Carrion

Every piece of Carrion is polished and near-flawless. From the amazing visuals, heart-pounding sound design, to the organic gameplay, everything in this game serves a unified purpose. In our current market oversaturated media, there is something invaluable in a game that doesn’t waste your time.

Carrion is a relatively short, positively memorable experience. Our odyssey as the monster attempting to flee from the mysterious installations shines with a formidable audiovisual design and fully original gameplay. It's cool to be the bad guy of the tale, sometimes.

Many factors make Carrion exceptionally fun to play, and hardly any that don't make it a gorily great way to spend eight hours. It's atmospheric in presentation and sound production, creating a complete package that feels like you're playing the origin story of a creature like The Thing.

Creepy, lusciously grotesque and most importantly, enjoyable, Carrion is one of the most refreshing games we've played in recent years and proves yet again that indie game development usually goes hand in hand with creativity.

Carrion is a unique game and one that is refreshing and fun to play. The gameplay is smooth, and the arcadelike aspect of hastily crawling around eating scientists is both humorous and satisfying. While there are portions of it that I found confusing and slow, the core gameplay was enjoyable enough to where I didn’t mind the negatives. Carrion has a little bit of everything, and I would recommend it to anyone who is tired of being the protagonist in distress.

Carrion reverses the roles of the horror genre beautifully, and playing as a monster has never been so disgustingly enjoyable.

Games can have messages, but they can also be a venue in which we act out our most twisted fantasies free of judgment and consequence.

Acting as a monster and hunting human beings are exciting. Carrion definitely worth trying if you are interested in the reverse-horror games.

Inspired by Carpenter and the 80s body horror, Carrion reverses the roles and puts us in the shoes of a formless and lethal creature, in a fluid, fast and extremely choreographic metroidvania. Some AI problems and a not always inspired artistic direction do not compromise the result of one of the surprises of this 2020.

Rampaging your way through Carrion as a tentacle monster makes playing this violent metroidvania feel unique, and the grotesque and harsh visuals greatly contribute to that feeling. But flaws like having no map and a lack of gameplay variety cannot be overlooked.

Carrion is simply a great time. The metroidvania gameplay loop is addictive, while its sound design and highly detailed pixel-art look makes it a joy to hear and look at. An average story and lack of an in-game map sap some of the enjoyment, but Carrion's ability to have you play as an unstoppable monster is gory grandeur.

Because there is so much to explore, so much back tracking to be done across multiple, confined locations, the player will have to travel across many, many rooms before significantly progressing. This experience breaks up, however small, what is otherwise a seamless experience of movement and momentum. And to a larger extent, these faults break up what is likewise a fantastic gameplay experience. If you ever wanted to play Alien: Isolation from the perspective of the creature, this is the game.

CARRION mixes familiar and alien elements to produce a memorably brutal inversion of the horror genre.

If you love movies like The Thing and have enjoyed the games of Devolver Digital before then you should definitely give this a go. Carrion may not have the good looks of a Nathan Drake or a Lara Croft, but it has the kind of gooey, tentacle-y charm that you just can't find anywhere else.

Carrion excels at creating realistic tentacle locomotion in the shape of a bloodthirsty nightmare. It falls behind when it requests precision from a monster only capable of blunt violence. As mad science grants sentience to raw brutality, articulation must be sacrificed for overwhelming power. It leaves Carrion as a mesmerizing concept overcommitted to its code.

Although Carrion is a relatively short game with little replayability, its quirky theme and ravenous flesh monster make for a fun feeding frenzy.

Yes, the game lacks readability when there are too many enemies. Yes, its level design sometimes loses the player. But Carrion is a successful game that takes being a monster to the extreme.

Easy to pick up and play, CARRION is original, absorbing and entertaining.It also has an excellent soundtrack – it’s cinematic horror vibe is the perfect accompaniment for the bloodbath that ensues.

Carrion is a bloody, intricate experience with a consistency problem that breaks the momentum that's central to a game like Carrion.

Carrion turns the horror genre on its head by letting you be the monster this time in a Metroidvania style game, which serves as the perfect type game to pick up and play between many of the other larger scale releases that have released this year.

Carrion is the most wonderfully writhing Metroid-like game we've seen yet, one that's filled with blood and puzzles. The game could benefit from a map, but it's still a fun title in which you control a vengeful monster.

Carrion is undoubtedly a unique take on the survival horror genre. There are a couple of misses, but for the most part it works well for those with a few hours to kill.

Carrion is a lean but undeniably fun reverse horror with plenty of clever ideas that will have you second-guessing meatballs.

Carrion is a beautifully orchestrated symphony of blood, guts, and dismembered limbs.

Despite its flaws, Carrion is immensely enjoyable, though I would imagine its grotesque nature will turn some away. If you can stomach the gore, it’s well, well worth the play.

Carrion is a great pick for horror game fans, and will make players want more horror-themed Metroidvanias. It can be completed in just a few hours and it loses its momentum at the end, but it's a fun reverse-horror game experience while it lasts.

Carrion is another hit from a publisher that has built its name on delivering to us unconventional and unexpected experiences. Devolver’s seal of approval is more than ever evidence of a classic as Carrion’s credentials as an incredible Metroidvania title as well as an inverse horror experience will never be in question.

Other than a few finicky control issues with grabbing the wrong object in a cluttered room or getting momentarily caught up in tight passages when playing as the beast's largest form, I had a breezy time. If you're looking for a cathartic pick-up-and-play game with little to no fat that you can slip in between this summer's massive story-driven titles, that's Carrion all the way. It's a devilish snack.

An anomalous metroidvania in the intent as traditional in the realization. The creature's alien and brutal beauty is only partially supported by an equally good world to explore. It remains a fascinating title, made with care, that really lacks that extra flicker to excel.

Carrion has a handful of annoying shortcomings, but it perfectly depicts everyday life of a scary alien creature from a horror movie, and that’s a monumental achievement by itself.

The joy of watching this wild tangle of pixel art tentacles, organs, and flesh (and listening to the sounds of humans being devoured) alone makes this game worthwhile. If, just like me, you always root for the bad guy, Carrion’s gameplay can be immensely satisfying. [10/2020, p.54]

Carrion has its problems, especially in its level design and lack of a map for the player, but it succeeds in what it sets out to accomplish: creating a horror game, proper horror game, in which you are the monster.

Carrion is a fun one-and-done game and not much more than that. The concept of playing as the monster in the vents is a cool one, and Carrion executes the fantasy fairly masterfully. Unfortunately, it runs out of tricks before too long and is only saved from tedium by the short game length. It's worth a playthrough if you like the concept, but don't expect anything genre-defining. There's a lot of potential in the concept, and perhaps a Carrion 2 will give us something with more meat on its … amorphous horrifying frame.

Carrion is brilliant take on the metroidvania genre, a game where you control a creature that feasts on human bodies and grows as it develops new and deadly skills. It is another incredible and crazy Devolver Digital game.

In spite of being quite short, and having an over-complicated system to switch between powers, Carrion is a very good game that offers something different from the mainstay. We specially like the animations of the monster and the fact that we play as a huge beast.