Playing as the villain isn’t a new concept in gaming. I’m not talking about morality-driven titles like Fallout or Fable, where the player chooses whether their character becomes good or bad. I mean games where the protagonist is objectively not a good person, titles like God of War, Braid, and The Last of Us Part I. Keeping with that theme is a game I stumbled upon through Game Pass, one we highlighted on the podcast a while back: 2020’s Carrion, developed by Phobia Game Studio and published by Devolver Digital. Carrion is a pixel-art metroidvania where you play as a shapeless monstrosity set loose inside a research facility. Defenses, both human and automated, stand in your way, but your goal is simple: expand your biomass, spread it throughout the facility, and establish a hive. You may be a monster, but you’re not indestructible. The unspoken moral? Whether you’re human or a writhing mass of tendrils and teeth, anything worth having is worth fighting for.
The aesthetic of the game hits you right from the menu screen where you’re met with a mass of pixelated tentacles and teeth. Selecting “New Game” brings you to a dark screen, all you can see is a sealed containment vat which holds…something. You’re prompted to move whatever is inside back and forth, causing its prison to rock, tilt, then break, and you are met with the monstrosity that you will be controlling. You find yourself in a lab, which instantly goes under lock down. Klaxons blaring, people running amok. Pandemonium. This opening area acclimates you to the movement of the character, which sets this aside from other metroidvanias. The creature can go anywhere on the screen, climbing up walls and across ceilings. Unlike Bruce Willis, you can feasibly enter ventilation ducts to move around undetected. This creature can squeeze into most gaps like a rat, but if the rat was a shapeless mass of tentacles and teeth that feeds on the flesh of man.
Being a metroidvania, this gives you a general idea of the gameplay loop you’ll be encountering. The map is sectioned off into a number of interconnected areas. Certain rooms are inaccessible because they’re locked behind heavy security doors that the creature can’t open on its own. Light puzzle solving will be required to find and access the switch or lever that opens the way. Other areas are inaccessible until you obtain the right ability to get through. The only way to access more of the map, see more of the environments, and ultimately beat the game, is to explore every nook and cranny. That being said, there are a couple of common staples of the genre that are absent here. More on that in a moment.
Let’s start with the creature, since that’s what the game does. I used the term “shapeless” to describe it, and that is accurate. Much like water, it can take the form of anything that contains it. But for a more succinct visual reference, think John Carpenter’s “The Thing” and you got the right idea. A mass of wriggling, sentient muscle. Muscle that can violently launch out tendrils for any number of reasons. It can pull itself across any surface, gravity be damned. The tendrils can lift and smash objects in the creature’s way, rip vent covers and certain doors off their hinges, or activate the mechanisms that control the doors that are too heavy for it. They can grab people, too. Whether the creature slams the person off every surface in the room, or pulls it right in, the end result is the same. The center mass of the creature hides a gaping maw, lined with carnivorous teeth. For this creature has an insatiable hunger which is quenched by the flesh, muscle, and bone of the humans inhabiting the facility. Consuming them makes its mass increase. In addition to making the creature more massive and imposing, this allows you to access the later-game powers.
The objective of Carrion is presumably just doing what the creature is biologically programmed to do: infest the local area by spreading its biomass around to establish a hive. I’ve already mentioned the door-centric puzzle solving. That’s only really true in the very early game. This changes once you grow in mass and gain new powers, and the humans start getting guns. The latter has its own scaling difficulty that increases as the game progresses, and is always a threat. Even at the lowest threat level when it’s just some uniformed security guard with a pistol. Eventually they gain armor and mech suits with attack drones flanking. And the pistols get upgraded to fully automatic and flamethrowers. You need to be quick to get the drop on any of them. If you just slither your way into any room thinking you own the place, you’ll be reduced to a pile of red mush. In the beginning, it’s all about closing that gap and getting your tendrils on them. Maybe throw a door or some furniture at them. But the enemies grow stronger because you do, too. And the way Carrion handles the earned abilities is pretty unique.
The abilities are gained when you find containment vats much like the one you broke out of. Leading up to getting them, two empty spaces on your HUD will catch your eye that will clearly be filled by whatever powers an amorphous monstrosity can get. They’re eventually filled. One ability can be used whenever, the other has a power meter. Before you can get another power, you will consume enough humans to grow in mass and size. More teeth, more tendrils, but your abilities are gone. Fret not, because those HUD slots are eventually filled with an entirely different set of abilities. There’s three different sizes the creature can be, each with a different set of powers. So does this mean that once you eat enough humans, that’s it? Those old powers are just gone? Well, no. Shedding its mass then re-absorbing it ain’t no thang for the creature. Meaning that when presented with pools of a reddish liquid, you can change your size to any of the forms you’ve accessed. This makes the late game puzzle solving a lot more involved than just “find a way to that switch”. You need to start knowing where those pools are so you can shed or absorb mass to match what the situation needs. Or maybe you were at the ass end of an ass kicking and need health back. Either way those pools are essential.
Earlier I alluded to a couple of features that one would expect in a metroidvania that aren’t present here. One would be boss fights. There are some rooms that lock down until the automated security is dispatched, but they play out like a wave of enemies instead of a dedicated boss fight. Which works for the narrative of the game. You’re a strange creature set loose on a facility of normal humans. Aside from some big robot, what would actually be able to stand up to this thing and be imposing the way a boss should be? The thing that’s missing, which this game sorely needed, is a map screen. What’s worse is this one could be explained with an ability the creature already has. The creature has an echo location that is used to locate the closest save point. The color of the echo determines if its one you’ve visited yet. You would think that with the echo location used by a creature that is spreading its own biomass around, a map screen could be incorporated into how the creature understands its surroundings, and how the player learns the layout of the maps. Instead you’ll get lost. A lot. There will be a lot of retreading old ground, wondering which fork you took before. It artificially extends the time it takes to complete the game, breaking up the pace of everything.
Carrion has a story that is told without dialogue. You only get it in the occasional small bursts, including an enjoyably dark ending. Before that you will get to play through flashback sequences where you play as a team of three scientists who initially discover the creature. I won’t go into too much detail, because it is worth experiencing. Which is how I would sum up this game: it’s worth experiencing. Carrion is a unique take on a popular genre. The biggest obstacle is the lack of a map screen. It’s not just an issue, it’s debilitating. I’m a seasoned gamer, and a lover of metoidvanias since the 90’s, and I even had times where the game would come to a complete stop because the next destination wasn’t exactly clear. It’s a quick beat, too. Even with the previously mentioned hurdle, the game can be beaten in a few hours. And if you’re like me, then then “Greatest Time of the Year” DLC is included.
I think a better name would’ve been “Wonderful Time of the Year”, because this is a Christmas themed chapter. It is very brief, and can probably be completed in 10 or 20 minutes. Explore a small station that’s decorated with Christmas decorations until you find the exit. That’s really it. Bottom line, this game is a Buy It. I would say Bin It because of the map screen, but it’s not like this is a wildly expensive game on its own, as it will only run you $19.99. However you end up playing it, definitely check this one out.
