Conscript Uses Survival Horror To Capture the Claustrophobic Terror Of World War One

Out of the 20th century’s many terrible conflicts, the first World War looms large in the popular imagination. Ill-fated charges into no man’s land, chemical weapons, and rampant disease amidst squalid living conditions define a struggle that extinguished millions of lives. Conscript, an upcoming indie effort that recently received a new demo on Steam, successfully transposes this terrifying setting into the conventions of old-school survival horror. Here, blurry brown pixels smear with blood in dilapidated maze-like trenches.

While plenty of games have attempted to represent the world wars’ brutality, most are shooters ultimately designed to grant empowerment. By instead channeling the tone and feel of early Resident Evil games, Conscript focuses on the helplessness and mortal fear intrinsic to its setting. We follow Andre, a French soldier stationed on the frontline during 1916’s infamous battle of Verdun. After a skirmish, the Allied Powers are pushed back, our protagonist’s squad is slaughtered, and he is left searching for his injured brother, who went missing during the offensive.

From here on, you are alone, and your only company is ominous gas-masked visages that prowl the trenches for intruders. Tonally there is a complete commitment to a threatening atmosphere. The grainy aesthetic depicts a desolate wasteland haunted by butchery, its washed-out color palette and pitch-black subterranean trenches establishing tension. At least early on, there is nothing supernatural or otherworldly. Instead, fear extends from stumbling into another human thrown into this senseless meatgrinder, forcing you into a fight to the death.

Mechanically, the cadence of these lethal encounters doubles down on scrambly close combat. While there are various firearms, things are confined to narrow trenches, meaning enemy soldiers will almost always be right on top of you. To avoid incoming shovels and gunfire, carefully timed combat rolls are necessary, but evading preemptively or too often will deplete stamina and get you killed. Thankfully, there is a forgiving windup when your foes line up their shots or blows, enabling these dodges. Your attacks are similarly deliberate as aiming your gun takes time, a trembling reticule slowly narrowing as you hold the trigger.

While many survival horror games punish you for allowing assailants to get close, the methodical aiming and long reload times make this circumstance an inevitability. The decision to have these close-ranged scuffles be unavoidable was well-considered, as it creates a constant stream of horribly intimate exchanges. The weapons you use also feel suitably frightening, such as how your bolt-action rifle lets out an ear splitting boom or how the swing of a trench shovel is accompanied by a sickening crunch. The effects of these armaments are keenly felt, as soldiers are left bleeding in squalid ditches. While it could be argued that its extreme violence is in keeping with shock-value-baiting depictions of war in videogames, this experience’s focus on the terror of bloodshed feels appropriate based on what we know about this war.

If it wasn’t clear that Conscript is heavily inspired by survival horror games, its puzzle-solving and exploration of labyrinthine spaces are in keeping with early takes on the genre. I navigated backwards through trenches, using a key to find another key which led me to a lockpick and then a final tool that helped me complete the demo. So far, rummaging through these bombed-out locales felt suitably unnerving while also delivering satisfying realizations as the correct path became clear. If I have one complaint it’s that the map, which is designed to look as if it’s been sketched by the protagonist, can sometimes make it easy to get lost. While it automatically marks locked doors and points of interest, there are so many branches at any given time that, at one point, I wandered aimlessly for a few minutes before finally getting my bearings. Although I prefer this more open-ended structure to what is found in many contemporary big-budget takes on survival horror, I hope traversing the full game doesn’t prove too confounding.

While Conscript primarily draws on ‘90s games for its gameplay, it also calls to mind one of the most upsetting films ever made, Elem Kimov’s Come and See. That war picture, which takes place in Nazi-occupied Belarus, evokes horror flicks through its unforgettably vivid depictions of atrocities. French new-wave filmmaker Francois Truffaut once famously declared that “some films claim to be antiwar, but I don’t think I’ve really seen an antiwar film. Every film about war ends up being pro-war.” Here he alludes to how, while many of these movies show the brutality of armed conflict, they eventually wrap us in the camaraderie of those involved, instilling the violence with some heir of nobility. Come and See largely avoids this by creating chilling images of cruelty that sear into the mind.

By framing the first World War through a similar lens, Conscript portrays the conflict not as an act of honorable sacrifice but as a senseless endeavor. Its title alludes to how the protagonist is not here by choice. His goal isn’t to selflessly serve his nation but to avoid being executed by his commanding officer and locate his missing brother. While it’s too early to tell if the game will ultimately be antiwar by Truffaut’s definition, its depiction of “The Great War” feels claustrophobic, ugly, and terrifying in all the right ways.