Gilman can’t run for long, however, and I often had to die and retry these segments multiple times just working out the perfect path. These bits essentially play out as chase sequences, where you need to bolt through the labyrinthine passageways, dodging dogged pursuers. At a few moments throughout Conarium, I found myself up against a supernatural force that would kill me if I touched it. The action segments are much sloppier and less fun to figure out, though they’re kept blessedly short and rare. A few of the puzzles even stumped me for a while, making it all the more rewarding to finally solve them. It builds on the sense that you’re in an extraordinary place with a bizarre logic all its own. It’s all suitably otherworldly and adds to the overall vibe of the game.
Conarium’s mind-benders often rely on strange, alien symbols, on trying to understand runes or star charts. Of these more interactive bits, the puzzles are the most interesting and satisfying. You could slot this game comfortably into the “walking simulator” category, though there are a handful of puzzles to solve, some light adventure game-style inventory management and a couple of sequences where you’re actually at risk of dying. If you’re noticing that I haven’t said much about Conarium’s gameplay, well, there’s not too much to say. It doesn't ruin the plot, but it makes some moments of high drama funnier than the game seemingly intended. Gilman’s lines are delivered awkwardly and with a bizarre, not-quite-identifiable accent. Conarium’s writing successfully mimics the stilted, bombastic style of Lovecraft, but its voice acting less effective. Though a few other characters show up throughout, most of the voicework is carried by Gilman, as he comments on the things you’ve seen, the revelations you’ve had or the growing pain in his skull. Moreover, they feel in line with Lovecraft’s style many of his tales are told in the epistolary form, via pieced together fictional historical records. These may seem like pretty cliché storytelling methods for a video game at this point, but I enjoyed the story being told. As you begin searching the base for clues about the fate of your colleagues – and about the truth of what happened to you – you’ll uncover massive caverns, ancient ruins and more, slowly piecing together a deeply unsettling plot.Īs you explore Upuaut base and the depths beneath it, you’ll occasionally stumble across letters, diary entries, audio recordings or even flashbacks in the form of strange visions. In Conarium, you play as Frank Gilman, a member of an Antarctic expedition who has woken up to find his group’s base of operations deserted and his memory wiped clean. And while this effort inevitably shares many of the weaknesses of other Lovecraft adaptations, it does an admirable job with its limited tools.Ĭonarium’s writing successful mimics the bombastic style of Lovecraft Conarium is explicitly based on the events and setting of At the Mountains of Madness. That hasn’t stopped creators from trying to capture the essence of Lovecraft in other mediums, however. How do you interpret that to a screen, to a form where people inevitably will see it for themselves? Lovecraft’s best stories are about things so horrible they are undefinable, indescribable, maddening to even gaze upon. That quote embodies Lovecraft’s approach to his own fiction, and it helps explain two things: first, why his work has remained such an ingrained part of pop culture even now, nearly a century since he started writing and second, why his work has been so remarkably difficult to translate to more visual narrative mediums like film and video games. Lovecraft once wrote in an essay about horror literature: “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” Lovecraft, an author who has been survived by his gothic horror writing 80 years after his death. Zoetrope Interactive's Conarium takes its inspiration from H.P.
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