CONSCRIPT

Conscript was provided by Team 17 for review. Thank you!

I fondly remember when I first saw CONSCRIPT's announcement. I was blown away by the incredible atmosphere mixed with the pixel visuals reminiscent of older retro horror games like Resident Evil, and it felt like the perfect combination with the horrific World War 1 setting. That feeling stuck with me throughout Gamescom 2023, where I got to try the game for the first time. I was elated when I got to review the game for many reasons, and that love I felt for it never faded as I played through this gripping experience that I couldn't get enough of.

CONSCRIPT has you playing as a French soldier during the Battle of Verdun, the longest battle of World War 1 that resulted in hundreds of thousands of casualties. You are looking for your brother, who is up and disappearing amid the chaos surrounding you. As you learn the back story behind the characters, you will also experience the battle in a very realistic sense, filled with devastation, explosions, and death all around.

The developer wove an interesting story into the game, but the atmosphere is the real winner. It is fantastic and exudes dread the second you boot in. The sound of explosions, flailing bodies of dying soldiers around you, mustard gas seeping in through cracks under doors, bullets whizzing by you, all of it works extremely well with the dark, pixelated aesthetic. It all combined to create an eerie and haunting, yet gorgeous to look at, world that I loved running around in.

The gameplay itself is very reminiscent of its inspirations, and I love it for what it's worth. You are going to run back and forth through the trenches while fending off enemies trying to kill you. You will have to use your skill and wit to evade or kill those coming after you, using breakable melee weapons or guns with limited ammo that you pick up. Resource management is very important here, and even though you can buy some items with Cigarettes you pick up, it will never feel like enough.

CONSCRIPT is filled with these gripping, tense moments, and due to the resource management required, you never know if the weapons and defenses you have will keep you alive long enough. 1 on 1 encounters with enemies aren't as stressful as the group ones, but even those can quickly deplete your ammo or break your melee weapons, like the Trench Shovel, if you aren't paying enough attention. There are ways to hide to avoid confrontation, but there will be inevitable fights, so you must be prepared.

There are some environmental puzzles here and there, which did nicely break up the running around and fighting. Most of these puzzles were a nice challenge and made me scratch my head just the right amount. It didn't overwhelm and I enjoyed a different type of challenge while trying to find my brother.

Map navigation can be good and bad, though it was easy for me to get lost. CONSCRIPT doesn't hold your hand, which I like about it, but at the same time, it wasn't always clear exactly where I needed to go to progress. The in-game map doesn't show where you may need to go; it just shows which doors are currently locked and what areas are blocked off. This did help me get through it and figure out exactly where I needed to go, but it did take a little bit of sleuthing nonetheless.

And I have to say, there's no better way to play it than huddled up in the dark, relaxing in bed, and playing on the Steam Deck.

Conscript - Steam Deck Performance

Playing CONSCRIPT on the Steam Deck is a blast and fits perfectly on the portable device. The game does cap to 60 FPS, so we won't be playing at 90 on the OLED, but it feels extremely smooth and the gamepad felt wonderful to use. There really isn't much more for me to say on this. CONSCRIPT is perfect on the Deck and feels right at home there.

Accessibility

CONSCRIPT does have some specific accessibility settings like bright flashes, text speed, turning on and off gore, and different cursor and highlight colors. There are other options you can change like screenshake, blood on the screen, your bag style, tutorials, action prompts, language, and audio sliders.

The game doesn't support 16:10 resolutions, but it does have both cloud saves and controller support. There are no HDR settings.

Conclusion

CONSCRIPT is a fantastic classic survival horror game that feels wonderful to play on the Steam Deck. The game is devastating and gritty by accurately portraying what happened during this battle, and it shows. The atmosphere is incredible, the pixelated visuals are stunning, and the gameplay loop that requires some strategy and resource management is addicting, while also keeping you on your feet the entire time. It can be a little obnoxious to navigate the map with little to no direction on where to go, but it's still playable. And it's perfect for the Steam Deck, which makes it 200x more worthwhile to play. This will be a must have for any survival horror fans, that's for sure.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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