Game Review--Conarium (Switch)

"The wearable Conarium we're carrying on our left arms connects and thus receives sensations from the same ancient source!  And sometimes I wonder whether there has ever been another soul during humanity's relatively brief period of existence who was able to achieve such a feat."

--Collectible note, Conarium

"As I predicted: a race, reptilian in physiology, lived inside these ruins after the original builders, the Elder Things, left the area after some unknown cataclysmic event, now lost in an archaic and lost chapter of earth's history."

--Apparition, Conarium

A reptilian, bipedal alien species that has links to the ancient race of Elder Things serves as one of the primary Lovecraftian elements of Conarium, a cosmic horror game that is a sequel to the story of At the Mountains of Madness.  This game has the distinction of being one of the only cosmic horror games to not have an M rating, as Conarium bears a T rating.  This does not result in a diluted Lovecraftian atmosphere.  The Necronomicon, a book detailing Lovecraft's eldritch creatures, is mentioned by name, and one collectible item looks like an octopus with a head much larger than the dangling tentacles, a seeming reference to Cthulhu.  The signature aspects of Lovecraft's universe are all present.

Production Values

The strongest part of the production values is certainly the clear visuals.  Ranging from small objects to open subterranean landscapes and, depending on a player choice, even an alien world, the digital environments of Conarium are far from the worst seen on the Switch.  The voice acting has a distinctly lesser quality when the main character speaks, unfortunately.  Frank Gilman is not the most vocally energetic or protagonist, but at least his voice acting is not at the level of the poor quality of Agony's!  For some reason, the voices heard from optional phonograph cylinders sound more natural than the main character's own voice.

Gameplay

Conarium presents a world of puzzles, exploration, and secrets where the majority of the player's time is spent walking or sprinting around and making observations or bringing objects to the correct location so they can be used to solve the game's many puzzles.  The puzzles are actually rather diverse, so the risk of having numerous puzzles with the same setup or aesthetic was avoided.  There is no combat at all and only one chase sequence that has to be completed in a way that is not obvious, so anyone looking for a cosmic horror game with a more intense approach to its subject matter could be disappointed with the slower pace of Conarium.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

A research team in Antarctica experimenting with devices called Conariums, which have the ability to help humans transcend ordinary sensory and phenomenological experiences, and investigating alien ruins beneath the continent's surface falls apart from psychological stress and strange evolutions.  A member named Frank Gilman serves as the protagonist and periodically has visions of moving figures or disembodied voices explaining Elder Thing artifacts.  He encounters items uncovered by the expedition, but he also has to deal with the spiritual power of those items and eventually has to make a grand decision when faced with the personal and metaphysical ramifications of Elder Thing culture.

Intellectual Content

Conarium naturally brings up issues like the possibility of extraterrestrial life, the nature of consciousness and perception, and the fixedly limited scope of scientific observations.  For all of its references to Elder Things and the dominant species on the planet between them and humans, it does not actually reveal their intentions or past with any great amount of clarity.  Players still interact with puzzles designed either by the Elder Things or the seemingly extinct reptilian species associated with them.  The themes might be philosophically significant, but the puzzles constitute the most direct parts of the intellectual content.  Minimal or no hints are given as to where to acquire puzzle-related items or how to use them; most of the game must be discovered on one's own.  One of the last puzzles is especially ambiguous to the point of the game's creators having done a terrible job of setting it up, even with a "hint" provided in the form of a sketch Frank makes shortly before.  For this one, I consulted the internet to save time, as the puzzle was designed poorly.

Conclusion

Conarium is closer in gameplay style to cosmic horror games like Lust for Darkness than it is to more mainstream genre examples like Call of Cthulhu or The Sinking City, meaning there is far more walking from one puzzle to another than dialogue or action sequences.  What this emphasis leaves is the largely self-guided exploration of underground environments.  As mentioned already, there truly is little to go off of for solving puzzles, and one of the later puzzles is almost unsolvable except by accident unless one looks up a walkthrough, but optional secrets and the more accessible puzzles help convey the Lovecraftian idea that individual humans are practically alone in their pursuit of understanding eldritch beings.  This also makes Conarium a cosmic horror game more suitable to people who want the philosophical themes of cosmic horror without the explicit horror nature of other games.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  In one specific part of the game, bipedal entities can chase and grab Frank.  The worst violence is thus extremely mild.

 2.  Profanity:  "Damnit" or similar words are used a handful of times.