Phobia Game Studio·Released Jul 23, 2020·Single player
Carrion is a reverse horror game in which you assume the role of an amorphous alien being. Use your unique otherworldly abilities to your advantage and hunt down your prey!
More of a buffet line than a hunting trip.
Carrion is a special thing in many ways, but its actual meat and potatoes structure is as formulaic as the genre gets. Thankfully, its core gameplay of tearing room after room of people into wet chunks of corpse never, ever gets old, and sustains the experience throughout. It looks superb, sounds great and is plenty of fun to play, despite some minor issues which just hold Carrion back from the upper echelons of the Switch library.
The result, for me, was anxiety. A low background hum of “did I miss something”, combined with the high notes of being unable to find the next new area. It was enough to shade my entire experience with Carrion, turning a pleasant enough Metroidvania with a one-of-a-kind protagonist into something I felt like I was struggling to escape from.
A lack of navigational tools put a damper on Carrion's otherwise excellent power fantasy of being a horror movie monster
Carrion makes being a vicious monster satisfyingly simple and captivatingly gruesome, even if it doesn't always capitalize on its strengths.
Playing as a monster has moments of devious fun, but the quest is repetitive.
You’re the monster, and you’re very hungry
Most importantly, Carrion’s smart. It’s an extremely finely crafted game, so much so that you’re essentially playing a meat-smeared Metroidvania without a map, and you won’t even miss it. That’s quite something.
Discussing the creature design in his gruesome 1982 adaptation of The Thing - a movie which, incidentally, opens with K…
