![]() And the road to get there is lined with the very sort of quiet, dreadful exploration that filled his stories. They haven’t forgotten this, and Conarium has a truly excellent ending (well, one of the two at least) that fits perfectly with Lovecraft’s own flair for the dramatic. That’s a hallmark of Lovecraft’s tales of horror, the slow build to the great DUN DUN DUNNN moment at the very end. I mean, Conarium still has those moments, of course. There are a few particularly impactful discoveries that are left entirely to the player to acknowledge, which is a refreshing change from revelations in most horror games being dropped with huge stingers and setpieces. Along the way you’ll find loads of notes, sketches, and maps that expand the scope of the story and help place Frank in his role for this drama. Frank’s journey will take you from the forlorn base through a tour of some quintessentially Lovecraftian locales, complete with references to the mythos and representations of the more famous creatures. I’ll avoid spoiling as much about the story as the store page does (seriously, don’t read it), but this is very clearly a tale set alongside Lovecraft’s own At the Mountains of Madness. But no good can come of unbridled curiosity when eldritch forces are involved. Coping with terrible revelations about your own part in this expedition, you are urged through caverns and ruins lost to history by a voice on the other end of a radio. Disturbing notes detail the team’s strange experiments and discoveries, bizarre life forms lie dormant in the laboratories, and something ominous stirs deep beneath the base. That proves to be the least of your concerns, because the Antarctic base you find yourself in is entirely deserted. You are Frank Gilman, and you awaken to a strange device flashing otherworldly signals into your face. Not every part of Conarium works as well as the atmosphere, mind you, but it feels like an understatement to say they got the important part right. When a developer actually succeeds at doing this, as those behind Conarium did, the result is a truly singular experience. The savvy ones look to capture the tone that Lovecraft evoked, the mounting mystery that leads to overwhelming terror that no hope can repel. I would say that most merely take monsters or settings and plop them into an experience of their own design, which hardly ever works well. It is always interesting to see what route developers take when they intend to adapt Lovecraft.
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