CARRION made a lot of noise with its gameplay reveal. A “reverse horror-themed game” where you play as a monster sounded novel. Except for that Paradise Lost: First Contact game that has been Kickstarted years ago and hasn’t come out yet which had a very similar look and premise, if not the exact same gameplay. Either way, it looked curious, but not that exciting to me so I was planning to wait for the other people’s reactions before deciding on if I want to try it out myself. Now that it has come out and had lots of positive reviews, I decided to take the plunge. And yeah, my assumptions were spot on. It’s curious and fun, but not that exciting.
The basic idea for this game is like this – you’re controlling a strange biomass of mouths and tentacles that has escaped containment in a research facility. It can eat, it can grow (with metroidvania-ish upgrades you find along the way), it can do object manipulation and it can move freely vertically and horizontally in all locations, as long as your way isn’t blocked by something you can’t move. As such, it works as somewhat of a metroidvania-ish mix of action, adventure/puzzle-solving but without any real “platforming”. The world is divided into levels connected by an overworld where you get from one location to the other. And each level, except for the first one, has a hidden collectible upgrade that provides you with some additional beneficial effect. Though they are usually hidden behind challenges that test your mastery of special abilities. And said special abilities are found in each level, so each time you get new obstacles and new ways to overcome them.
And most of the way it works really well. It’s fun, if often simple, it’s disguising in an entertaining 80s horror way and it’s well paced for the most part. The last separate level of the game was at times infuriating with how badly thought out the camera and randomness of things could kill you, but up until that point the game was really solid, and after that it’s a smooth sailing until the ending. Few sections where you can control humans have surprisingly poor controls, especially when using ladders, controlling the mass at its biggest can sometimes be finicky, even if seemingly intended. Curiously, playing with keyboard and mouse or with a gamepad leads to a slightly different, but equally valid experience. With kb+mouse you turn the creature into a very precise predator who’s good at manipulating things with its many appendages. On a gamepad you’re a frenzied meatball of death, which is also really fun. What isn’t fun is the only big potential issue the game has – the lack of a map. Even if you don’t backtrack for unlockables, you can easily get lost in these levels. I know I did, and I’m usually very good of remembering level layouts in these exploration-focused games. But if you start exploring and backtracking, expect to constantly go wrong directions, which often are one-way as well.
Is CARRION nice? Yeah. I enjoyed it as an overall nice experience. Did it excite me or made me want to ever play it again? Not really. I can recommend checking it out if what you see in the trailers and the demo is appealing to you, but don’t expect anything more out of the game. It’s just a nice game. And maybe that can be enough.