Carrion is a ‘reverse’ horror game, meaning that it puts you in the position of creating the horror, as a ‘monster’, killing humans. The humans, though, don’t seem like they’re up to much good, so MUST DIE AT YOUR HANDS… Or: your tentacles…

Carrion was developed by Phobia Game Studio and published by Devolver Digital, first releasing in July of 2020.

You are an amorphus, very red, tentacled blob and you manage to escape from a specimen jar in a lab, and use your tentacles to move around. You grab and pull grates to unblock the way forward; open closed doors; pull switches; explore the maze of tunnels and vents, nicely controlled using a mouse and keyboard.

You must grab and eat humans to gain biomass (nice), and break and squeeze into experimental jars to gain new abilities. You can deposit biomass cocoons into gloopy pools to ‘downgrade’ the monster, to be able to use certain abilities. You can then return to the pool to consume the dropped biomass to ‘upgrade’ again.

The main danger comes from armed humans who’ll shoot you on sight, and it doesn’t take many hits to kill you. Some humans also have shields, that will harm you on contact, so you have to figure out how to attack them from behind.

There are cool flashback sequences, where you’re given control of people who fill-in the backstory of the game, and lots of detailed pixel art with real-time lighting; fast scrolling and excellent, atmospheric music. Overall, Carrion is a game I’d recommend playing. It’s weird and it’s fun being a disgusting tentacled monster for a while.

More: Carrion on Steam
More: Carrion on GOG.com