Life Eater is an indie puzzle game with psychological horror themes. Developed by Strange Scaffold, the story centers around a man who we come to know as Ralph, who hears the voice of a deity. This god commands Ralph to perform human sacrifices, lest the end of the world be incurred.

The game opens to the words Year One on a black screen. It turns to show us Ralph’s visage, flooded in the comforting yellow blanket of a streetlight, as we see the yellow light snap to a sharp, blinding purple, that brings Ralph to his knees. Ralph tells us of the god that infiltrates his mind, the one that announces his presence through this horrible purple light, bereft of any warmth. The faceless, voiceless god Zimforth. He has determined that it is time for this year’s sacrifice. Ralph obeys, he sees no choice in the matter. He hates what he does, but what choice does he have? If he disobeys, the entire world will end. To him, the billions of deaths resulting from the coming armageddon due to his failure to commit atrocities must be worse than the comparatively few horrific murders he must commit by his own hand.

The control is placed in the player’s hands now. In front of us lies a screen with a blank schedule. Instructions from Zimforth, “A body familiar with the harvest. Take them.” A name and a faceless avatar. There is a timeline, presented much like a video editing software UI, that we must slowly fill in through observing this stranger’s life. The elements of, and commentary on, the surveillance era are present throughout the gameplay, installing keyloggers, screen recordings, installing cameras, etc. We undertake these actions to stalk the target and learn more about them, even more simple actions such as looking through their trash, banging on their door, peeking through their window, all while managing the time these actions take against our allowance and how suspicious our target is of our behavior. If we go over the time allotment or our suspicious activity incites the target to alert the authorities, we are given a game over screen, saying that we have failed Zimforth, and that the end is coming; but we do not see a cutscene of the earth splitting open, we do not see meteors hurl from the sky, we just restart with a new set of schedules to uncover. The longer blocks at night are revealed to be sleeping, waking from sleep in the middle of the night, the shorter ones in the morning could indicate they are making breakfast at this hour, commuting to work, long blocks for their working hours, and so on and so forth. The targets are largely faceless, but as we observe patterns of behavior and individual events we learn more about them, and they are no longer some abstract idea. We are stalking a man who calls his mother every other day, who comes home to an empty house and sleeps alone every night. We are kidnapping a young college student who has a side job tutoring. We are killing an old man on his deathbed, soon to leave his wife of several decades. Everything is made so much worse by how we are commanded to kill them. We are told specifically if this person is alone while doing a task, if they are unarmed, their age, and their hair color. All this information must be parsed and committed to memory for when we enact the will of Zimforth.

Once we have observed the target enough, we are given the option to Abduct. Once this option is selected, we are brought to a gruesome scene. The culmination of all the information we have gathered. In front of Ralph, in front of us, lies the opened abdomen of the person you have kidnapped. The ribs, the heart, the lungs, the intestines, everything. In the margins of the scene lies the scrawlings of Zimforth. Instructions on how he wants his sacrifice rendered. The set of instructions are different for every individual “beast” you bring to your basement, but they follow the same structure. If the target has children, break three specific ribs. If the target has the listed hair color, break the rib specified. If they do not have the listed hair color, break the rib specified. If they live alone, remove the liver. If they do not live alone, destroy the pancreas. You get the idea. You are given the mercy of one mistake, if you make a second you will face the same game over screen as if you had failed to properly manage your time and suspicion, and you cannot look over your collected information once you have reached this stage.

Now the player understands the gameplay loop. At the end of every gameplay segment lies a cutscene. We see Ralph at a store, and the cashier behind the counter is a young man who knows Ralph by name. Ralph panics, and we find out that he kidnapped this person and is keeping him in a cage in his basement, because nobody should know his name, he isn’t a real person, he can’t be seen as real person, why would Zimforth pick a real person to do the horrible things he does? His name is Johnny, and he has to witness every murder and dismemberment that takes place. Ralph is kind to Johnny, he understands why he hates him. He can’t kill Johnny, he isn’t on the list, but he can’t free him, either. Ralph feeds him, tries to talk to him, but of course, Johnny just sees a man who dismembers people and has him locked up in his basement. Ralph apologizes to Johnny for making him see his acts of servitude. Over the course of several years, they grow some kind of relationship, shown to us through a scene of Ralph watching some TV series on his phone with him. It comes to a head when Johnny attempts to escape and wounds himself with a knife he created with spare metal, Ralph bandages him up when he finds him in the basement, unable to escape, because his legs don’t work anymore after the years of being in the cage. More years pass, more sacrifices are processed, and Johnny tells Ralph that he cannot stand to see any more. Ralph apologetically states that he can do something, like throw a blanket over the cage, but before he could rattle off more solutions, Johnny cuts him off. Johnny tells Ralph if he can see, then he can remember. He doesn’t want to see anymore. Ralph obliges. After this point, over the course of a few more years they both come to terms with their situation, as Johnny learns about Zimforth and Ralph’s predicament. Johnny asks, if there is no religious text, no cult, no organization, how does he know it’s real? What would happen if the deadline was missed? Ralph has never entertained the idea, is it not worth a try?


It is a fair question. There is no rhyme or reason. Zimforth picks a target, and Ralph follows his command. The targets have nothing in common with each other, they can be evil, they can be good, they can be young, they can be old. We do not know how this pleases Zimforth, or even if it does. Is Zimforth an evil deity, and the world would end by his own hand, or is Zimforth actually the protector of the earth, and there are cosmic elements we could not begin to understand? Why was Ralph chosen to enact this? Is he the only one who has been chosen? Is every serial killer an agent of Zimforth, or are individual serial killers serving their own respective gods? Many questions are raised, but these questions evade the point of this story. To us, we are contending with the possibility that Zimforth is not even real, and that Ralph is insane, that he’s hallucinating, and that all these horrible actions that he hates doing are not even for any real end. Ralph decides to test the theory. We see him do nothing as the time approaches, and when the time comes, we learn the truth. Which truth would be worse? If you were in the shoes of Ralph, would you prefer to be insane and have killed all those people for nothing, but finally free? Or would you like to be vindicated in your evil, but further trapped in your role, destined to kill for as long as you live? I suppose Ralph, and thus, we, no longer need to care, as we see the ea