Remember games like Evolve and Ape Out and the surprise ending of that one popular indie game from 2016 I won’t spoil even though I think we’re past the spoiler window just in case you haven’t played it, where you play as the monster instead of (or, in Evolve’s case, in addition to) all the humans trying not to get eaten by the monster? I love that stuff. In the demo for in-development indie game Juice, you get all the fun of being the monster, plus a snippet of the dread of being the person.
The Juice demo is very short, roughly ten minutes of what developer Colorfiction calls a “dual narrative” about being an escaped monster terrorizing a city, but also a person living in that city. As the monster, you chow down on hordes of people. As the person, at least in the demo, you stare at the news and look out the window as chaos overtakes the city.
The game’s Steam page seems to suggest the monster will evolve through the full game, and also that the human will encounter it somehow, reading “Barricade your Apartment from impending Death and brood the nights away as your world is ripped to shreds. Attempt the daily routine or embrace the Filth.” The Steam description asks “Who will emerge victorious?,” but I love the possibility that you’re just a normal person and not some gun-wielding hero who has to take the monster on.
Mechanically, Juice is pretty simple: you can run and attack, and there’s not much strategy to eating all the people. I tried to be very methodical at first, but then I quickly realized that I could just run through areas gobbling everyone up, and the game became a riot of sound and splashes of red. I loved the contrast between the monster’s freedom of movement and the spaciousness of its world compared to the cramped apartment and limited interactions of the human, and I hope that contrast persists in the full game. But both parts were confusing and a little bit pointless in an oddly satisfying way, more an experience than a game. Judging from the developer’s other games, this seems to be their vibe, though those other games look a bit more peaceful.
There’s also an arcade mode where you’re just the monster in a people-eating arena, which the developer says will feature some kind of competition. My brief time with Juice was a little nauseating (the game warns you that it contains flashing lights) but also compellingly weird, and I’m definitely curious to know more about what the full game will look like.
