Carrion

Developer: Phobia Game Studio; @kroskiewicz

Have you ever wanted to play as an amorphous, eldritch killing machine? Of course you have. We all have. Now you can.

There are a surprising number of games where you get to play the villain, but to get it so viscerally satisfying takes skill. Carrion is a 2D reverse-horror game in which you take on the role of the alien blob stalking through the vent shafts, picking off humans along the way. As you ravage and infect more of the facility you’re trapped in, you discover samples of DNA which you consume to get new abilities and grow into an even fiercer creature.

There’s a bit of puzzling to the game, too, because some paths are blocked off, requiring certain abilities. However, some of your powers can only be used in certain forms, so you have to use special pools to dump some of your mass, enabling you to use powers from your various forms. The problem is, your health is directly proportional to your mass, so the smaller you are, the easier you are to kill. And the humans aren’t keen on having a raging mass-of-muscle just wandering about unchecked.

Whilst a lot of the people bumbling around don’t pose much threat, some of them are armed. A pistol isn’t going to cause you much trouble once you’re bulked up a bit, but the flamethrowers are. Fire needs water to put out, so it becomes essential to know where to withdraw if you suddenly find yourself a bit singed. You don’t necessarily need to engage with the humans if you don’t want to - you could simply stay in the vents, reaching out a tentacle to snatch up a tasty snack until the room is empty. The choice is yours - break the doors down and hurl everything in sight into the walls before they know what’s happening, or become the unseen horror. Eventually, you can take control of the people and The Thing your way into killing all their co-workers whilst you sit in the shadows.

As for spreading about the facility, that’s achieved by activating a certain amount of nodes to spread your mass. Activate the requisite amount and you force the door open to the next area. These points also double as save points, fully healing you in the process. Each area also contains a secret DNA container, unlocking upgrades like longer tentacles or armour. These aren’t required, but then what kind of self-respecting mutant blob would you be if you didn’t have all the spikes and whistles? As you’d expect with this kind of game, there’s some Metroidvania’ing required to get all the secrets.

Scattered about the facility are some material analysers. Crawl into one of these and you’ll experience flashbacks, taking control of the scientists who first entered the underground bunker and found you. It adds a nice perspective and a bit of much-needed context. The story is limited, but it makes sense when you think about it from the point of view of a blob. The same can also be said about the lack of a map. The layout is complicated with several one-way systems, so whilst a map would have been nice as a player, not having one makes a lot of sense if you’re trying to role-play the creature.

The pixel art is densely packed - whilst up close it may be missing some details, the overall effect is horrifically beautiful. There’s a real sense of gore as you take off a limb, or surgically remove heads and fling them around. And then there’s the sound design, which adds a whole other layer of atmosphere. The sound designer, Cris Valesco (Mass Effect, Borderlands), actually contacted the developers after seeing early footage of the game, eager to score it. 

A small point of note, there is DLC for the game, which is Christmas-themed. The highly secret lab decked out in lights and decorations is ludicrous, but that’s what makes it so much more fun. It’s not a huge expansion, but for the low-low price of nothing, you’re getting far more than you’ve paid for. 

The influences for Carrion are easy to see, and, much like the fleshy mass you are, they’re all smashed together into an indulgent experience. It’s not an overly long game, even with the DLC, but there’s still a lot to it. If you at all thought Kurt Russel and Keith David were a bit harsh, you owe it to horror to spiritually redeem all of monster-kind.