Conarium Review

A Lovecraftian novella transformed into the video game medium, Conarium tells an intriguing story in a gloomy and mysterious setting that will leave you with unanswered questions, curiosity, and an overall feeling of dread. Although for every way Conarium succeeds, it also finds ways to stumble.

Many horror games have listed H.P. Lovecraft as an influence for their creation. Conarium takes that influence one step further by using one of Lovecraft’s novellas, At the Mountains of Madness, and telling a story set after the events of the novel. As someone who hasn’t read the aforementioned novella, I can’t speak to how similar the game is to the story, nor do I know how well it holds up in comparison.

What I can say is that Conarium really did feel Lovecraftian in some very good ways. The unanswered questions, the mystery, the curious morbidity, even the game’s short length all fit the theme. It was also very clear that the developers respected the story Lovecraft originally created. There was a layer of depth I didn’t expect and fantastic lore hidden throughout the game, if you were willing to search for it.

Let’s expand on the game’s story for a bit, because for me it was one of the more contentious aspects of the experience. The premise of the game is that a group of scientists create a device that they believe can be used to push the boundaries of what was thought to be the limits of human cognition. You play as Frank Gilman, one of the scientists behind the experimentation. After waking on an abandoned Antarctic base with no memory of what happened, you begin to realise that you had used the device, died, and then come back to life. As visions begin haunting you it becomes a fairly safe bet that the device did in fact work, and has opened up your consciousness to a whole range of otherworldly sights and sounds, seemingly to your detriment. The narrative and lore expands from here in some pretty significant ways and if the story was told in another format I’d say it succeeded greatly.

Having said that, the game also managed some environmental storytelling that was pretty fantastic. In fact, the world design overall was top notch and the lingering creepiness the game managed to create, particularly in later sections, was on point.

I went into Conarium expecting a horror game but I think I was slightly misguided. Conarium isn’t a particularity scary game but nor is it trying to be. It would prefer to create dread via mystery and lore than jump scares. It would prefer to create a dark and gloomy atmosphere than a scary one, and in that regard it succeeds. The question does become though, if Conarium isn’t a horror game, what is it? Well I guess it is a bit of a mixture between horror, puzzle and walking sim. The issue with this is that it doesn’t really excel in any of these areas.

While horror games succeed in making the player uneasy, uncomfortable and scared, Conarium at best made you feel a certain kind of morbid curiosity. Puzzle games are at their best when they can challenge you and surprise you with their creativity, but Conarium’s puzzles were often too simple, uninventive, or challenging for the complete wrong reasons. Walking Sims engage with their environments and storytelling, but as previously mentioned, despite Conarium’s great story, visuals and environmental design, the specific way in which it told its story wasn’t engaging.