Carrion

More gore and tentacles than your average Carry On entry.

We spend a lot of time running from rampaging monsters in video games, but rarely do we get the chance to play as the creature in question. Devolver Digital’s latest retro-styled throwback, Carrion, let’s you do just that, placing you in charge of a tentacle-covered alien monstrosity as you tear through the facility that imprisoned you.

Kicking off with your escape from a scientific chamber, Carrion sees you use your tentacles to traverse around large underground rooms in an incredibly fluid manner, as you attempt to escape your captors. Controlling the monster is fairly simple – use your left stick to move around, your right stick to control your tentacles, and hold the right trigger to grab objects (or hapless people) which you can then fling around. Although you start your journey as a small, pulsating mass of teeth-covered gore, you quickly begin to increase your biomass as you use those aforementioned tentacles to stalk and eat every human in sight (though not before violently bashing them around the environment a little bit beforehand).

In true Metroidvania fashion, your monster will need to track down and absorb DNA upgrades that will grant you new abilities in order to reach previously blocked areas. These include such powers as passing through lasers, reducing your size to smash through tight barricades, swimming through water, or even controlling the minds of humans to get into locked areas.

Those familiar with this beloved gaming subgenre will know that back-tracking usually takes up a large portion of your game time, and in this instance, Carrion proves somewhat frustrating due to the lack of any kind of map system. Thankfully, the game’s short and sweet four-hour campaign length means you probably won’t spend a great deal of time running around trying to figure out where you should go next. Minor setbacks aside, Carrion is an incredibly satisfying monster romp that will please horror fans who’ve always wanted to get their freak on.

If you’ve ever wanted to carry on like a real monster, Carrion is your game.