Introducing Kratophagia

Kia ora koutou! Greetings all!

Welcome to Kratophagia!

Kratophagia is a game about violence, oppression and body horror, so content warnings for all of that.

I wrote a thread on twitter about the themes of the game; I'll paraphrase that thread here as a springboard into talking some more about the game. That thread is iself a paraphrase of the the first chapter of the book, which you can read in the screenshots on the project page.

In Kratophagia you play hungry scavenging creatures called kratophagoi living on a ruined planet devastated by a galactic war. Kratophagoi subsist in a violent hierarchy of oppression. Kratophagoi are nominally humanoid creatures who hunger for the viscera of living creatures, including other kratophagoi. As Kratophagoi eat viscera, they mutate from their humanoid form into a wide variety of other bodily configurations. Those are the three core themes of Kratophagia:

• Oppression and how to escape it.
• Consumption, greed and hunger.
• Bodily change, bodily autonomy, bodily control and bodily limits.

At least, these are the three core themes of the Larva Stage, which is what will be available on Saturday. I'll have more to say in a future devlog about how I imagine the development and publication process going.

I've made that first chapter available as screenshots because these themes and content warnings are essential for people to know before they engage with the text. Kratophagia is a game about nasty, violent, and murderous cannibals. I don't want anyone going into this game without knowing that. The first rule of Kratophagia is to take care of the other people at the table.

In the coming days you can expect more threads and public devlogs about some core aspects of the game at launch and the directions I'm planning to take it in the future. Look out for posts on some of the core game systems, the MC materials, and the development history of Kratophagia. If you have questions about other aspects, chime in with them in the comments, or on twitter.

Finally, I'm releasing Kratophagia alongside a bunch of other cool games by Kiwi creators as part of KiwiRPG Week (1-7 May). Games like Vex Chat-Blanc's Hunting Billionaires for Sport, Mike Sand's XGE13, and Morgan Davie's Paranormal Wellington. Check out those games and other events by watching the #KiwiRPG hashtag wherever good hashtags are collected (including here on itch!) and following the @kiwirpg account in all the usual places. And look out for a panel we'll be running at Big Bad Online at the end of the week (6/7 May depending on time zones).

Until then, be excellent to each other!

Hamish