Holism: Carrion’s Vivacious Viscera

Carrion, a “reverse horror” game that came out a few months ago, wears its inspirations on its sleeve. Like a lot of games, it draws from 1980’s pop culture; in this case, it’s a bevy of Eighties horror films about Eldritch, alien grotesqueries. Somewhat uniquely, Carrion flips the script: you fill the shoes of the fleshy, sinewy abomination, haunting the halls of a laboratory as it snatches, dismembers, and eats its staff. If the monster has a higher level of brain functioning or a vision other than growing fatter and bloodier, it’s coy about it. The industry is known for plenty of lunkheaded heroes, but protagonists this animalistic are rather rare (then again, this game out a couple months after Maneater, a game where you play a shark. Maybe these are signaling a new trend?). It’s just one thing the game took from its non-gaming inspirations.

The source material is clear: a “best of” highlight reel of monsters from the Late Seventies to Early Nineties. The creature constantly gains and loses body mass, like the Blob or the Stuff. It can squeeze through painfully tight corridors, like Eugene Tooms of The X-Files fame. Its chompers suggest it and the Alien from Alien share a dentist. Its power to take over people’s minds and bodies with a tendril brings to mind an assortment of science fiction, a trait not dissimilar to its webbing. But it’s the Thing from The Thing that leaves the biggest footprint. It’s a beast that infests people, assimilates whatever it consumes, and takes poorly to fire. The so-called “Carrion” even captures the slightly silly, ungainly movement of John Carpenter and Rob Bottin’s iconic monster. It’s the kind that makes the situation all the more ghastly when the movement turns from scuttling about to ripping folks in half. The Thing already got a video game in 2002, but the appeal of Carrion is that you’re only “in” The Thing in that you’re “in the Thing.”

So… yeah. You kill people and mostly eat them, and your vague goal lies in escaping this prison, presumably so you can kill and eat more people. Doing this means exploring this low key (if rather picturesque) labyrinth, gaining powers to unlock areas and fulfill your dream of endless consumption. It’s not just an inverted horror game but an inverted Metroid, so scaled down that the game’s few optional upgrades come across like a joke mocking the end game quests of the Metroid Prime trilogy. Metroidvanias aren’t exactly uncommon, even those that openly follow Metroid and its Eighties sci-fi. Thankfully, Carrion is more than “just” one of the many, many games inspired by Metroid‘s endless mazes, ominous laboratories, and incremental capture of powers. The style and vision of Carrion are special, and they pretty much start and end with your little grotesquerie.

It’s somewhat difficult to fully express how moving the Carrion exactly works. The controls are the same as any game with a regular human protagonist; you move the control stick to move their body around. Except that the Carrion isn’t a person but a slithering tumbleweed of mouths, eyes, and bloody tentacles – and one that gets larger and larger as the game goes on, no less. And moving a tumbleweed of largely identical viscera isn’t exactly something games are used to doing. The bigger you get, the more unwieldy you are to compensate; your sheer mass makes moving almost comical. You’re often dragging half of your body behind you like a rucksack, and since you don’t have a traditional “head” or main body, the part you’re controlling can change on a dime. It’s hard to fully be clear which “part” is the one you’re moving before you start; in my experience the game often affixed control to whichever “head” was closest to where I was going. It’s a bit hard to get used to, and it deliberately lacks the precision we typically expect from games.

And yet, it’s not a problem. There are some rooms where the game does have trouble registering which part of the body is the one you’re moving, but it’s otherwise always easy and clear. You also move fast – thanks to limbs that affix themselves to the walls like an inside-out Spider-Man – and the tunnels, vents, and pools of this bizarre lab are very accommodating even when you’re larger than most cars. There’s only one time where the beast’s size becomes an issue that I found “unfair” or poorly considered, when it involves a very specific obstacle that instantly kills you. The ability to shield it requires all of a pool of energy used for special moves, so if your giant, bloody body is next to the obstacle right after you’ve used it up, it’s back to the last save. I’m focusing on this point solely because it’s literally the only part of the game where this comes up (it’s also probably my only criticism of the game). Otherwise, Carrion the game is very accommodating to Carrion the monster. The controls really do make you feel like this inscrutable, unstoppable alien predator.

This leads into the other most interesting thing about the Carrion, which is its health – or, rather, the way its health impacts the things you can do. In the game, your health directly affects your size, which is itself a great visual trick. Crushing victims is easy when you’re big, but when you’re spindly and tiny, it’s time to run away from the humans shooting at you and wait for a chance to possess one. It’s cool stylistically, and it’s a great way to tell players how bad things are without them needing to look at the health bar. That’s impressive game design on its own, a way to ensure that the most critical part of the game is always clear. Doesn’t hurt that the small shape of the monster at its weakest is easier to move, less of a target, and less able to be immolated – the true weakness of all fleshy monstrosities.

But this goes further once you get health upgrades that give you a second and, later, third form depending on how much health and size you have. The small, medium, and large sizes all have distinct abilities, with the general rule being that the big ones get more power in exchange for fewer of the niche, specialized moves. So, for instance, the small form gets this gross webbing move the larger forms eschew in favor of much more powerful and direct attacks. The webbing isn’t “that” useful (though it can be very helpful in a firefight), but it can hit switches none of the other powers can. This leads to puzzles that rely on the Carrion having access to powers of a specific size, which is why the game provides a liberal number of pools where you can literally deposit a chunk of your body to solve the puzzle before coming back to eat your body into your body to become your body.

Again, it’s this fascinating system where your health and what you can do aren’t just tied together, but via this third visual feature that brings out all these great stylistic tropes. I’m unsure of whether the game uses incredibly sparse text because it’s trying to put you in the mind of an inhuman horror who can only barely comprehend our higher functions, or because it’s confident you can figure out the goals and systems. Almost the only things on the HUD are your health and four buttons, all of which have just a cute image of what it does. When you change size, the images change, and that’s largely it. The game is incredibly cut down and good at making sure that you’ve always got your information (though an option in the menu to reread the text instructions when you get a new move could’ve been good). You’re never not acutely aware of the kind of game and character you’re playing. This even goes down to how saving works. You save by embedding yourself into the sediment, growing these giant fleshy nests that retain your memories while infesting the world of the game more and more deeply. It’s interesting in how it contextualizes a major mechanic, but even more so, it sets a mood.

Altogether, Carrion is just good, far more solid and meticulous than its slithering mass of violence implies. It has a goal – creating a space where you can role play as a cinematic abomination – and puts every slimy and bloody part of itself towards achieving it. That means having gameplay in which dynamically growing is a central mechanic, combat in which your character’s body can be literally blown apart, and even distinct visual touches. Whenever the monster lies dormant, drops of blood slowly drop to the ground, steadily causing a giant red stain. It’s gruesome and kind of adorable in its own way, like this creature is so toxic that it corrupts even the hapless rock walls. Some games work to tell stories or to facilitate gameplay. This one is all about a specific kind of power fantasy, but a kind that’s surprisingly rare in an industry filled with both power fantasies and adoration for 1980’s culture. And it explores this fantasy in every avenue available to it, in a way that makes it into a tasty meal.