![]() There are a few moments where this attitude saved me though, but most of game is a passive experience. So much so that I properly missed a few stingers because I immediately ran away from several scenes early on as I was expecting something more dangerous than a simple scare. I was fully in horror game mode while playing this. The stunning mix of music and sound effects adds to the tension as well. The lighting and shadow effects are next level and make the game so much more eerie than it would otherwise be without them. So taking these horrors out of my imagination and placing them on the screen made them tangible, and allowed my analytical side to gamify the experience rather than let me be immersed in the moment. The player always has a much more vivid imagination than the game can ever hope to realize. Conarium isn’t a full-fledged monster game, opting instead for a much more subdued tone.Īlthough the few scenes where dangers that can end your game show up are actually a lot less scary because of one major problem with the medium of video games and horror games, especially with something so esoteric as Lovecraftian fiction. Along the way across the Antarctic, Frank will encounter an array of increasingly difficult puzzles and a handful of actually dangerous foes that he must escape from or bypass. The gameplay itself is a fairly standard for a horror game similar to Layers of Fear. It’s a tricky balancing act to both create engaging gameplay, mostly in the form of puzzles, while also crafting an intricate and appreciable setting, and the devs seem to have succeeded in most ways. And it’s pretty clear that Zoetrope understood where this ideal was best applied, within the game world, rather than built into gameplay. The Cthulhu mythos is fueled by strange and mysterious powers that are completely alien to our understanding. There’s a real tension in this game, which is pretty surprising given the simple gameplay elements in Conarium basically boil down to a horror-driven “walking simulator”. And it seems like the game developer did a wonderful job given the limited scope of the setting. Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness, there’s tons of old-school horror buried within the game. Lovecraft once wrote in an essay about horror literature: “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” And being that Conarium draws heavily from, but takes place after, H.P. You awake to find the entire area deserted and as you try to figure out what happened, slowly uncover an endless and confusing string of horrifying truths. In Conarium, you play as Frank Gilman, a member of an Antarctic Upuaut Expedition. Zoetrope Interactive and Iceberg Interactive bring you their Lovecraftian horror title, Conarium, this time on PS4 and Xbox One. Only seemed to use 1 core of my CPU (1 was at 60% while the rest at less than 20%)ĪMD FX-9590 | 16GB DDR3-2133 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 17.3.6 | Samsung 850 Evo 250GB | Solus 3 | Kernel 4.15.7-60.A copy of this game was provided by the developers for the purposes of this review. Some Steam achievments didn't seem to work for me The odd graphical glitch such as an area not being lit properly by the flashlight Ran very well, framerate was usually 80+ My total system RAM usage was 2.5-3GB while they list 6GB foir the minimums. A couple of other things I will mention are that while it doesn't list supporting AMD graphics cards for Linux I had no issues using mine and also it uses a lot less RAM than it has for the requirements. Overall I would recommend this to fans of HP Lovecraft and fans of puzzle/adventure games. The puzzles for the most part are well done with the exception of two that annoyed me. ![]() It had great atmosphere and a good story. I kind of expected a run and hide horror game for some reason, which isn't my cup of tea, where what I got was a nice HP Lovecraft puzzle/adventure game. I recommend that you look for it on promotion (like I did) and then get it at a more reasonable **** in all, a very solid H.P. Lovecraft enthusiasts (such as myself) can enjoy it and safely add it to the list of the most solid attempts at bringing Lovecraft's work to video games so far. All of this makes up for the short time it takes you to complete the game. ![]() The "mood" is there, the lore is good, the level design is interesting. Not one for the horror fans that will be looking for proper scares and complex puzzles, even though that's not what is promised, so no fault there. It is precisely for staying true to the works of Lovecraft and for creating the right atmosphere that it is worth experiencing. It makes up for its flaws with the ambience and the interesting story that unfolds before you as you progress through the game. One can put it in the "walking simulator" catalogue as it is clearly one worth it for the experience and lore.
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