Puzzles are more like a series of fetch quests than anything else and it ends up feeling pretty tedious in the end. Puzzles and controls leave a lot to be desired, but Conarium does much else well, making it an easy recommendation for any fans of the author.Conarium‘s puzzle side only shows itself when it’s time to unlock a particular pathway and almost every puzzle’s solution can be solved by simply locating a particular object elsewhere in the area and returning to the location of the puzzle/blocked path.

It is still an adventure game in part, but it gets that part mostly right too thanks to a good atmosphere and a story worth following whether or not you've read its original inspiration from H.P. Conarium thankfully rises above this regularly faulty approach by including just enough actual threats to keep players on their toes. Summar圜overing horror as often as I do, I know by now the telltale signs of a horror game that is little more than a walking sim with a few scripted door slammings. As the game is never too difficult beyond the puzzle frustrations, it's an easy four-hour completion with a guide to find some of the many pick-ups you'll want to grab on your travels. The achievement list includes many for gathering the collectibles of various types, seeing both endings (which can be done with a quick reload of the last checkpoint) and more for unmissable story beats. It looks better than most other games of its scale. Atmosphere is more important to horror than perhaps any other genre, and with the impressive visuals and audio, including a quieted but unsettling original soundtrack, Conarium gets these crucial parts right. It can sometimes feel like a Lovecraft museum, with its omniscient automatron heads playing host and squishy green viscera flooring decorating the halls.Ĭonarium also looks lovely running on Unreal Engine 4 and the audio is usually good and sometimes even great. The game scatters a lot of collectibles around and many of these are merely tangentially related to the story at hand, but they bring more Lovecraftian appreciation to the mix in a way fans will really appreciate.

They clearly have a respect for and understanding of the author and put it to great use. If you haven't read the story yourself, you'll not know which parts came from Lovecraft and which parts came from Zoetrope Interactive. It takes major beats from the Lovecraft novella while bringing wholly new elements to it that don't feel out of place. The story that plays out is neither an adaptation nor a loose homage. Past those sections, the game does a lot right. It's not Lovecraft without creepy stone altars. It's a problem not often seen in console gaming anymore, but it's a consistent reminder that Conarium was born on PC. When one of the puzzles even demanded I use these faulty controls quickly, despite knowing the answer it was tough to get the controller to cooperate well enough to pass it. But you can't adjust the controls for the puzzle sections, and they consistently use the D-pad in ways that feel clunky and nearly broken. In the options, you can reassign any and all buttons for walking around.

The puzzles create an additional hassle because of how poorly optimized the control scheme is. Neither method is fun and while the game seems to want to reward a keen eye for detail, it feels like few would actually solve the puzzles this way. Either achingly scan a large area looking for the often minuscule clue you missed, or you will have to look up the solution online. First, they often slow the pace of the game to a halt because their objectives are so often be unclear, presented in areas so large, that one's choice in solving them are limited. Puzzles also play a major role in the game but these are consistently one of the worst parts of the experience for two reasons. Even then, there are a few really creepy moments within the less gameplay-intensive sections too. It's fair to still call it part adventure game, but it dodges the walking sim categorization by smartly breaking up the walking with the occasional legitimate scare. There are death screens, there is a chase sequence, there are ways to die (and even achievements for doing so a lot and never at all) and you likely will be unsettled more than a few times. Thankfully, this isn't actually the case with Conarium. In similar titles, such a feeling usually gives away the fact that there are no real horror elements beyond its atmosphere. In the three to four hours it takes to see the whole story, much of it will come via notes and memories replayed in front of you, giving the whole experience an adventure game feeling. Waking up in the role of one of the four scientists, players are tasked with uncovering exactly what went on in the oppressive wind and cold of the research center. A science expedition in the Arctic has gone awry. Conarium begins much like Lovecraft's aforementioned novella does.

Conarium puzzles