9/22/2023 0 Comments Conarium![]() ![]() These found documents attempt to emulate Lovecraft’s excessive, melodramatic prose, and do not quite hit the mark. Scattered around the various locales you will find books and notes containing backstory and, rarely, clues. Instead, the game focuses all its narrative effort into developing a creepy and unsettling environment – an effort which, for the most part, succeeds. Characterisation is shallow, but events and people isn’t really what Conarium is about. ![]() The plot plods along with few unpredictable twists or turns, and the mystery to be uncovered is largely to be expected. It’s a linear experience, with a few extra areas to find and explore here and there. ![]() Along the way, you solve puzzles to open new paths and reveal details and clues about your allies, and where everything went so wrong. Your journey takes you from the base through ancient seas and constructions and distant recollections to your final place among some of the more alien ruins. After waking up in an abandoned outpost with no recollection of what happened to his team, Frank sets out to discover the whereabouts and fates of his expedition members. Among other experiments being conducted is the mind-altering Conarium – a device based on ancient technology that transports a person’s consciousness to other, unknown places. You play as Frank Gilman, a senior member of a 1930’s expeditionary team to Antarctica. Not quite a direct sequel to one of Lovecraft’s finest (At The Mountains Of Madness), Conarium embeds itself in the fiction and sense of place that Lovecraft invented. Zoetrope’s Conarium, as a Lovecraftian horror game, attempts to rebuild the creeping disquiet of the source material into an interactive experience. The heart of unease – in which what is imagined is far more terrifying than what could ever be witnessed – that Lovecraft so wished to express has too often faded away into mundane body horror. The result is often a clichéd mishmash of overused horror tropes and predictable jump scares. The issue with Lovecraftian games is that the unspeakable, by necessity, becomes spoken. In his strangeness, his otherworldliness, his attempt at capturing the bizarre and unspeakable, Lovecraft built a horror empire – one that has migrated from the original written word into more modern formats. Regardless of his meanderingly overwrought prose and his often very objectionable personal views (to call him “racist” would be putting it mildly), Lovecraft and his universe of unspeakable Elder Gods is much adored by horror fans. The creator of a beloved fictional universe. The father of an entire subgenre of horror. ![]()
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