CONSCRIPT (XS) - Review

by Lee Mehr , posted on 26 August 2024 / 1,912 Views

The deafening sounds of Howitzer blasts, the agonizing breaths of those sucking in mephitic mustard gas, and the decaying masses festering within every trench are among some of the expectant horrors found in World War I. It's not surprising then that solo developer Jordan Mochi (also represented as Catchweight Studio) is compelled to distill those "highlights" from the start. But it's both audacious in inspiration and a tad foolhardy in execution. For a survival-horror to channel an intensely-focused action setpiece before acclimatizing players sets a different expectation for the rest of its campaign. Then again, The Great War had no interest in playing fair either. Why should CONSCRIPT be any different?

Apropos of its viciousness, the setting is the Battle of Verdun in 1916. As scores of soldiers – German and French – are continually thrown into the meat grinder, you play as a lone French solider named Andre Poliu who is looking for his lost brother, Pierre. With the recent German advancement, Andre is foisted between reconnecting with Pierre while also defending and eventually countering "The Boches" descending upon Fort Souville's supply trenches.

As one would expect, things are in disarray: communication is unreliable, dead comrades are strewn everywhere, and an advance German unit has already infiltrated. In classic survival-horror fashion, you're on the back foot early on with merely a torch, trench shovel, backpack, pistol, and some ammo. The odds seem overwhelming, but with a zoomed-out, top-down camera, there's ample opportunity to weigh out means of attacking or sneaking by unaware guards. It's also an inspired artistic touch: having a bird's eye view of these narrow trenches with a grimy pixel-bit aesthetic feels reminiscent of a long-lost Game Boy Advance horror title transplanted to modern systems.

CONSCRIPT's controls emulate old-school chunkiness and heft to Andre as well; after all, you're a simple conscript fighting for his life. With a limited health and stamina pool, there's a design ethos of making every swing or shot count. Timing is key. Whether charging a melee strike or taking aim, there's a deliberate half-second cooldown for your UI to narrow the targeting reticle; even then, Andre's nervous hand can't help but shake a little – not without drinking alcohol, at least. It's a slower action tempo of tactically kiting and roll-dodging enemies to expand your attack window. That sense of lumbering momentum with its crunchy audio design does feel weighty, but also not as tightly refined, with occasional cases of poor hit detection and getting stuck on the geometry.

While there's also the option to flee and sneak, those underlying systems aren't expansive or rewarding. It's certainly handy in a pinch to nestle in a curtained alcove against multiple patrols, but your means of stealth don't evolve much beyond that. Enemies function strictly on line-of-sight (LoS) detection, so there's no issue with sprinting right behind them, shining your torch light at them from anywhere besides their front, or leaving a freshly-killed Hans right along their patrol path. Even on default Soldier difficulty (which was my choice), it's not hard to sprint past their LoS before they reach an alerted stage.

Your limited tools and weaponry reinforce the genre's sense of desperation. Scrounging for material, be it opening crates, smashing wood barrels, or being a master of unlocking, is part and parcel here; at the same time, there's also inventory tension as every weapon, a select amount of ammo, key, healing item, and more take up one slot. Sometimes disinterring a treasure trove at the wrong time makes for a bigger headache to your current plans. Figuring out where and when to stash items to make room for discovered or purchased supplies can be a side objective of its own, especially when more sophisticated puzzles demand multiple keys. Who knew a quaint French town had intricate locks like The Spencer Mansion?

Fortunately, juggling and discarding so much stuff doesn't have to take place in combative zones. There's such a rush of comfort after stumbling upon a new, blue-lit safe room, graced with fresh supplies, a storage crate, a save point journal, and a traveling salesman (a la Resident Evil 4). All of which acts as any genre veteran would expect: your crate of extra items is magically connected to every stash across the map, the salesman acts as both a means of buying/selling items for loose cigarettes and also upgrading guns with gun parts, and saving can only be done with one-use ink ribbons, unless you opt to turn on checkpoints. While functionally indistinct from what's come before, the distance between them and how some of them change over time is perfectly implemented.

These micro-dilemmas – weighing between action and stealth, prioritizing inventory items – feel more substantive when considering German reinforcements or… other enemies. Rewiring open parts in the parapet is necessary to prevent more soldiers from invading, which also means less food for pestiferous rats. Similar to Resident Evil Remake's Crimson Heads, CONSCRIPT's post-death dynamics involve plague-ridden vermin whose bite(s) carry a 50/50 chance of poisoning you, reducing your maximum health and tainting the outer edges of your screen until you remove it with proper healing. So, now there's this permanent tension of every freshly-killed enemy luring a small pack of them. It's like a ticking bomb and you have to act fast by either burning the bodies or plugging little rat holes with grenades. Melee or fire-based attacks are valid offensive options too, but the chances of coming away unscathed are quite slim.

All told, CONSCRIPT's survival-horror mechanics are among the best in recent Indies – Crow Country included. That blend of resource management, combat, puzzle-solving, and exploration connect with each other so well as you're pummeled in the trenches. But it's not just limited to there. Eventually, the fighting broadens out to a nearby town, a forest at the rear flank, and so on and so forth. While every main area has useful interconnectedness, the dark forest exemplifies the level design's weaker pathfinding. Because of how 3D models are smushed onto this 2.5D plane, it's so hard to discern what's a valid hurdle to cross – like, say, cobblestone steps – and an impediment. This issue is exacerbated by how narrow and artificial some of the forest's path ultimately feels. It never fully recovers from these inimical ideas either, going so far as to vitiate the original level's looping layout by blockading a couple useful shortcuts.

That visual 2.5D/3D mismatch can feel compounded for those unprepared for combat. It's not enough to simply break a rifleman's line of sight and retreat to a different trench lane when they can hookshot their bullets like Kareem Abdul Jabbar; no, you need to get more distance for a well-timed roll or a miss on their part (which frequently happens). The same magic bullet rules apply to you, but that's the problem: you can't intuitively know which supposed barriers work or don't work like the computer automatically does. And while I appreciate the thematically-appropriate plague rats, it's a shame to see they’re programmed to exclusively target Andre. I get that he's French, but imagine the emergent dynamism if they were equal-opportunity biters.

Lack of dynamism can also apply to the story. Even with valid qualifiers of this serving more as context for the survival-horror experience, it occasionally lends itself to being more substantive. The chapter bookends that flashback to pre-war Andre, intense first-person perspective shots meant to evoke the horrors of war, and so on allude to something more sweeping than it functionally is. There could've been more zest, or perhaps more French era-appropriate touches to the prose, breathing more personality into every character. What's here is still a serviceable – if well-worn – narrative depicting the incalculable psychological toll of warfare with flashes are genuine artistry. The way design and storytelling meld for the final big combat sequence perfectly encapsulates the slog of Verdun and WWI overall.

While that drudgery within this world makes everything feel grounded, a little something feels lost in not extending CONSCRIPT's horror into the supernatural. Perhaps this'll be considered more of a nitpick on my part, but it's tough not to think of something like the living barbed wire scene in Deathwatch, or potential monstrosities as visual metaphors for something else – a la the Silent Hill series. Though it's a fair counter to make seeing every enemy combatant (armored or not) as a regular person, many of whom keep pictures of their family on them, there are also some subtle moments suggesting it could've gone further. It would also marry well with gameplay, given that it strains credulity how spongy soldiers can be to everything except specialty handcannon or shotgun rounds.

Part of this yearning (or nitpick) also stems from thinking of what potentially inventive sounds could've been incorporated into both the audio design and Sonny Igusti's soundtrack. From the intensive shelling sequences to the quiet atmospheric moments, Mochi knows how to establish a mood; it may be relatively basic, but trudging through knee-high marshland, running across floors littered by artillery shells, and other background noises do a great deal in selling this world. Most of Igusti's tunes are more about establishing the basics, until they get darker and darker as Andre's own descent towards hell continues.

Said descent can last between 8 to well over 13 hours on Soldier difficulty. Had I'd known nothing about this game's background, I wouldn't have believed this was ostensibly a solo developer's passion project (minus contract work on soundtrack & sound mixing). Past the runtime alone, there are also multiple endings based on your actions during the campaign – one of which is admittedly too obtuse for its own good. Its accessibility in difficulty options and enabling checkpoints also makes it easy for critics of survival horror's punitive staples to give it a shot; moreover, going below the standard difficulty locks out the chance to see certain endings. There's a decent amount of flexibility along with reasonable trade-offs.

It goes without saying that CONSCRIPT is – first and foremost – a prodigious project by Jordan Mochi. Shouldering level design, narrative, puzzles, and more to this extent is an incredible rarity in today's age. And that singular vision is felt throughout each and every element. That also comes with potential drawbacks when inspired ideas that seem thematically consistent of this era partly vitiate its grander survival-horror aspirations. The otherwise-robust mechanical foundation gets snagged on barbed wire in the form of mismanaged level design, some cheap enemy encounters, and other miscellaneous detractions. But through it all, the journey remains a harrowing one that's easily worth volunteering your time and money to experience.

Contractor by trade and writer by hobby, Lee's obnoxious criticisms have found a way to be featured across several gaming sites: N4G, VGChartz, Gaming Nexus, DarkStation, and TechRaptor! He started gaming in the mid-90s and has had the privilege in playing many games across a plethora of platforms. Reader warning: each click given to his articles only helps to inflate his Texas-sized ego. Proceed with caution.