Developed by the aptly named Phobia Game Studios, Carrion (Switch/ PS4/ XBox One/ PC) transforms John Carpenter’s The Thing into a repugnant pixelated biomass of bloody tentacles and rows of sharpened teeth, squirming through cracks and crevices of a dark research laboratory. Like great horror movies of the past, the game begins with our titular organism breaking out of its containment unit and squirming its way through the facility to find an escape route. Unlike those great horror movies, however, we see events from the Thing’s perspective, as we consume and absorb fleshy bipedal scientists and redecorate their workstations with the blood and dismembered limbs of their colleagues and friends…
Following the creature’s outbreak from a containment unit and its subsequent rampage throughout the research facility, flashbacks explain how the creature got there in the first place and culminates towards a surprisingly climactic, if ambiguous, ending. Since the story takes more of a backseat, the real Carrion experience can be found in the surprisingly gory pixel art – including disembowelment, blood sprays, and bisected corpses – and gameplay, which mixes Metroidvania exploration elements and upgrades. Not to mention the admittedly sadistic feeling that comes from torturing and devouring wandering scientists. This minimal story lends itself to a more expansive exploration style gameplay, and thankfully isn’t bogged down by a monotonous family drama that sometimes plagues monster movies…
Exploration largely involves squirming through tight gaps, crawling through ventilation shafts, à la Ridley Scott’s Alien, and grabbing onto surfaces and bodies with wriggling, bloodied tentacles. The abhorrent 2D pixelated knot of tentacles at least has some advantages here – and to say it makes you feel utterly inhuman and totally alien would be quite the understatement! While exploring this maze, you’ll uncover other containment tubes containing pieces of yourself from which you can gain new abilities to better overcome hazards and obstacles in true Metroidvania fashion. Perhaps as if, in the Metroid series, you were a Metroid yourself, rather than Samus in a mech suit. The creature also has an echolocation ability, which acts as a low guttural growl to scare humans and helps locate fissures infested with a mess of alien flesh and teeth like yourself which are used as spawn and save points.
However whereas exploring the planet Zebes in Super Metroid was a delight, with a consistent feeling of progression through item upgrades and deep exploration, the lack of any kind of map in Carrion makes traversing the research facility a puzzle unto itself. Given the sadistic thrill of pouncing at scientists and launching spiked suckers, after a while the exploration can feel somewhat anti-climactic and slightly frustrating.
As you explore, you’ll also find scientists and armed security guards patrolling, or otherwise running and screaming, banging their arms against security doors as they hear the low growls of an unseen entity – a fun mechanic that can scare or lure victims to your tactical advantage. That being said, as gruesome and inhuman as you may appear, you’re not impervious to everything in the facility. While you may benefit from being able to sneak around dark shafts in the ceiling or under floors, you’ll have to be smart when dealing with armed guards. Even with your ability to attack with freakish appendages and absorb them into your own, ever expanding biomass, bullets can still hurt you, and if you’re not cautious, you’ll end up as a gross splatter of pinkish worms and fleshy matter on an underground facility wall. Fortunately, there are no Kurt Russells or Sigourney Weavers to contend with, and most fleshy bipedal meat bags are easily dealt with so long as you’re careful. But that doesn’t diminish the satisfying role-reversal of being able to scare scientists into a corner and watch them hopelessly look for a way out of a tight, enclosed room, only to come face-to-tentacle with a Giger-worthy nightmare…
Despite issues with navigating the laboratory’s labyrinthine design, it does provides Carrion with a brooding atmosphere, though it may make you question how any scientist could possibly find their way around, especially with a ravaging beast dripping blood hunting them down from unseen crawl spaces. The horror tension is maintained largely thanks to sound design, grotesque art which is heightened by the pixel style, and otherwise monstrous creature design that would make even John Carpenter or Donovan Leitch shudder, especially after being absorbed by the Blob in 1988.
One of the strengths of Carrion is undoubtedly it’s wonderfully grotesque pixel art, which pays tribute to ‘80s horror monster movies, from The Thing and The Blob to Alien, where the creature itself looks like it could have come straight out of a B-movie. We’ve played as our favourite movie monsters before, but they tend to remind us that they were guys in costume: the tangled mess of biological nonsense that makes up Carrion’s box-art mutant couldn’t be farther from Ridley Scott’s apex predator, or another deviation of Bram Stocker’s blood sucking Prince of Darkness. As it slithers over surfaces and lashes out with spaghetti-esque tendrils, it seeps bloody pixels, exposes fierce jaws, and rips its victims to shreds. Gross as it is to think about, the sprite-based pixel animation is detailed enough to pick out severed limbs and torn torsos in a disturbingly realistic manner.
The movement of tentacles and human characters echo a fluid, realistic animated property akin to rotoscoping found in the likes of the 1989 Prince of Persia, 1992’s Flashback, or the 1991 Another World. This adds a sense of real-world physics that inspires the impression that if Carrion was a pre-existing Carpenter monster movie, it would have been animated with his signature practical effects. The creators behind the game even commented on how they utilised point-based physics and sprite animation, which enhances this feeling.
As with great horror movies of the past, the creepy hallways haunted by your alien form are accompanied by an eerie score and your own monstrous groans. Though it really acts as an ambient filler, the low hum of the soundtrack haunts the background, while panicked cries of unsuspecting humans fill the soundscape, along with the sound of creaking shafts, clashing grates, the crunch of devoured victims, and generally gross tendrils feeling out the environment. At times, the music heightens a sense of panic and drama in tune with the scientists own fearful reaction, though these moments are fleeting and ironically short lived seeing how quickly you make mincemeat out of them. If there’s an aspect of Carrion that would have captured its ‘80s horror roots, it would be a greater sense of human terror by providing them with a sense of character where they grow increasingly unhinged as their colleagues and friends are devoured around them, adding to the sense of abhorrent sadism the game is naturally built around.
It crawls, it creeps, it eats scientists alive! While the lack of a map damages the feeling of progression that marks a good Metroidvania, the gory pixel art and sadistic gameplay make Carrion a unique horror title that succeeds in its exploration of monster movie role reversal. It’s just a shame there is something mildly anxiety inducing, not from witnessing bisected corpses strewn across walkways, but from the nagging thought that you missed something and can’t find your way to the next area. Like the titular mutant tubifex, at times it feels like a struggle to escape the current area.
