A totally harmless llama...
Hungry Lamu is a short indie game that released in June 27, 2022.
Your objective in the game is helping to fill the stomach of the eponymous llama named Lamu. Despite the friendly-sounding premise, the game is actually a horror game following the trend of games that seem child-friendly but turn out to be scary as you follow the protagonist trying to find their friends and escape the park while being followed by a starving llama.
The game was created by Kulu and is available for free on its itch.io
page.
The developer also released two sequels called Sea Mongrel and Porkbound.
On July 11th, 2025, Hungry Lamu 2 released on itch.io as a finale for the series.
The games have examples of:
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Hungry Lamu
- Accidental Murder: During his painful transformation into a monstrous and mutated human-llama hybrid, Larry accidentally killed both of his parents.
- Animalistic Abomination: Lamu vaguely resembles the animal he is attributed to while possessing a disturbing human-like face. A result of genetic experimentation.
- Ax-Crazy: Lamu sees his world as sunshine and rainbows when he is actually gruesomely maiming and killing everything in his path. In the children's book found in his cave, it gives insight on his mental instability such as the phrase "they are fruit" written all over a page, which indicates that he's trying to cope and reassure himself that he isn't doing anything wrong.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Lamu kills the player if the option of wrecking the car was taken in the "Full Course Meal" ending and in the "Old Stories" ending where he finds the player in his cave once they're done reading his book and jumps at the player to kill them.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Lamu kills the banana, later revealed to be a dog named Mochi, by culling it with a rock.
- Balloon Belly: In the "Full Course" ending, Lamu is depicted with a large, round belly shortly after he devours the player character. Although he leaves a hand behind.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Lamu sees nothing wrong with eating someone fully sentient, but only if he's given permission beforehand. He also dislikes "rude" fruits, which means fruits who absolutely refuse to be eaten. Although a book in his cave indicates that this both a coping mechanism and also caused by his mutation affecting his brain.
- Body Horror: Lamu himself is a monstrous, man-eating llama mutant with human face. The diagram which the player finds in Hungry Lamu 2 shows the full extent of his horrific condition, with brain damage caused by trauma from mutating and an abnormally large stomach due to increased metabolism, which explain both his impaired mentality and ravenous hunger. His "hooves" are revealed to be stumpy fingers that have fused together. Flashback to the birthday party shows the full extent of Larry's horrific and painful transformation when Dr. Bronze administers his flawed cure to his son.
- Car Fu: In the Roadkill ending, the last camper manages to escape into the group's car and floors it. As they drive down the road, Lamu makes one last-ditch attempt to attack the camper by leaping out at the windshield... unfortunately for Lamu, the camper keeps on going.
- Disguised Horror Story: What starts as a cartoony game simply about feeding an anthropomorphic llama drastically changes to a 3D Survival Horror setting where you have to escape the park before Lamu gets you.
- Earn Your Bad Ending: Most players will get the good ending first (running Lamu over) rather than the bad ending (getting eaten by Lamu) since you have to go out of your way to smash the player's car to get the bad one. You can get the good ending just by playing regularly. An update added an ending with a poor outcome if you seek out Lamu's cave instead, but while it's easier to find than the broken car route, it's still harder to find than the good ending.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: Mochi tried to protect the campers from Lamu, who is a human-faced llama serial killer, and acts hostile towards his presence, which he interpreted as her refusing to be eaten and being "rude". Sadly, the emphasis on tried, as Lamu kills her with a rock.
- Fictional Document: Lamu's favorite book, "The Llama is Hungry", is based around a Llama who spends his day eating food. Within the book, there is red writing from Lamu that reveals his backstory and a newspaper clipping about Eric Bronze, a doctor whose animal-human genetic modification research was seemingly proven false (the outside world unaware of exactly how true it is), and the back of the clipping reveals that Lamu was Bronze's son who he experimented on.
- Foreshadowing:
- If you go down to the bottom of the map, you'll notice a "fruit friend" hidden behind a tree, but you will be unable to interact with them. Sure enough, once the gameplay shifts, you take control of this lone survivor.
- The "fruit" release red spurts upon being eaten, hinting at how they're actually living beings in real life and are only fruit from Lamu's perspective.
- Horror Hunger: Lamu has a near insatiable appetite, that a diet of foraged cherries or berries can barely satiate. Leading to him having to find "fruit friends", but even they can barely put a dent on his cravings. Said fruit friends being human beings at that. The sequel reveals his ravenous hunger is caused by his transformation enlarging his stomach and giving him high metabolism.
- Karmic Death:
- Doctor Eric Bronze, who was killed by his own son, who he turned into a monster. The sequel downplays this to a degree in that Doctor Bronze did genuinely have the sympathetic goal of wanting to cure Larry of his condition, but he nonetheless still used his son as a guinea pig and created Lamu by injecting an untested, defective cure into his boy.
- Doctor Terry Orgullo, Doctor Bronze's partner in genetic experimentation who not only indirectly helped with the creation of Lamu but exploited it to force Lamu to do his bidding (along with instigating the events of both Sea Mongrel and Porkbound by creating the mutated monsters of those respective games), would also get eaten by Lamu when Doctor Orgullo was too distracted by the protagonist to notice that Lamu had slipped away.
- Light Is Not Good: Lamu is a brightly colored friendly-looking llama, and is also a large cannibalistic mutated monster that eats anyone he finds in Lamu Park.
- Madness Mantra: In one of the pages of the fictional children's book, "The Llama is Hungry", found in Lamu's cave, the sentence "they are fruits" is repeated over and over in red writing belonging to Lamu. This indicates that Lamu is trying to believe that he's only eating fruits, which are actually living beings outside of his perspective.
- Meat-O-Vision: Or rather "Fruit-O-Vision". Lamu perceives the world around him as bright, sunny, and cheery (even when it's clearly not) and all the inhabitants are friendly fruit people playfully teasing to be consumed. After eating his parents in a transformation-induced surge of hunger, Lamu forces himself to see the world this way to prevent himself from facing the reality of what he's doing.
- Multiple Endings: Whether or not you choose to destroy the car as Lamu will affect the ending.
- Full Course Meal - The protagonist fails to use the car to escape, due to Lamu having destroyed it previously. Lamu catches up to them and eats them like he did their friends.
- Roadkill - The protagonist reaches the car and drives away, Lamu hot on their trail. The protagonist collides into Lamu as they escape, refusing to disclose details of the nature of the killer while assuring the public his murderous spree is over. Hungry Lamu 2 continues after this ending, revealing that Doctor Orgullo managed to grab the still living Lamu before the police could get their hands on him.
- Old Stories - This ending was added in an update after the game's initial release, found by interacting with a book in Lamu's lair after the perspective change. After reading the book, the camper finds Lamu standing behind him. Lamu almost lets the camper go, but attacks at the cave's entrance. The writings in the book, as well as the newspaper clipping shown afterwards, all but outright state that Lamu Was Once a Man before he was experimented on by his father, who Lamu killed (along with his mother) before running away to the forest.
- Narrator All Along: Its heavily implied the mysterious narrator in the first part of the game's is actually Lamu, talking to himself in the third-person.
- Nightmare Face: Lamu is revealed to have one once the perspective changes to the final camper, with a vaguely human-like face and lips spread to show teeth that are just as human-like.
- No Name Given: The final camper's name, unlike the rest of the group, is never revealed. Even the newspaper story in the Roadkill ending has their name redacted. This continues when they return as the sequel's Player Character, they are merely referred to as "You", something the official timeline clarifies as them being a self-insert for the player.
- Off with His Head!: Lamu takes the heads off his victims whilst noticeably leaving the rest of their bodies accounted for.
- Railroading: Neither Lamu, nor the final camper, can wander off in the forest until they complete the task at hand.
- Room Full of Crazy: Lamu's lair, from the final camper's point of view. Children's books are all strewn about the place filled with ramblings about how his victims are "only fruits".
- Self-Made Orphan: The children's book reveals Lamu killed his parents and fled from home shortly after. The sequel further reveals that they were killed while Lamu/Larry was in the throes of his painful transformation.
- Serial Killer: Due to his insatiable hunger, Lamu kills and devours anyone that comes to Lamu Forest Park by biting off their heads, giving him the title of "The Lamu Killer". He has apparently had over twenty-four victims over the course of twenty-five years (but the possiblity of more is very high).
- Subverted Kids' Show: It's a game about a monstrous llama abomination going on a killing spree.
- Super-Persistent Predator: From the perspective of his victims, Lamu qualifies as this, stopping at nothing until everyone is devoured. Make matters worse is that he's also smart, being able to find solutions when he is obstructed from his "Fruit Friends".
- Survivor Guilt: The surviving camper from the first game is haunted by the deaths of their friends and regrets convincing them that Lamu wasn't real so they would go camping, hallucinating their accusatory corpses at several points in the sequel.
- Too Hungry to Be Polite: Inverted. Hungry Lamu always asks for "permission" before eating anyone; those that refuse he deems "rude" and they get eaten anyway.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: Lamu sees the dog and the player's friends as being sentient fruit he assumes wants to be eaten. The scribblings of "They Are Fruit" in Lamu's favourite book, suggest this to be a self-defense mechanism for what's left of his sanity. Hungry Lamu 2 would expand on this to be a consequence of what happened after his transformation and malnutrition after the subsequent 25 years of isolation living on a diet of forest berries and human flesh. Since llamas only eat fruits, he couldn't have eaten his parents, right? They can't have been his family, they must have just been delicious, yummy fruits…
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: The first half of the game you play as Lamu from a top-down perspective, with everything being drawn in a cartoony style and a narrator giving you instructions. The second half switches to a straight-up first-person Survival Horror and you play from the perspective of the lone surviving camper whose friends and dog you just murdered and ate as Lamu.
- Was Once a Man: The "Old Stories" ending of the first game, as well as the sequel, confirms that Lamu was originally an eight-year-old boy named Larry Bronze.
- Wham Line: Even though Lamu has eaten all three of the "fruit friends", Lamu's hunger is still not satiated.Narrator: Oh? What's that, Lamu? You're still hungry?
Hungry Lamu 2
- Asshole Victim: Given what we find out about Doctor Orgullo, who was implied to be the culprit behind Eric's cure turning Larry into a monstrous llama, and turned his coworkers and random people into horrific mutants in Porkbound and Sea Mongrel, no tears were shed when Lamu claimed him as his final victim.
- Birthday Party Goes Wrong: Larry's transformation into Lamu occurs when Eric forgets to bring home his intended present (a baby llama) and uses a defective cure as a substitute gift.
- Bittersweet Ending: With slightly more emphasis on the sweet. Lamu is finally dead, finally being able to rest in peace after his transformation and painful existence for a long time. Doctor Orgullo is gone as well, stopping any chance of the same thing that happened in the pork farm and the aquarium to happen again. That said, Lamu and the doctor still killed many people, and the protagonist still suffers from Survivors Guilt, with the game being unclear if they'll ever feel peace after what they felt like was their fault.
- Cutting Off the Branches: Hungry Lamu 2 opens with Lamu's point of view of the first game's Roadkill ending.
- Concept Art Gallery: Its unlocked after you beat the game for the first time, containing the game's artwork and models, concept art, behind-the-scenes material, and even a timeline of the Hungry Lamu series events.
- For Science!: Doctor Orgullo's reasoning for continuing Doctor Bronze's experiments with the cure which used animal genes as part of its formula. He shows utter disregard for any concerns and dangers the cure poses, dismissing everyone who suffered (and died) thanks to his experiments as irrelevant. It's also implied his tampering with the formula is what caused Larry to mutate into Lamu in the first place.
- Gone Horribly Right: Doctor Bronze was trying to cure his son's condition so he could enjoy the outside world like the other kids. His final formula succeeded in making Larry strong enough to leave the house... just not as a human.
- Guilt-Induced Nightmare: After the stretch that shows the "Roadkill" ending of the first game from Lamu's perspective, we seemingly play as the protagonist before their friends are killed, only for it to turn out to be a reflection of their memory and guilt about the incident.
- Hate Sink: Despite his limited screentime he is given, the dialogue Dr. Terry Orgullo shows his utter disregard and contemptuous for life, especially how he rants about what happened to Lamu and to the Player's friends are for science, declaring they got what they deserve in the name while mocking the said Player, and how he tampered with Dr. Larry Bronze's serum that turned his own into a ravenous mutant llama.
- Kick the Dog: Doctor Orgullo shows nothing but contemptuous disregard for the Player's lamenting over how their friends were killed by Lamu, mocking the Player and saying how their dead friends (emphasizing "dead" just to rub the salt in the wound) were not only irrelevant, but deserved their fate. And then he suffers a Karmic Death listed above.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler: Doctor Bronze's research and how Lamu came to be, facts hidden behind the secret Old Stories ending in the first game, are quickly outlined at the start of Hungry Lamu 2.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Twice:
- The protagonist has a nightmare about the events of the first game, feeling guilty about his friends dying as he was the one who suggested staying at Lamu Forest in the first place.
- Lamu has a brief moment of lucidity during the final chase sequence, crying profusely about all the people he hurt and guilty that he couldn't be a good person like he promised his mother. This gives the protagonist time to put Lamu out of his misery.
- Previous Player-Character Cameo: When snooping around Dean's Pig Farm, the player runs into Aaron, Leon's younger brother and protagonist of Porkbound. The two have a heart to heart that helps the player get over their guilt over Leon's death.
- Rule of Symbolism: The Gallery explains two cases that
Kulu intended:- The fruits the human characters become in Lamu's vision say something about the actual person.
- Leon Dean is a pear because of its green color, which seems to be his family's Color Motif.
- Tasha Neel is an orange because of her tanned skin tone.
- The Protagonist is an strawberry as part of their overall ambiguous design, as they're meant to be the player's self-insert.
- Terry Orgullo is a tomato because of how people once ate tomatoes with pewter plates, which led to them absorbing lead from the plates and becoming highly poisonous. This likely symbolizes how, through his methods to get a scientific breakthrough, Orgullo is a highly despicable individual.
- The only one who doesnt get an explanation for his fruit appearance is Ken Abel as an apple. However, apple trees have a flower known as apple blossom, which can trace back to his bee allergy.
- Lamu's disheveled appearance is meant to represent tears in the cartoon lenses that he sees the world through.
- The fruits the human characters become in Lamu's vision say something about the actual person.
- The Sociopath: Dr. Terry Orgullo, Dr. Bronze's colleague and assistant during the initial research into the cure that involves use of animal genes. His notes found in Hungry Lamu 2 reveal that he's an utterly despicable, sociopathic misanthrope who treats other people around him with disdain and sees them as inferiors due to his high intellect, and used some of his colleagues as guinea pigs for his experiments which would result in the disastrous events of Sea Mongrel and Porkbound. While Doctor Bronze genuinely wanted to create a cure to help humankind, Terry had absolutely zero morals or compunctions, seeing the research purely as means of elevating his social reputation and to receive universal praise, as well as to exact revenge on those who he believes have wronged him in some fashion. He even goes so far as to insult the Player's friends who were killed by Lamu, stating that they deserved their fate (when they were just a group of innocent people who went camping in the woods where Lamu was taking refuge) and that they were utterly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
- Title Drop: When inspecting the Dean's Pig Farm sign, the player name drops the previous game Porkbound.You: Leon's family business. Always told us how his father wanted him and his brother to take it over one day. I guess he was Pork bound.
- Talking the Monster to Death: Lamu, in a way, does this to himself to allow the player to finish him off. Specifically, its the last shred of Larry's consciousness that overpowers the "Narrator's" wish to run away.
- Tragic Monster: Hinted at in the "Old Stories" ending of the first game, and fully confirmed in the sequel; Lamu was once Larry Bronze, a young boy with an illness that rendered him too weak to go outside and play with other kids. His father, Eric Bronze, was a scientist who was desperate to cure his son, and unintentionally mutated him into a human/llama hybrid monster by administering a faulty prototype cure, which resulted in Larry unintentionally killing both of his parents when taken over by his newfound prey drive. Even worse, it's clear that some sliver of Larry's human self is aware of what he's become and has knowingly suffered for several decades, before being captured by Doctor Terry Orgullo, his father's former assistant and former colleague. By the time the Player kills Lamu, what remains of Larry Bronze briefly takes over his body and simply waits to be killed, showing that beneath the horrifying monster was an innocent little boy waiting to be put out of his misery.
- 20 Minutes into the Past: As the Gallery reveals, the events of both Hungry Lamu games plus the other games connected with the duology happened between February 2002, and February 2003.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Doctor Eric Bronze, a quack doctor studying genetic modification in the attempt to cure his cripplingly sick child resulted in the creation of Lamu, who killed him and his wife and went on to become a serial killer who terrorized a campground for two and a half decades… although the clues found in the sequel imply that Dr. Orgullo, his colleague, might have tampered with the formula before it was administered to Eric's son.