Although Conscript was introduced during a Steam festival a couple years ago, first time developer Jordan Mochi had been relatively silent since then until the title fully released a couple weeks ago. And for a freshmen effort in the game industry, Conscript is extremely impressive, even if it’s a little bit rough around the edges in a few parts.
Conscript is a top-down adventure set in the middle of World War I. Specifically, the setting takes place during the Battle of Verdun, one of the bloodiest and longest battles in human history, when the German army made a huge push into French territory and its trenches following months of artillery fire. In real life, the battle lasted over ten months, although Conscript offers about 15 hours of playtime depending on how slowly you’re exploring the world, fighting enemy soldiers and solving the title’s many puzzles. Conscript takes place over several massive levels including a French trench system under constant attack, a wasteland between the lines, a destroyed village and a French fort that the Germans have previously conquered.
Players take on the role of a French soldier fighting in the trenches with his brother, and for the first couple hours Conscript almost feels like a wargame. You will be running around your trenches shooting or slugging it out with German soldiers and defending the line. However, you quickly discover that almost everyone else on your side dies during the attack, leaving you all alone to try and find your missing brother.
After the initial battle, Conscript settles down into the more familiar pace followed by many survival horror titles. You will spend time exploring the environment looking for clues, upgrading your arsenal, solving some fairly complex puzzles, figuring out how to open different types of doors and gathering supplies. You will also keep getting attacked on occasion by various enemy soldiers and even hungry rats, although there are things you can do in the environment to severely limit the number of those random encounters.
You are helped in this endeavor by a friendly French soldier who acts as the key merchant in the game. He is similar to The Duke from Resident Evil Village, as he is almost like an entity who can pop up in unexpected places all over the map to sell you supplies. He trades for cigarettes that you collect and is normally found in Conscript’s many safe rooms where players can store or retrieve gear or save their games, so you will be encountering him a lot. In addition to just selling items, if you collect weapon parts, he will upgrade your firearms for free, adding buffs that make them more powerful, quicker to reload or shoot, or increase how many bullets they can hold – again, just like The Duke from Resident Evil Village.
One of the most interesting things about Conscript is the fact that the majority of the horror within the adventure does not come from some supernatural event or magic but from the nature of war itself, especially The Great War. You will witness quite a few horrors with dead bodies buzzing with flies, troops with their legs blown off crawling across the ground trailing their intestines and even those who have become shellshocked at the horror of the situation. And who needs movie monsters when you have a six-foot-tall elite enemy soldier in welded armor plates charging at you while yelling curses in German and swinging a massive axe that could cut you in half?
In fact, on the normal level of difficulty, I found Conscript too tough to play because of the combat, especially when getting killed resets you back to the last save point, which could have been quite a long time ago. Even the rats (which were thankfully nerfed in a recent patch) could give you a huge amount of hurt while exploring. Lowering the difficulty (there are four levels, two lower and one higher than normal) did the trick for me, although I had to reset the game and start over to change it as you can’t do that on the fly.
The combat in Conscript is a little clunky. It’s a top-down view, and there is no way to tell if you have a definite line of fire on an enemy. You can hold the aim button down until the crosshairs shrink to their smallest size but can still miss the shot. And on harder levels, enemies are bullet sponges, especially until you upgrade your weapons. Melee combat is a bit more reliable, but relies heavily on dodging using a combat roll, which pretty much makes you invincible while performing it. So, it becomes rather easy to roll past an enemy while they are locked into their swing animation and then just take a few whacks on them from behind while they reset. Or you can use that time to get some distance to take another shot at them if you prefer. Once you master those key moves, it makes things a lot easier, not unlike what happens in the recent remake of Alone in the Dark.
Graphically, Conscript looks really good. It’s not Unreal Engine 5 or anything, but it’s some of the best pixel art out there right now. There are even different costumes that when worn can change the look of your main character. The sound effects are good, and there are a few nice touches like how the sound of your footsteps will change depending on what you are walking on, plus things like screams in the distance to set the mood and provide another layer of unsettling horror.
Conscript is on sale on Steam for just under $20, making it a great value on top of all its other strong points. Overall, it’s a lot of fun to play, and it’s nice to find a survival horror title with a more realistic setting. Yes, there are some rough edges like too much backtracking required to solve certain puzzles or to advance to the next map (this too was alleviated somewhat with a recent patch), but in general Conscript does a great job of grabbing players’ interest and holds it from start to finish. It’s not an experience that should be missed by anyone who enjoys survival horror games, especially if they are looking for something fresh and different in that dark genre.