CARRION Reviews
Carrion's sickeningly animated protagonist and distinctive playstyle will sate the desires of any player who has ever imagined being a monster from a horror film. It is also a blast to torture faceless government workers with a buffet of slimy powers. Bland level design and a narrative that has the complexity of a paramecium keep Carrion from being something truly memorable.
Carrion is an excellent power fantasy that casts you as the monstrous villain in your own horror film. The wonderfully gloopy animation and conception of Carrion's meaty monster makes it enjoyable to play, especially when tearing through the unfortunate humans that stand in your way. But dull exploration, a lack of memorable environments and disparate gameplay ideas that never really come together, mean that Carrion never truly reaches its full potential.
Carrion abounds with the thrills of being the monster, then, but, less common and more cosy, with the kick of being in a monster movie—of slithering in celebration over the tropes of the genre. The good news is that, for a while, it works.
Carrion is an energetic and taut game that flips the tables on The Thing, putting you in command of the alien creature and tasking you with simply going to town on the hapless humans surrounding you. The loose physics-based gameplay is satisfying to play, and the enigmatic creature's bloodlust is crucially never too powerful to render the armed humans that challenge you entirely helpless. Although Carrion's story falls largely flat, it's a very satisfying slaughterhouse of gnashing teeth and tentacles.
Carrion makes being a vicious monster satisfyingly simple and captivatingly gruesome, even if it doesn't always capitalize on its strengths.
Carrion nails the power fantasy of being a horror movie monster, but makes exploration a chore that pads the adventure.
Carrion is a fun reverse-horror adventure, though it doesn't push the concept to the heights of its potential.
With the gameplay flow struggling to find a pulse, the novelty of controlling a monster doesn't fully take shape
Carrion is ultimately fascinating, engaging, and short and sweet. By putting you in the role of the alien threat it imbues you with a strange supervillain-like sense of playing in an insect farm.
A decent reverse horror title with fluid gameplay and immersive atmosphere.
A proposal of puzzles and action wrapped in pixel-art, with an Oddworld flavor and capable of engaging until the end. Luckily, its duration is just enough to make its progression system not boring. Being the bad guy is fun again.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
GOOD - Carrion is a fun reverse-horror game that could have been much better than it is with a few simple fixes, but what we got is still pretty good. Stalking humans and slithering around feels as great as it sounds.
Carrion’s concept of playing the evil, inhuman creature that’s out to eat everyone is definitely interesting and, at times undoubtedly visceral despite its distant 2D perspective, letting you bloody up rooms and leave halves of corpses lying around for later consumption. Its movement enforces the foreign nature of its protagonist but frequent frustrations like repeated difficulty spikes during combat and getting lost in its unremarkable facility do chip away at its awesome parts. Nevertheless, if you can weather some frustration, you’re in for a lot of delicious dismemberment and many horrified screams as you take Carrion’s flesh beast on its bloody journey.
Carrion is an unusual experience that seeks to do the most with just the essentials, which makes it somewhat repetitive after a while, when almost all the cards are already on the table. Even though it looks like a labyrinthine metroidvania, the design tends to guide the player linearly so as not to get lost, keeping the gameplay flowing between puzzles and massacres, without much reason to explore on your own. The game's greatest success is in fulfilling its promise of horror by putting the player under the skin of a tentacular monster to devour, grow and evolve into the perfect predator.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
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 incredibile and crazy Devolver Digital game.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Carrion presents you with an opportunity to take the reigns of an invading monster, and it delivers on all fronts with visceral gore and effects that translate vividly even through its pixelated style. The lack of a map combined with navigational and interaction clumsiness make for a more cumbersome Metroidvania formula, but the payoffs of gameplay and exploration outweigh the issues that Carrion presents.
Carrion is a fun but flawed 2D horror game with a fun hook. It doesn't play perfectly, and the controls are particularly hit-or-miss, but overall, there's a lot of fun to be had when you get to be the monster and leave a path of destruction in your wake.
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.
Review in Italian | Read full review
In Carrion we will revive with a retro pixel aesthetic the fear of a horror movie from the 80's, only in this case we will be in the place of the monster. A very fun game to enjoy from start to finish.
Review in Spanish | Read full review