Reviews: Carrion

Spoiler free review of the game Carrion played on the steam deck OLED.

Disclaimer: The images in this post are the screenshots from the steam page of the game.

About the game

CARRION is a reverse horror game in which you assume the role of an amorphous creature of unknown origins, stalking and consuming those that imprisoned you.

Steam page

Margot’s stats

• Device: Steam Deck Oled

• Difficulty:

• Completed: yes - main story

• Time: ~6 hours

• Summary: Carrion attracted me with its “reverse horror” description. I am pretty jumpy so I enjoyed the idea that I am playing the monster rather than hiding from it. It also got onto my radar during a search for more metroidvanias and this looked quite different from like Ori or Hollow Knight that I was playing at the time. I would say this is more of a side scroller with some light back tracking and metroidvania aspects, so don’t buy it for those. Play it for the reverse horror and pixel art.

• Verdict: Recommend - 7/10

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Narrative and Gameplay

Image from Carrion the game from their steam page.

The basis for the game is pretty simple. It reminded me a bit of the original Alien film. You are a being in a lab, and want to escape. During your escape you encounter different areas or biomes, and need to do some basic puzzles for which you unlock the abilities. Is this Metroidvania? I don’t really think so. You do some backtracking but it felt more like a horror platformer than metroidvania to me.

You essentially gain some abilities and you can make yourself smaller and bigger. You grow in size as you eat people. The movement was smooth if a bit fast and uncontrollable at times. It wasn’t always easy to sneak around. This is probably the biggest initially off-putting element of the game. If you stick with it you will be rewarded in my opinion though.

The enemies are sometimes more challenging than I would have liked. :D I am just pretty rubbish at avoiding bullets I think (the movement mechanic is maybe also adding to this but never long enough to really affect me). Maybe my reaction times have slowed down with age. haha.

The movement of the monster might be a bit where gameplay seems a bit chaotic and jarring but you are a fleshy blob moving about so it is not necessarily “unrealistic” to the game. The speed and chaotic movement did put me off to begin with but with a bit of practice and getting used to the size of the tunnels and areas and how the being moved at different sizes, I got used to it and enjoyed the game.

Some of the puzzles were harder or more obscure than maybe they needed to be, and I did look up a couple of things, but my overall experience was positive.

Now my personal weakness is maps and reading maps … well in this game there are no maps … which also was not a good idea. At one point I somehow ended up in a loop and couldn’t figure out how to progress. I still can’t tell you how I solved it. Suddenly I was in a new area.

To complete an area you tend to have to find certain points in the map and then the next part becomes unlocked. Along the way you find your abilities.

This gaming loop did become a bit repetitive, but just when I got a bit bored of it, they introduced flashbacks. I won’t say more about these, but I liked that change of pace and the addition of them to tell the story of what happened.

Pixel Art

Image from Carrion the game from their steam page.

Once again this is a side scroller and pixel art game. It is by no means super realistic but the sci-fi setting is nice and I am always impressed at what developers and artists can create in pixel art. The monster did look horrible and fleshy and each biome is distinguishable and has unique features. It must have been a lot of work.

Verdict: Recommend - 7/10

This is by no means a long game, but fun with a twist on the normal horror genre it is a game I’d happily recommend. The downsides of not having a map and some initially jarring movement control, are countered with intricate pixel art and fun story telling. Sometimes I just want to cause destruction and I feel like it is easier as a monster than PvP. :D (I used to always destroy my cities in sim city, what does that say about me).