RPS Hunger

Genre: Misc.

Players: 1

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Review:

RPS Hunger, released in 2025 on Nintendo Switch, is a game that’s difficult to describe, because there’s so little to it. This is a game where players play rapid-paced rock-paper-scissors battles against an invisible, unnamed opponent, and that’s pretty much it. Oh, and just to make it more pointless, the game can only be played in handheld mode using the touchscreen, for no reason – there’s nothing in this game’s controls that couldn’t be replaced with three buttons on a controller.

The presentation here is almost nonexistent, just a single image of a castle in black and red with text over it. There is one exception to this, however, in the form of an actually pretty good Japanese-language opening theme. It’s so good, in fact, that I can’t help but think that it existed prior to the game, and the entire rest of the game was hastily slapped-together around it.

There’s nothing wrong with rock-paper-scissors game mechanics. It’s one of the good core structures of any competitive game, and some game franchises like Fire Emblem and Dead or Alive are explicitly built on top of a core rock-paper-scissors system. But that’s the thing – it’s a foundation for the gameplay, not the beginning and end of the gameplay. Rock-paper-scissors on its own is a pretty boring game, especially when you’re not playing it face-to-face with a human opponent.

If that’s all RPS Hunger was, this would be dull and pointless, but this game takes the pointlessness to a new level by making the game’s rounds of rock-paper-scissors rapid-fire, as it ties rock, paper, and scissors (here redubbed sword, shield, and punch) to health bars that are constantly depleting, refilled only when you make a selection. Make the right choice and the bar tied to your choice refills. Make the wrong choice and it depletes faster, but it’s always depleting… and since your computer opponent’s choices are randomized and there’s no strategic difference between the three choices, it means the most strategic option for the player is just to button-mash (or more accurately touchscreen-mash) whichever choice currently has the most-depleted health bar.

Allow any health bar to empty completely and you lose. Survive for a minute or so and the game automatically ends. And that’s it, that is the game in its entirety. One could suggest that this game’s price tag of just over $1 might mitigate how short it is, but nothing mitigates how completely lacking in meaningful gameplay is here.

Despite a genuinely good this game’s opening theme is, everything else about RPS Hunger is empty, meaningless, pointless, and absolutely nothing resembling fun. If you buy this game because “it’s only $1”, that just means you’re okay with wasting $1. And if that’s the case, let me direct you to my Patreon link, because if you’re that eager to spend your money, you can give it to someone who is trying to spare you from wasting your time on junk like this.

tl;dr – RPS Hunger is barely even a game, just text and a single image of a castle, with a button-mashing rock-paper-scissors exercise in futility that’s pointless, tedious, and over within a minute whether you win or lose. Even with its low $1 price tag, this is not worth getting.

Grade: F

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