

These may seem like pretty cliché storytelling methods for a video game at this point, but I enjoyed the story being told. As you begin searching the base for clues about the fate of your colleagues – and about the truth of what happened to you – you’ll uncover massive caverns, ancient ruins and more, slowly piecing together a deeply unsettling plot.Īs you explore Upuaut base and the depths beneath it, you’ll occasionally stumble across letters, diary entries, audio recordings or even flashbacks in the form of strange visions. In Conarium, you play as Frank Gilman, a member of an Antarctic expedition who has woken up to find his group’s base of operations deserted and his memory wiped clean. And while this effort inevitably shares many of the weaknesses of other Lovecraft adaptations, it does an admirable job with its limited tools.Ĭonarium’s writing successful mimics the bombastic style of Lovecraft

Conarium is explicitly based on the events and setting of At the Mountains of Madness. That hasn’t stopped creators from trying to capture the essence of Lovecraft in other mediums, however. How do you interpret that to a screen, to a form where people inevitably will see it for themselves? Lovecraft’s best stories are about things so horrible they are undefinable, indescribable, maddening to even gaze upon. That quote embodies Lovecraft’s approach to his own fiction, and it helps explain two things: first, why his work has remained such an ingrained part of pop culture even now, nearly a century since he started writing and second, why his work has been so remarkably difficult to translate to more visual narrative mediums like film and video games. Lovecraft once wrote in an essay about horror literature: “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” Lovecraft, an author who has been survived by his gothic horror writing 80 years after his death.
Conarium gameplay series#
Early access is scheduled to begin on February 28, 2021.ĭark Fracture will be released in 2021 on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X.Zoetrope Interactive's Conarium takes its inspiration from H.P.

The level of detail, variety of environments, and depth revealed in this early access walkthrough footage of Dark Fracture is particularly impressive because the team behind it is a two-man operation, and this is their first game. As odd events begin to occur at the body farm one night, Edward has to come to grips with what’s happening around him and figure out if it’s merely his mind playing tricks on him or if he has stumbled onto something truly horrific. This would be a taxing job for even the most mentally stable worker, but Edward comes to his new place of employment already carrying some psychological damage. Players take on the role of Edward, an employee at a local body farm, a facility that documents the way that bodies decompose under various conditions for use by scientists and law enforcement. In this vein, much attention has been given to monsters, environments, textures, assets, and the soundscapes that will accompany players on their journey.ĭark Fracture is a first-person psychological horror game set in the late 90s in an isolated forested region of the rural United States. The developers are focused on creating an immersive atmosphere that will appeal to even the most avid horror fans.

The video’s narrator also reveals that Dark Fracture will be released on next-gen consoles and will offer 4K high-quality graphics, particle effects, as well as lighting and ray tracing. The developers have stated that they took inspiration from well-known worlds of horror, and the influence of games like Visage and Frictional Games' Amnesia, as well as Swiss artist H.R. In addition to the morgue-like body decomposition facility, the Dark Fracture walkthrough gives the audience a brief peek at an unsettling netherworld environment replete with strange tentacled humanoid forms and haunting sound effects. RELATED: Lovecraftian Horror Game Conarium Getting Switch Port The five-minute video includes never-before-seen gameplay footage from the upcoming early access version of the game, during which viewers catch a glimpse of a rundown facility complete with gurneys, a morgue, and an overall oppressive atmosphere where the primary source of lighting is often a flickering lighter that has a habit of extinguishing itself from time to time. Fans of horror who tuned into the Gamescom coverage this week might have caught a tantalizing preview of Dark Fracture, an indie psychological horror title currently in development by Twisted II Studio and slated for release sometime in 2021.
