Review: Conarium is An Unnerving and Otherworldly Walk Around Antarctica

Platform: PC

Developer: Zoetrope Interactive

Rating: M

MSRP: $19.99

Introduction:

Zoetrope Interactive clearly loves the works of H.P. Lovecraft, the famous author of the surreal and unknown. Their love for his literature is evident in their new title Conarium, as they use not only his style but also his tone.

Lovecraft’s horror wasn’t about jump scares, but rather, slowly unnerving the reader as they read on. To quote the great author: “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”

This is why Conarium’s identity as a “walking simulator” works really well. Cthulhu doesn’t chase strong, bearded space marines down hallways. He and the many old gods slowly bend the minds of their victims until they’ve lost them completely.

Conarium is based specifically on the events of Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. You play as Frank Gilman, who wakes up in a somewhat comfortable, small room sitting in a chair with nobody around and no memory of how he got there. Most of the game’s challenges play out as puzzles of sorts. The first of which is to reboot the power to the facility you’re in. As you leave the building, it’s soon very obvious that you’re somewhere very cold. Antarctica to be exact. It turns out, you and a team of scientists uncovered massive caverns and ruins from a society long past. With no memories and no one around to fill you in, the game always leaves you wondering and piecing together what happened to you.

While exploring, you’ll come across various letters, diaries, items and audio recordings left behind by your colleagues. You occasionally get painful flashbacks that come across as visions, as opposed to recounting a remembered event.

As far as Gameplay goes, there isn’t much​

In Conarium, puzzles sit between you and your next goal. These puzzles can include finding an item to slot into another item, or something more creative, like drawing a symbol that you saw earlier. Other than that, the gameplay doesn’t have a whole lot to it. Luckily the puzzles are varied enough to have this not feel repetitive. With non-repetitive puzzles and a very well done atmosphere, Conarium never felt like a slog to get through.

The disappointing part, however, were the rare action sequences. Lovecraft isn’t much known for his action, preferring much more to frighten and make uncomfortable. Oddly enough, this translates in the less-than-fun chase sequences. Running from monsters found deep within a cave sounds like fun, but if feels out of place in the otherwise slower paced, exploration game.

The presentation is very fitting of H.P. Lovecraft​

In the realm of presentation, Conarium nails what it’s going for. The quiet caverns, coupled with crumbling rock sounds that always sound like they’re around the corner, the large foreboding towers in the otherwise frozen wasteland, and even the narration. While Frank’s voice acting isn’t the best, the game certainly mimics Lovecraft’s choice of wording. Using words that paint unsettling images to set the tone. This comes across in recordings and journal entries throughout the game.

Visually, the transition between human structures to alien/monster structures down beneath the surface is wonderfully done. Structures built by the mysterious race long past are very winding, narrow, and overall weird. The architecture itself feels very alien.

The game rarely has moments where you can actually die, but every new area explored had me on edge, simply because the developers really keyed into the Lovecraftian aspects of their project.

Conarium is a fun journey that perhaps ends too soon​

Honestly, it’s hard to tell whether or not Conarium should have been longer. On one hand, the storytelling sucks you in, but on the other, Lovecraft’s best-known stories are relatively short around 15 pages. Sticking with their love for Lovecraft, this actually fits the mold as well.

The game is only about four hours long and costs $19.99 on Steam. It’s hard to say it should be longer for that price, but maybe that just means Zoetrope should make more Lovecraft based adventures.