It has become commonplace for the survival-horror genre when the player is pitted against various monsters as enemies. Conscript offers a different perspective on this concept. There are no monsters or screamers here, and the main danger is the man himself and what he is capable of.

Positional hell

Trenches of the First World War 1916, France, Verdun. The main character Andre, together with his brother Pierre, was sent to the front to defend their homeland. At first, the brothers perceived all this as a great adventure, making plans that they would soon return home. Reality turned out to be much harsher on them.

The plot begins with Andre’s letter to his mother. He describes that he has been in Verdun for 9 weeks and at the time of writing the letter he is vegetating in a support trench. There is complete chaos all around due to communication disruptions, problems with supplies and constant shelling. Forts change hands for several weeks in a row. They were about to be sent south so that the soldiers could rest, but this was not destined to happen. The German side was preparing an attack on the fort where the brothers were based. And she was successful. Many people died, brothers were separated, and we have to go on a long journey through trenches, forts and scorched earth to save our brother and get out of this hell alive.

As the player progresses through the story chapters, they are shown over and over again the real horror that soldiers faced in the First World War. Scorched earth, where apart from corpses, remnants of ammunition and barbed wire, nothing remained. Trench life, when there is nowhere to put dead comrades, the noise of shells exploding nearby does not stop for a minute, and rats are always scurrying back and forth in search of food and it doesn’t matter to them whether it is alive or dead.

But the worst thing is not this, but when on the corpse of a man who wanted to grind you with a trench club 2 minutes ago, you find a photograph of his loved one. At such a moment you realize that the most terrible monster for this person was you.

The influence of events occurring around leaves its mark on the main character. During firefights, his hands tremble – conveyed through the vibrations of the sight. And the more murders occur, the more the tremors intensify. Hallucinations appear, this is understandable; few psyches can withstand the events taking place around them. In moments of relaxation, Andre mentally returns home – to the quiet, flourishing family farm. The contrast after such memories is colossal, because once upon a time the surrounding environment was peaceful and flourishing.

Which ending Andre will reach depends entirely on the player. Conscript has many endings and even has a secret one. One thing is for sure – the story of the main character and his great adventure will leave few people indifferent.

Take care of your equipment for victory

Survival is reflected not only through the plot, but also through the gameplay. Andre is not a superhero, but an ordinary soldier. Therefore, his life can end quite quickly, and our task, as a player, is to prevent this.

Conscript is divided into chapters. In each chapter you will complete certain tasks and explore the level in detail. The locations are large, there is room to roam.

In each chapter, certain parts of the location are locked – with a key, a riddle or a combination lock. There are two big disadvantages in exploring locations – too much backtracking and not enough fast movement. The last one is in the game, but it is so useless that it was really useful only 1 time in the entire game.

I’d like to point out that progress is saved through save rooms. There is a chest, often a merchant, and a diary to save. In my playthrough there was a manual save, t. To. the game provides 2 saving options – manual and in the form of checkpoints.

A character’s abilities depend on equipment – firearms, melee weapons, special equipment or consumables. Firearms in the game with abundance. Barrels are upgraded using weapon parts. Some guns have unique features. For example, a rifle of that time should be reloaded after each shot.

Melee weapons are smaller https://vegasinocasino.co.uk/bonus/ than firearms, there is no pronounced variety in them, the damage figures and durability differ. Only melee weapons and body armor have durability. Body armor is a class of equipment that passively strengthens the player; in addition to it, there are other items in the game with different effects.

Health, stamina and inventory can be upgraded using certain consumables. Conscript has simple crafting from scrap materials.

There are few types of opponents, but absolutely everyone poses a danger to the player. They hit hard, they differ in the equipment they wear. Someone in armor, someone with a rifle with a bayonet-knife.

Rats deserve special mention. Not only can you not hit them with cannons, and it’s difficult to hit the rat model itself with close combat, but they also poison the character, thereby reducing his maximum amount of health.

During my playthrough I highlighted a couple of non-obvious mechanics:

Using cans of gasoline, you can burn corpses to prevent rats from spawning on them. It worked, but every once in a while;

Some firearms have a piercing effect. You can hit multiple enemies with one shot at once.

The entire gameplay is carried out with proper elaboration of the mechanics and does not get boring until the end of the passage. By the end of the game, the character’s survival faded into the background, because. To. a lot of resources have accumulated, this part is stronger in the first half of the game. There were some downsides. The curved registration of hits was very annoying in some moments and few cartridges were wasted on unsuccessful shots. And in general for the genre in terms of gameplay there is nothing new here. Sometimes I caught myself thinking that I had seen certain mechanics in other projects, the trace of the Resident Evil franchise is especially noticeable.

Audiovisual component

As you may have already noticed, the project is completely made in pixel art. At times I stopped at the locations, because the detailed landscapes of the events taking place around them were done in great detail.

However, Conscript has another visual technique that stands out: hotel screens with detailed scene detailing. Screens like these work well to highlight the mood at certain moments.

The audio component is performed at the proper level. Each composition emphasizes the mood of the scene and does not stand out from it.

As an example, a composition from a save room

Remaining advantages

Plenty of accessibility settings and good training. There is a separate item in the menu with which you can customize the game in more detail for yourself. The player learns through the game world and does not poke you with phrases like “Press W to go forward”;

Remaining cons

The technical state of the game in the last chapter is depressing, but does not interfere with the passage. I encountered a bug with an unkillable enemy – re-entering the location helped. There was also a bug with rats instantly spawning.

Conclusion

Conscript has become for me one of the brightest representatives of the survival-horror genre. It can be put on a par with such projects as Signalis or Darkwood . The horrors of the First World War and the way they were shown to us create a special atmosphere that sets Conscript apart from other representatives of the genre.

CONSCRIPT

Best comments

Been playing the demo for half an hour.

There are few types of opponents, but absolutely everyone poses a danger to the player. They hit hard, they differ in the equipment they wear. Someone in armor, someone with a rifle with a bayonet-knife.

No, enemies with shovels are practically not dangerous. With rifles they are slow and also basically simple. Only the enemies in armor are too imbalanced (in general it turns out to be a comedy in the style of Benny Hill where you run away from these enemies in circles around the location, but they don’t lag behind as if there were no other goals of interest in them. This creates the effect of the protagonist being chosen). Yes, and the formation of the fights was such that the enemies ran one at a time, and if there was a crowd, there was a heavy machine gun nearby with which it was easy to kill them. As a result, whole mountains of enemies could be created like Rambo alone.

And there are also non-intuitive situations in the game, for example, for me the demo ended when I ended up in a catacomb with gas in which I didn’t know what to do. Although I ran around the location on the surface 3 times. In general, no involvement in what is happening is celebrated, no collective action, no subordination between the soldiers – they are either extras or go straight ahead.

In general, the battles there, in my humble taste, are done so-so. With melee weapons, some strange Dark Souls on the screen occurs with rolls, with firearms there is no convenient auto-aim, as in the already mentioned Signalis or in Heaven Dust, just aim at the enemy and wait for focusing, most likely you will hit if you calculated the angle correctly, but not a fact. Not long ago Crow Country was released, also isometric without locking on the enemy, but in it you can control the camera and turn the aim anywhere. If there is no auto-aim, then the player should have a clear understanding of where he is about to end up.

If there were still parries and blocking, I wouldn’t even touch this game, there’s enough soulsliceism in other projects.

With shovels, it’s true that enemies are extremely weak, only if not in conjunction with other opponents, because they will become like human shields for higher priority targets. And so in the future there will be a minority of shovels, i.e.To. instead of them, the most frequently encountered enemy will be an enemy with a club, who runs quickly, kicks and this causes a lot of problems. Further on in the game, combinations of enemies are more likely to decide in terms of difficulty, and in addition to those you described, a new type of enemy is added with each chapter.

The moment you described with the machine gun is the so-called battle. They are really designed as you wrote, but there are only a few of them in the game, the rest of the fights take place in a completely different format.

There will be a few points about collective action later in the story. T.To. the game is more about personal drama and personal hell, and not large-scale military operations, I don’t see the point of putting this point in the project’s minus.

I have nothing to add about non-intuitive situations here. It turned out this way for you, but differently for me. Everyone’s perception works differently.

Apparently, by the end of the playthrough I was already very used to them and the only downside I gave was poor hit registration. Let’s just say that the not-so-fast melee combat seemed very much in keeping with the spirit of the project, so I didn’t see any particular problems in it. And for Dark Souls there are still not enough parries and blocks.