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Violence is an action that comes up more frequently than almost any, bar walking, in video games, from Space Invaders to Doom. This is by no means a moralizing point I wish to make. It makes sense, since stories in games are almost universally driven by drama and by extension conflict, that in a medium that tells the majority of its narratives through literal action, that the most obvious and well-trodden path is to write a story about a literal fight. While I do think that, whether by laziness or convention, video game developers far too often default to this type of story and conflict, there are still new storytelling possibilities in this space.
The horror genre has always attempted to subvert this structure by creating games where, instead of being presented with a fair fight, the player is commonly put at a major disadvantage. Contrary to most games where the player feels a sense of mastery as they learn and practice the skills the game requires, these games make you dread the necessary evil of conflict. This tradition stretches back to the claustrophobic corridors of Alone in the Dark and more famously Resident Evil. Indeed it continues to be employed by many games. The insecurity of rummaging through one’s backpack in ZombiU and the merging of horror with the similarly combat-averse genre of stealth in Little Nightmares are good examples.
As such, it seems as though self professed “reverse horror” game Carrion from Phobia game studio would not be much of a horror game at all, but it may not be that simple. The player is cast for the most part as a Cronenbergian monster who emerges in a research facility with the singular goal of escaping. This leads to hundreds of human casualties. Some are army personnel who attack the monster with flamethrowers and guns. These will force the player to use their wit. The remainder of the NPC’s (non playable characters) are defenseless researchers. This is where I feel Carrion is more substantive. The defenseless characters scream uncomfortably, which made me highly reticent to take part in the gratuitous act of consuming them, and as such I largely tried to avoid them. In spite of my best efforts, at certain points getting where I wanted to go would occasionally lead to the accidental incapacitation of bystanders. Amid their screams it became clear that the most horrifying thing about Carrion was one’s will to keep playing it.
I once again want to stress that it is not strange if one finds Carrion ‘fun’. The act of dispatching with soldiers is designed to be viscerally satisfying. Furthermore the game uses the metroidvania form, granting the monster new abilities periodically to allow the player to not only to solve more complex puzzles, but also serve as new tools to deal with increasingly tough combat encounters. This growing arsenal makes the player feel as though they are growing and evolving. This empowers the player in much the same way as games such as Guacamelee and Metroid Zero Mission before it. Combat is also encouraged as consuming biomass and growing in size is necessary for progressing at certain points. Much like any predator the monster is just trying to achieve its goal. Neither it nor the player know about the lives of the humans it attacks in much the same way a shark does not. All they know is they must eat to survive. When every tool given to a creature by evolution is a hammer, all obstacles can only be dealt with as nails.
While this contrast between empowerment and satisfying action, and the discomfort of being set on defenseless humans is a strong core, the former aspect of the game is occasionally undercut by the fact that progression can grind to a halt rather abruptly. Naturally as the game is about trying to escape an unfamiliar research facility, it has no map or waypoints. The developers have attempted to aid player navigation with message boards telling the researchers where to seek refuge which act as suggestions for the player’s next destination. This combined with non-linear objectives and the dividing of the map into small zones with minimal backtracking means that the player will probably stumble into their next objective more often than not. Occasionally, however, the samey environments and lack of indication where the remaining objective might be, left me stumbling around unsure of where I had visited and where I had not. This led to me feeling less like I was planning my next move and more like I was confusedly running around the same areas where almost all of the threats had been neutralized. Charitably I could say this was the monster struggling to escape, but in practice it felt boring as the game held me back to check one more box before I could progress. This was not a deal breaker for me, however, and while I am slightly unsettled by it, for the majority of my time with the game, it was engaging and at times thrilling.
As such, Carrion stands as a unique take on the horror genre that, rather than placing the player in a position of vulnerability, places them in a position of power, and in doing so asks some interesting new questions.
