Metroid-vania style game with interesting twist, you're the monster.

Cool premise, satisfying controls and combat, creative puzzles. The pixel art style is great too. The steady flow of new abilities and enemies keep the core gameplay interesting mostly, but it can feel a little repetitive by the end of the games short runtime.

Lack of fast travel and a difficult to decipher map layout make backtracking a bit of a slog.

One of those games that achieves just about everything it sets out to do.

Basically a horror movie from the perspective of the monster, Carrion is a violence and carnage fueled rush. It's structured like a metroidvania where you gain abilities that progressively make your monster stronger.

It's one of those times where the gameplay and premise are perfectly in sync and I think that was my favourite part. The forward momentum of needing to get more powerful in order to kill more so that we can ultimately escape is such a fun gameplay loop. Carrion has just enough novel gameplay ideas to last throughout the entire 4ish hours it takes to complete. It never overstays it's welcome.

My only small gripe is that I'm somewhat navigationally challenged, so there was one time where I got so lost and had no idea where to go. I spent a good 20 minutes before getting back on track. Not a dealbreak but it's worth mentioning that it's sometimes tricky to figure out where to go next.

This is a great game that is simply fun and kind of different. It's fun to be the monster that hunts humans throughout an underground facility. It's fun attacking the humans and hearing them scream as you eat them. However, this game is not a horror game. It may look like one in terms of graphic design, but it doesn't have much of a horror feel. There isn't an actual emphasis on attacking humans. They're there to simply be killed or try to kill you with a pistol--to impede your progress in gaining new abilities, getting further throughout the underground area you're in, and eventually escape.

As such, this game is fun because it's a metroidvania with a slight twist of you being the bad guy. As a monster you slither around and go through vents and whatnot to get from area to area or simply to attack people. What ultimately makes this game so much fun is the fact that it's a metroidvania. You go through a few areas you can, figure out some puzzles to get through to a new area, learn a new ability, then use said new ability to go to new areas previously unreachable. It's satisfying, it's fun, it's rewarding, it's a typical metroidvania. That is where this game's strength is as it really doesn't hold up at all as a horror title like it's being promoted as.

One huge mistake was made in this that simply must be said: there is no map for you to use to see what is where. It can seriously slow you down not knowing where to go because you can't find an area, and there are no hints. You must rely on memory. If it wasn't for that this game might have gotten 5 stars, but this is an abysmal error on the devs' part. Carrion absolutely needs a map.

Bottom line: Play it for the fact that this is a metroidvania, not for the "being a monster" or "horror" aspect that is advertised. There is no map which is a massive pain in the ass and cost this game a star from me.

Fonte: Lista - Indie of The Year Nominees
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Pixel art sensacional
Jogo muito criativo
Amo o horror

To my mind, there are two ways to design a good gameworld for a metroidvania. Either make an intricate world of distinct areas that all connect together in a complex but understandable way (e.g. Salt & Sanctuary), or just add a mini-map to the game. I find that my favourite metroidvanias tend to have both of these (e.g. Hollow Knight). Carrion... doesn't do this. The world, while beautifully realised, has some fairly samey visual elements across all of it, and with the amount of times you end up teleporting across the map or between different subregions, its extremely easy to get lost. It made it extremely difficult to backtrack to all the 'come here later!' secrets that the game throws in like a metroidvania should. Also while the game is actually pretty damn good at subtly telling you where to go next, if you miss one of its context clues or come back to the game after a couple days not playing its honestly a nightmare to figure out which direction is progress. Why there isn't a minimap in this game I simply cannot fathom, I would have enjoyed it so much more if they had just added such a simple feature. But I digress...

Overall, the game is pretty solidly made. The art direction and music are both pretty good (although I'm not a huge fan of the main character design), the room designs within levels make for consistently varied encounters, and the powerups you pick up through the game are nice and varied and fun to use. The puzzle sections of the game are consistently solid too, I especially like the mechanic of having to deliberately sacrifice HP to gain access to different powers. But I found the combat sections a bit more of a mixed bag. At its best, the combat has you flailing about like the tornado of chaos you are, launching debris across the room, or hiding in the shadows and creatively using all your powers to pick the humans off one by one. But at its worst, I found myself often trapped in a room with one or two guys with shields, desperately trying to squish past them so I could grab onto their models 1 degree clockwise from where the shield hitbox ended. Essentially I found the exceptionally janky movement controls made more calculated tactical fighting nigh on impossible in enclosed or crowded spaces, and this resulted in frequent trips back to the game's strangely distributed checkpoints followed by long runs back to the combat room again.

Overall, while I see the merits of this one, it just didn't gel for me. While it does some things well, it really drops the ball when it comes to some of the elements that define the metroidvania genre so great.

A fun reverse horror experience. Getting to play as the monster and going on a metroidvania adventure to collect alien DNA and evolve new nightmarish abilities - absolute recipe for success.

The game lives up to its premise as you crawl your way around the walls of each level, slowly expand your biomass by consuming scientists and civilians, learning to navigate by the sewers and vents in order to evade defences and use your many tendrils to grab, slam, throw, and consume your mortal prey.

It's a fun ride with some interesting puzzles along the way, but there is very little variation in enemies and as much fun as it is to terrorise the humans it can get repetitive fast. The upgrades you get are mostly just functionality upgrades like extra energy, larger size, more strength, while the few more 'monstrous' abilities you gain end up being very circumstantial and directly get used to bypass literal progress gates.

The art style is great, very detailed for the pixelated look it goes with, but the music is pretty forgettable atmospheric horror stock. It gets points for uniqueness and ingenuity but there's a much better game that's been narrowly missed and that's disappointing to see. A good proof of concept, here's hoping they expand on what's been established in a more extensive follow up.