#carriongame

(I’m back baby, enjoy this convo between Rory and a new character. Maja!)

Hey everyone! Things have been busy but I am back on my shit. I'm planning on writing out important dialogue cut-scenes as full fanfiction style one-shots just to get the tone right for my personal use later on when I actually make the in-game scene. Anyway, enjoy this peek at two characters: Aurora (Rory) and Esmeralda!

Enjoy these very nice picrews of lesbians from my video game!

Full Review: https://youtu.be/HynGUbP3GZk

Summary

Carrion is a sidescrolling, action adventure, game.

Developed by Phobia Game Studio, Published by Devolver Digital who also published the last game I reviewed Stories Untold

Phobia Game Studio is based in Poland but has members that work remotely all over the world. Phobia previously released their game Butcher which in their own words is, “a fast-paced 2D shooter and a blood-soaked love letter to the cult classics of the genre.”, that’s been well received. It looks interesting. I might check it out down the line.

The premise of Carrion is that of a Reverse Horror game. In a conventional horror game you play as a ‘normal person or group going up against horrific threats & odds in a frightening environment w/little chance of survival. In Carrion you ARE that horrific threat seeking to escape an unidentified research facility & your human captors.

As for the game’s achievements, it’s not bad to 100%. You’re looking at roughly 10-20 hours to 100% this game. More on this in a bit in the Achievements section.

Analysis

Disclaimer: I do not like most ‘video game puzzles’. To me they too often devolve into ‘guess what the developer was thinking’. I’m more of an action genre gamer that decided to start his YouTube review process doing two puzzle heavy games. I don’t f**king knows why I did this.

Firstly, the music in this game is incredible. The credits cite Cris Velaco and Maciej Niedzielski for music in the game but I believe it’s the score by Chris Velasco that really drew me in. It’s dark, textured, and goes a long to establish that atmosphere of Carrion. It’s good enough that I’ve been listening to it frequently outside the game… like when writing this review! In short, it's awesome.

The pixel art has a visceral and vibrant feel to it. It’s enough that if I stare at most parts of the environment long enough I start to wonder about the backstory of that location. There’s enough details to support a somewhat ‘lived in history’ with all the tiny pixel artifacts of life.

The player controls an unidentified monster of unknown origins that is a writhing mass of worms, ravenous mouths, and eyes. This monster grows in size and ability the more people it consumes. I have to say playing as this monster feels absolutely grotesque at times. There is something to be said about gore caused by avatars resembling humans. For the lack of a better phrase such gore and violence is relatable. This same gore when controlling a completely inhuman monster though? It’s really unsettling at times. There was something about when the monster grew in size and was flying through vents and passages that almost made me sick to my stomach. I kept thinking of how my waste matter passed through my intestinal system when I did this which in turn made me think of the wet pile of meat we are just neatly contained in a bag of skin.

Carrion reminded me a lot of the body horror genre David Cronenberg is known for with his films such as Shivers and Videodrome. Body horror being a genre of film that exposes the revolting reality and fear of being a product of a messy organic body. There will be 3 main things the player will be doing in Carrion:

-COMBAT

-EXPLORATION

-PUZZLES

The combat essentially boils down to grabbing an enemy and eating them, grabbing an environmental object (or enemy) and thrashing them about, or using some special abilities on both enemies and objects. The enemies aren’t pushovers most of the time. In fact I had to err on the side of caution more often than not as even a basic human with a handgun could mow the monster down in just a few seconds. So carefully considering my approach was usually an interesting series of choices to make. Should I be stealthy? How can I use the environment to my advantage? Since the monster’s combat options were more physics based than not I did get a real sense of agency applying my IRL logic to overcoming combat encounters.

When the combat got really intense that’s the only time there seemed to be a disconnect between my intentions as a player and the actions of the monster. In tight situations the physics based approach to combat and movement seemed closer to a bane than it was a boon. Or I could just be terrible at controlling the writhing mass of a creature. This disparity wasn’t enough to destroy my overall enjoyment of the game but I do wish the mappings between input and on screen movement were tighter.

The exploration in this game is light. There isn’t too much rounding the next corner or going to the next screen to happen across some pixel art vista of epic proportions. There are sights to behold for sure. But most of the exploration in the game was a means to an end of going from location A to B and/or puzzle solving and not so much discovery.

“Good design requires, among other things, good communication of the purpose, structure, and operation of the device to the people who use it. That is the role of the signifier.” -Don Norman

What was frustrating about exploration in this game in general is there was little in the way of signifiers to navigate one’s way around the world and this led to me getting lost and backtracking a lot. When I first went to this game’s subreddit the most common post I came across was addressing the game’s lack of an in-game map. The thing is not every game needs a map. Navigation as a gameplay mechanic is as valid as any other mechanic and some players may find great joy in knowing the lay of the land and using their own sense of direction to traverse the environment. Level designer for Carrion Krzysztof Chomicki had this to say during an interview with Oleg Nesterenko of Gamer Career Guide:

“It's like with Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, those games being vastly misunderstood at first by the majority of reviewers. Demon's Souls didn't review all that well because the game didn't explicitly tell you what to do. Those games didn't have any maps. But eventually a few people figured out what those games were about.” -Krzysztof Chomicki

To much of this I agree. I absolutely love the Dark Souls series. If I keep doing this YouTube thing I promise you there is going to be a TON of Dark Souls content. I almost wish I could exist in that world. The thing is IF the Dark Souls character picked a paper map or something like that would exist ‘in universe’ that’s not going to just thrust me out of the game. BUT…

When Chomicki said, “The original Metroid didn't have a map and it was totally fine and nobody complained. Back in the day, even games that did have maps still required you to pay attention to the environment.”

This is where I wildly disagree. Here’s the thing. I played Metroid when it was released. I played a lot of old fucking games when they were released. Generally your goal as a gamer back then was to have access to Nintendo Power, the Nintendo Hotline, a Game Genie or someone at school to help you out. Because you knew that there were games out there that you might ‘get stuck’ in. Getting stuck meaning if you didn’t have one of the previously mentioned options you weren’t going any further in the game. There’s ‘paying attention to the environment’ and then there’s pixel hunting every inch of a game to the point of statistical exhaustion. The key difference between Metroid and Carrion is that in Metroid, for better or worse, your goal is to survive while using exploration to drive your pixel hunting quest forward. The overarching puzzle was finding the spot you didn’t interact with yet and hope that’s the next step forward. It was a giant yet simple task. And as obscure as some of these spots were there was at least a sense that maybe… that’s how that world would ‘really’ be constructed.

In Carrion it seemed more the exploration and combat was held back by having to solve Rube Goldberg puzzles on a regular basis and it was just such a bummer. I’m not totally against puzzles but in video games especially they seem so utterly arbitrary a vast majority of the time. In Carrion the real horror aspect of the game was realizing I was having fun with the combat, movement, and exploration BUT all that was going to come to a screeching end when I had to solve Rube Goldberg Puzzle #05. You’ve seen by now in the footage the monster is just this mass of meat pulling itself around on its tentacles right? Even as a newly freed monster at the beginning of the game it’s strong enough to thrash people around like throwing toys and mash a human being in its jaws to jelly in seconds. So it’s reasonable to say this monster… it’s pretty strong right? Let’s take a look at this switch. Being that this creature is tentacle madness would it be reasonable to bet that this being could flip a switch within its range that can be pulled by much weaker humans that it eats up, spits, out and eviscerates? Let’s see what happens. Oh that’s right. Not a damn thing. See… you need a ‘special’ tentacle to flip switches. It doesn’t matter that this creature is strong enough to rip that switch off the wall with any one of those tentacles… you need the ‘special flip the switch’ tentacle to flip the switches. So right away in the early parts of the game I’m being told to discard some of my common sense to play another round of ‘guess what the developer was thinking’. This vibe continues onto the level design itself. While the game is beautiful to behold from its industrial settings and vibrant fauna areas, the actual infrastructure… when I tried to make sense of it… really seemed to fall apart at times.

<insert clip of makinig fun of infrastructure>

And don’t even get me started on the one way air ventilation ducts. Like if this game is going to have puzzles… so be it. But for the life of me they barely made any sense.

Too often the AI in this game felt like they were meat bags waiting to challenge the player or roving health packs instead of living beings inhabiting a space they worked and/or lived in. That doesn’t mean they weren’t challenging; I died PLENTY in this game. This also doesn’t mean there weren’t some AI that was actually ‘living and working’... but most of them just yeah… roving health packs and ‘gunmen automatons’.

As for the deluxe edition… I felt it was on the steep side. Ten bucks for a bunch of wallpapers, a small artbook, and a very short comic is a bit much. Considering their previous game Butcher is also ten bucks Phobia is kinda saying the art runoff from Carrion is worth just as much as an entire one of their games. However if they threw in the incredible soundtrack I would consider that fair. But they don’t sooooo…. I would avoid it if you do buy this game.

Achievements

-21 achievements total.

-All but 3 are done via natural progression of the story.

-Do Cerebral Feast as soon as possible as it is possible to reach the end of the game having killed everyone & have no one left do Cerebral Feast on. OR start a new game & do it in under 5 minutes. ;)

-After player completes ‘The Bunker’ level is the best time to complete the remaining achievements.

-Resources I used to 100% are linked in the description.

Impact

BAFTA 2020 Best Debut Game

Steam Reviews: Very Positive Open Critic: 77 out of 100 Metacritic: User score of 7.9 out of 10

At least half a million sold.

There aren’t a lot of reverse horror games out on the market. Especially ones where you play as something utterly inhuman; a true monster. Carrion is no doubt likely to be part of most if not all ‘reverse horror’ and ‘villain protagonist’ game discussions for years to come. That’s not even mentioning it’s very unique movement system owing to a very unique avatar. There’s little doubt Carrion has opened doors on mobility in game design as well. Recommend

Who is this game made for? First and foremost… people who like puzzles. If you are the type of person that likes a little gore ridden science fiction horror in your puzzle experience Carrion should be right up your alley. Also if the idea of ‘physics based combat’ because you’re a many tentacled monster that can thrash people and things about the environment… it might be worth your time to check out. You also might like the last game I reviewed, Stories Untold which is a sci fi horror adventure game with 100% less swarming mass of worms as the main character.

Avoid this if you’re gamers like me; people who prefer action oriented games like Prototype, Nier: Automata, Warframe, etc. If this game was free of Rube Goldberg puzzles I’d have a completely different disposition on it as I would love to just freely explore Carrion’s world free of such contrivances but I really don’t like ‘guess what the developer was thinking’ puzzles and this game is chocked full of them. As fun as I did have with the game I am so eager to be done with this review and done with this game forever… or at least until I fire it up again for a potential art study for the game really is beautiful. Finally if you’re a fan of dark, atmospheric music the soundtrack by Chris Velasca is 100% worth checking out whether this game sounds like your thing or not. You’ve been listening to it the whole time!

Sources

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/953490/CARRION/

Credits: https://www.mobygames.com/game/xbox-one/carrion/credits

Rube Goldberg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_hbEhyrNAM

Open Critic: https://opencritic.com/game/9846/carrion

Metacritic: https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/carrion Achievements: https://steamcommunity.com/id/LihimSidhe/stats/appid/953490/achievements

Containment Unit Guide: https://youtu.be/gjEte2Mr2Hw

Sales: https://gamerant.com/carrion-game-sales/ Dev Interview #1: https://www.ausgamers.com/features/read/3628197