Conarium: Selected First by the Old Ones*

Late to the Party
8 min readJan 28, 2021

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*a.k.a. The Almighty Random Number Generator!

As it says in the title and that giant image above, the game that has the esteemed honor of being the first completed title from my backlog is 2017’s Conarium from Zoetrope Interactive. I hope their award isn’t this long-winded “review” you’re about to get into! Heavily inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s novella, At the Mountains of Madness, the game takes place at a tiny research base in Antarctica that is loosely set after the events of the story. The player takes the role of Frank Gilman, a scientist who wakes up to find himself seemingly all alone on the frozen continent with nothing but questions. I love this kind of weird horror so the fact that Lovecraft was mentioned in the game’s description definitely piqued my interest. But before I get into my experience with Conarium, let’s take a brief second to talk about this Lovecraftian brand of horror that permeates the game. How brief are we talking? I already don’t know how much more of this I can take!

Ah, Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Wasn’t he a — What can be said about a man who wowed the world for a century with his contributions to the cosmic horror subgenre as well as with his unabashed and highly-documented racism? There it is! Objectionable character aside, H.P. has left an indelible mark on horror literature in the last century and some of the thematic elements of his writing have also made their way into the world of video games over the last few decades. No matter the medium, I always look forward to tales of encroaching madness, “unnatural” and “otherworldly” architecture, and unfathomable entities whose very existence betrays the laws of known physics. Man, you’re really liking those big words aren’t you!

60% of the time, it works *all* the time.

Conarium seemed to fit this bill and I was expecting the usual tale of humanity poking and prodding into realms unknown only to find out that the cost of attaining the knowledge found within those deep, dark places of the universe is unimaginably terrible. You ok, bro? This is pretty much exactly what I got from the game, but there was nothing else to set it apart from others that try to tackle the same essential cosmic horror themes. It wasn’t a bad experience per se, but the narrative was too familiar — too predictable even — that it left me with the dreaded “meh” feeling. At least now you know how the majority of your dates feel by the end of the night! That’s ok for the most part because I still got some of my cosmic horror fix by playing through it. However, what truly determined my overall enjoyment — or lack thereof — of the game has to be the execution of the scares and the gameplay.

Like I said, I love cosmic horror (and horror in general while we’re at it), but it has to be done right. First and foremost the book/film/game/whatever better deliver on the scares and existential dread. Being familiar with the source material and other walking simulators in the horror genre, I had certain expectations of the gameplay. I was expecting to be persistently stalked through wild places by a crazy otherworldly creature. I was expecting to run and hide and have my heart beating through my chest. I was expecting to be scared or disturbed in a way that only existential/cosmic/Lovecraftian/whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it horror can. None of my expectations were met. You’re starting to sound like your parents! At least my expectations weren’t quite met.

There was one part that stuck with me, but I almost forgot about it because it happens so early in the game. Not to mention it’s also one of many secrets that you can miss during your relatively short playthrough. There’s a part when you’re exploring the private quarters of the missing crew and you come across this contraption that you have to figure out how to open. When you finally do, you’re confronted with a mechanical humanoid bust. Speaking of “busts”, how about this review?! High five! You can talk to it which is creepy enough on its own, but after picking its brain for a second you find out that the mechanism claims to be you. When you try to correct it or prod further, you are dismissed as simply being “air” and that’s pretty much it. Well, it’s not wrong! This moment genuinely freaked me out and made me curious/anxious about what other existential abominations I might encounter during the rest of my playthrough. Yet, nothing like it happens for the rest of the game which means the rest of the game is spent walking in dark areas and hearing things from time to time. It was disappointing to say the least.

Just like cabbage and eggs.

Where Conarium lacked in the memorable scares department, it kind of made up for it with its creepy atmosphere. The sound design in particular really helped add to the general unease I felt through a good portion of my experience and it is arguably the best part of the game overall. The sound designers were able to take a simple footfall and turn it into something that made me stop and back track to check for unwanted followers on more than one occasion. The echoes in the cavern section made me feel like I wasn’t alone and the minimalist soundtrack worked with the rest of the game. I feel a pretty big “but” coming on. However, by the time I made it halfway through the cave section, any trick that had gotten me before stopped working. Kind of like you after your lunch break! The atmosphere wore thin towards the end and this made the game start to feel more like a chore. This is even more noticeable when you consider the walking sim and puzzle-solving aspects of the gameplay.

The main gameplay in Conarium consists of walking from Point A to Point B and sometimes the path would be blocked by an obstacle in the form of a puzzle. None of those puzzles were very “difficult” though. Yet I was still left stumped on more than one occasion which I think contributed to my overall impression of the game as, you know…a game. Wtf does this sentence even mean? The game wasn’t very fun to play is what I’m getting at. For me, this has to come down to the design of the puzzles themselves.

I forgot about this one, but I didn’t forget how much I disliked it.

Now, I know what I’m getting into with walking sims, but this lacked in comparison to other walking sims I’ve enjoyed like Dear Esther or Soma for example. I can handle the walking (and then running and hiding in Soma’s case) as long the story and/or puzzles are engaging enough. I didn’t think you could handle any physical activity! It definitely makes sense to have weird intricate puzzles in ancient ruins that have been buried beneath the ice for Cthulhu knows how long…*winks*. Oof, that was so corny, Monsanto just tried to buy it! However, without any solid in-game logic to follow (i.e. repetition to learn the way the world/puzzles work…or you know, like, decent clues) the obstacles become solid walls. That’s a pretty pretentious way to say you’re not very smart!

Of course, there’s a chance I just didn’t pay enough attention to my surroundings, but some of the solutions to the environmental puzzles required knowing what a specific item does without actually knowing that the item can be acquired in the first place…or how to use it once you get it. Pretty vague! Is that because you know you’re complaining for no reason? There’s another puzzle where you need to draw a symbol into some cosmic goo by connecting glowing dots. Perfectly normal! At first glance, it doesn’t look difficult at all. It maybe takes you one or two tries to connect the right dots and then…nothing happens. You try another couple of times. Then (if you’re me) you google the solution and ask out loud: “are you fucking kidding me?”, solve the puzzle, and quit for the night. Turns out, the order and direction in which you draw the lines matters. Go figure. You’re still pretty butt-hurt about that, aren’t you?

Do this puzzle and you will know what I mean by “unnecessarily complicated”

It’s important to mention I was playing this on PS4, so maybe the controls for this particular puzzle didn’t translate well. That said, I’m still holding firm that the puzzle design is poorly conceived and unnecessarily complicated. Still holding firm to that spiral ham too, I bet! The puzzles here dragged down an otherwise atmospheric and potentially interesting game. Anyway, let’s wrap this up. Thank god!

The combination of the frustrating “puzzles” and pretty generic plot (where it ends horribly for the humans because they tested waters that were too deep for them to fathom) made for the aforementioned “meh”. It wasn’t so bad I couldn’t play it, but it wasn’t so good that it was memorable enough to play it again. Cosmic horror is philosophically heavy and can be tiring to develop so I give Zoetrope Interactive props for making a good-looking, good-sounding game even if this one idiot didn’t particularly find it to be that fun of an experience.

Random Stats and Stuff

Estimated Time to Beat: 4 Hours

Time Played: 5 Hours 27 Minutes :(

Recommended to: Maybe people who aren’t really into the horror genre so much but are willing to try something as long as it’s not going to kill them with jump scares. Oh yeah, the areas are pretty cool to explore and the soundtrack is cool if you’re into minimalist/ambient/droning/stuff.

Rating: I’ll give this game 4.3 out of 7 ancient glyphs that I still can’t read…or write.

Next Game on the List: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

Let the memes fall where they may.

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