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Conarium - Lovecraftian horror game from Zoetrope inspired by At The Mountains Of Madness

GandGolf

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Feb 22, 2013
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What does he say in the last sentence? I can't make it out.

"Among all the conarium ??? is the most, how should I say it... gifted."

If you turn on the closed captioning he says "Among all the canary, Harvey is the most..."
 

Wirdschowerdn

Ph.D. in World Saving
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Clogging the Multiverse with a Crowbar
What does he say in the last sentence? I can't make it out.

"Among all the conarium ??? is the most, how should I say it... gifted."

In the youtube description:

"Two days ago, Frank most probably could have reached the intended time period. Among all the Conarionauts, he is the most – how should I say it? – hmm, gifted."
 

Anthedon

Arcane
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Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Their other games weren't terrifying either. But the atmosphere was very Lovecraftian.
 

Wirdschowerdn

Ph.D. in World Saving
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Gamersyde has a mini review and a few gameplay videos:
http://gamersyde.com/news_our_verdict_on_conarium-19160_en.html

Verdict


Contrary to what it seems, Conarium is not another one of those horror games in which you have to run for your life regularly. In the whole game, we had to run away twice, in very scripted and short sequences. The core of gameplay then relies on exploration, the discovery of documents (written and audio) and puzzles. Thankfully, the latter are well-integrated in the game and they never frustrate the player. Being an adventure game with narrative elements, Conarium is rather slow-paced, which means it's evidently not aimed at action fans. Despite that slow pace, Zoetrope's title is however not very long, unless you decide to find all the documents (we advise you to take the time to read them all) and secrets and you want to see all the available endings. Conarium may not be a must-have, but it's a game we've enjoyed playing from beginning to end, with a real attention to its raw material, aka Lovecraft's work. Considering it is the result of a team of 3 people, we are pretty curious to see where Zoetrope will take us in their next project.

One the plus side

+ Great atmopshere
+ Visually solid overall
+ The universe depicted
+ First Person Adventure above all
+ Smooth progression
+ Puzzles make sense
+ Multiple endings


On the downside

- Voice-acting is very uneven
- Short (3 to 5 hours), especially if you only want to see one ending
- Some visual assets can be a bit cheap
- More Cthulhu ?





 
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agris

Arcane
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Apr 16, 2004
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6,764
What's the connection between this studio and The Long Journey Home devs? There's an NPC in TLJH that you can select for your ship named "Zoetrope".
 

ghostdog

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Dec 31, 2007
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11,079
Shit.... 3-5 h???? Iirc darkness within took me ~10 hours and I didn't even find most of the secret easter egg stuff. Did they seriously make such a short game or did the popamole reviewer just breeze through the game with a walkthrough without even stopping to read any documents?
 

Cromwell

Arcane
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Feb 16, 2013
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5,443
Shit.... 3-5 h???? Iirc darkness within took me ~10 hours and I didn't even find most of the secret easter egg stuff. Did they seriously make such a short game or did the popamole reviewer just breeze through the game with a walkthrough without even stopping to read any documents?

I would say it depends how much you have to do for the different endings, if the replay value is high enough it would be ok. Darkness within didnt have multiple endings or am I remembering that wrong?
 

Anthedon

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Steam reviews seem to agree that the Lovecraftian atmosphere is top-notch but that the game is too short and too easy. Darkness Within 2 had different endings IIRC. But it came down to a different choice in the last five minutes. So nothing that would warrant a replay. Finding more of the (hidden) clues is a bigger incentive.
 
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Beowulf

Arcane
Joined
Mar 2, 2015
Messages
1,963
So, I bit the bullet and finished it.

My playtime clocked at 4h according to steam, but that includes me alt-tabbing and watching a youtube playthrough.
Not that the puzzles are hard (in fact, they are very easy), but game journal got bugged (that particular puzzle required me to align something according to the drawing that I couldn't see).
The key bindings and gamma level settings also reset once during the level transition.

Otherwise it's meh/10. Short, predictable story, nice visuals, extremely linear walking sim.
The lore is just straight dumped on the player and people not familiar with Lovecraft might wonder what's what, as there are hardly any explanations for the symbolism.

On the plus side - the ambience is nice, and the game was relatively bug free (apart from the settings resetting issues) for me.

It kind of reminded me of the very first Penumbra game.

I'm not that familiar with asset stores, but it looked at times like Solus Project (Unreal Engine); and this "horror" walking sim, that had something to do with the paintings, and which name eludes me at the moment, as I'm slightly inebriated (but it was made with Unity).


Darkness Within is better, and Call of Cthulhu still superior as Lovecraft games go.

So - 1 dorraru bundle fodder it is.

EDIT: Also - no FOV slider.
 
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Self-Ejected

Barnabas

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Don't know I can justify 17$ for 4 hours
 

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