Publisher: Feardemic
Developer: Simon Lukasik
Medium: Digital
Players: 1
Online: No
ESRB: Not Rated
Bad Cheese feels like it’s a perfect fit for the YouTube/Twitch era of gaming. I have no doubt that if you’re the kind of person who likes to watch other people stream their games, it might be fun. But as far as playing it yourself goes, it’s a whole lot less interesting.
This is because Bad Cheese is all about creepy vibes and creepy aesthetics, but not much else. It borrows pretty liberally from Disney circa Steamboat Willie, at one point even showing a cartoon on a TV that looks suspiciously like Mickey Mouse’s iconic debut (which, of course, is now in the public domain). The main character looks like a grotesque version of Mickey, and most of the characters you see also look like they came out of a Disney fever dream.
For that matter, the whole game looks and feels like a fever dream. You’re trapped in a nightmarish house, forced to do random menial tasks, never knowing if you’ll suddenly come across some monster you need to fight. There are constant spooky noises bubbling in the background, and the main character sounds demented. As I said, if you were watching someone else play, I could see it being interesting.
But if you were playing Bad Cheese yourself, it would probably feel a lot less interesting. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, much of the game is spent performing menial chores. Yes, you occasionally have to kill a giant spider, but you also need to clean up messes, vacuum, and do all kinds of other household chores. I know that the game is trying to hint at deeper meanings about domestic violence and childhood trauma, but to get there you have to sit through some pretty uninspired gameplay.
As I said, it all adds up to a game that feels like it was designed for streaming, not playing yourself. And while I don’t have any strong feelings about what people want to watch, in some cases I have stronger feelings about what people play, and this is one of those cases: don’t waste your time on Bad Cheese, because there are much more interesting games out there to enjoy.
Feardemic provided us with a Bad Cheese PC code for review purposes.