mr.Vegan

I went in expecting nothing and still came out mildly confused, which is honestly the correct emotional state for mr.Vegan. This is a GameMaker-built casual side-scroller where you pilot a bearded bodybuilder through city skies, desert heat, and outer space, riding a chilli pepper in underpants, collecting fruit and vegetables while dodging meat, meteors, and cacti. The premise is a dream sequence triggered by a B12 overdose, and the developer openly admitted the plot has no bearing on gameplay whatsoever. That kind of self-aware absurdism is either charming or a red flag depending on your tolerance for pure chaos. The structure is ten levels split across three visual environments, with three of those levels marked as boss stages. Regular levels are mouse-controlled collect-a-thons: you guide the pepper-rider around the screen, hoovering up set quotas of corn, pineapples, melons, and other produce before a timer runs out, while pieces of meat apply a screen-tinting green penalty if you touch them. Boss encounters swap the formula slightly, having you hold the mouse button to shoot down a food-hurling opponent. Between levels, a small shop lets you spend earned pepper coins on hats that grant passive bonuses: faster scroll speed, doubled collection rate, increased boss damage. There is exactly one strategic decision in this game, and it is picking the hat that lets you finish faster. The whole run clocks in at roughly an hour. The repetition is real and the community has not been quiet about it. Levels reuse the same vegetables across the same scrolling backdrops, and the coin counter is only visible from the main menu, never mid-level. The windowed launch with no in-game fullscreen toggle is annoying, and the Linux build has documented issues including a persistent hardware cursor and driver-specific startup workarounds. Typos crop up even inside the achievement descriptions. These are not quirks of a rough diamond. They are signs of a project that shipped before its rough edges were examined. And yet. Steam sits at 88 percent positive across 95 reviews, which is a number that stopped me in my tracks. The Hardbass School soundtrack, seven tracks of loud Russian-language electronic music, is either the game's worst element or its best depending entirely on your relationship with that particular subculture. Players who showed up for the meme walked away delighted. Players who showed up for a side-scroller walked away disappointed. That split tells you everything about whether this one is for you. If you have ever watched a Hardbass compilation and felt something warm in your chest, or if you collect absurdist sub-dollar novelty games the way some people collect stamps, mr.Vegan will give you exactly what it promises. If you want tight arcade design or any depth to speak of, there are hundreds of better choices in the same genre and price bracket. Know your audience. In this case, the audience is yourself.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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