![]() Even if you don’t have a great memory, the auto-updating journal gives decent hints on what to use. There’s rarely a moment where I felt unacceptably lost, like not understanding environmental triggers or what I needed to do with certain symbols. The gameplay and puzzles play decently overall. The same could have been said for the main character, but Conarium earns its appeal when it matters most. Faust’s voice acting is so good I was able to overlook my lukewarm reception to his very presence. Faust often chimes in when more silence might have enhanced the environmental tension. Faust’s voice, the other presence that dominates Conarium‘s playtime, and toes the line between horrified and campy so carefully that Vincent Price might have been proud. This leads to the double-edged appeal of Dr. Conarium review: the puzzles are often embedded in the environment and have a logical through-line. I recommend playing Conarium with the quiet mode on to stifle most of Frank’s dialogue and keep what successful tension there is. Overexplaining is often the death of horror, and with so much of the tension relying on the great sound design, listening to Frank ask what’s going on repeatedly adds annoyance over intrigue. ![]() Frank’s voice acting is inconsistent and there’s just too much of it. The sound similarly falters in part when it comes to the voice acting. Visually, the environment is phenomenal, but the eventual creature designs and encountered character models are modeled with a lower resolution gooey visual style that looks more unfinished than creepily unformed. Other aesthetic elements don’t fare as well. The soundtrack is admirably understated, eschewing high tension strings for a moodier score of piano and borderline unnerving drone. Conarium‘s sound design frequently accompanies this feeling expertly, echoing groans and shifting rock to communicate a place that never feels fully at rest. Frequent images of Frank’s breath vaporizing in the point of view mix with honeycombed organic life and a perpetual settling of snow and dust to create a place that often feels alive with moisture. Chills, in this case, does not mean fear but the sort of cold that travels suddenly and unexpectedly up the spine. But it also has some of the lows through uneven voice acting and gamier elements that fit awkwardly alongside the otherwise great environmental storytelling.Ĭonarium works well when using the Unreal engine to craft a chilling environment for the player to navigate. Conarium hits some of the highs of Lovecraft-inspired video games with a firm control of mood and environmental storytelling. There’s potential to be mined from plumbing Lovecraft’s obsession with the horrific unknown that frequently butts heads against many developers’ desires to provide a solid narrative experience. ![]() Lovecraft continues to be a popular source for video game inspiration. Conarium review: the light is tantalizing but doesn’t promise safety. Through Frank’s interactions with the arctic mystery, the player will discover what happened to the expedition team and what this may mean for the future of humanity. ![]() The mostly linear path forward takes the player and Frank through the surprising depths of the base into an expansive network of tunnels with sudden shifts into another time or space. All navigation through the snowy expedition base is done through first-person moving and object manipulation with careful focus needing to be paid to environment details for clues. The player begins and traverses through Conarium as Frank Gilman, a scientist on an Antarctic expedition searching for the unknown. Lovecraft’s “At The Mountains of Madness” with environmental puzzles and accompanying spooks. Conarium hopes to provide a first-person horror experience as a spiritual successor to H.P. Publisher Iceberg Interactive presents developer Zoetrope Interactive’s Conarium for review. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |