The vent you’re in is tight, damp, and dark. Outside you see something creeping but you’re not the one who’s worried, for the ones outside are creeping to hide from you.
Carrion
Developer:Phobia Game Studio
Platform: PC/PS4/Xbox One
Carrion takes the horror concept and reverses it, putting you in the role of the monster and boy what a monster it is. Like something born out of the head of Carpenter and Cronenberg, you play as this disgusting wad of flesh that swiftly crawls along with laboratory environments who’s hungry for humans.
The demo itself opens with your small monster quickly learning the ropes of movement and how to grab objects with your tendrils. After eating your first few batches of humans you’ll soon grow in size where you’ll gain a web-shooting ability and later a devastating dash when you grow to your largest. When you’re at your absolute max size the horror element of the game really settles in as your massive body lumbers through the environment with a speed that just shouldn’t be possible as scientists scream in abject terror when you burst through the vents and consume their bodies.
Your creature isn’t unstoppable however, as much as it feels like it there are humans with actual weapons that can harm your sweet flesh monster boy. In the demo you’ll encounter soldiers with flamethrowers and even flying sentry robots that can quickly tear through your health, lowering your body size in the process. This is when the game takes a bit of a stealth pivot as you approach these locations with caution. For the most part, I found waiting for the right moment to burst into a room and cause chaos to be a pretty good strategy, but a few areas encourage you to traverse the environment to pick enemies off one by one.
The violence in the game has an almost gleeful nature to it as you can pick up humans with your tendrils and either bring them into your body to consume or brutally swing them around and watch as they noisily get slammed against the walls and scream for their lives. Everything about Carrion feels really tight and polished, from the way you deftly move across the environment to picking an object/person up and flinging it across the room. If there’s something to take away the most from this demo it’s the absolutely top notch sound design. The creature itself has a slick, sort of wet sound to its movements, and added with some of the most horrifying screams I’ve heard in a game make an already gruesome affair more so.
Carrion’s demo is currently available for the next few days and I can’t recommend you enough to try it out. The full release is due out sometime next year on PC and Xbox One.
