserve them during the Darkdread battle. While checkpoints are plentiful, you're still in for a rough time even if you maxed out Munch's ability to heal on every punch.
  • The Ancient Path, which is the final zone of the game before the Final Boss if you're on the true ending path. It's a huge slog through several areas that are filled with enemies and hazards that can inflate Munch if you aren't paying attention. The color palette in the Ancient Path is filled with white and pink with a bloom effect randomly taking effect, all which can be quite uneasy on the eyes for those that are sensitive to it. The only saving grace are the huge amounts of EXP you gain for beating enemies here.
• Underused Game Mechanic: The pressure switches in the mines which require a certain weight upon them, which while most of them are weighed down by a lizard who loves slime, one has to be activated by Munch himself while above 450 weight (which just so happens to be the minimum weight for Weight level 4). This is the only time a switch requires Munch to have unlocked one of the Weight Levels, which makes getting the other two weight levels feel pointless aside from giving some leeway in areas with high concentration of food.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • The pirate dragon that fights Munch with a food cannon is female and has a high pitch voice blip confirming as such, but many people confuse her with being a male since her design lacks feminine characteristics. If you dig into her dialogue options though you'll find she's part of a 'brother-sister team' and is looking for her brother, thus logically making her the sister.
  • Kitora is also a subject to this if one hasn't seen the artist's art of their characters, as they also have the high pitch voice blip, but along with their pink colorization and gender-neutral look it's difficult to tell their gender just by looking at them.

---