Conarium

Lovecraft Plays Mind Games In This First-Person Puzzler

- Chris Burke

Cult horror writer HP Lovecraft is enjoying a bit of a renaissance in videogames at the moment, what with last year’s Call Of Cthulhu and the upcoming Sinking City, and here’s another game that’s based on his imaginative mythos. Conarium, from Iceberg Interactive, is quite closely based on Lovecraft’s 1931 novella At The Mountains Of Madness, set in the claustrophobic confines of an Antarctic research base, and the deep caves filled with remnants of an elder civilisation that have been discovered by the expedition of which you were part.

This is a first-person puzzler – low on action, but pumping its source material for as much atmosphere and mind-warping weirdness as it can muster. Your character, Frank Gilman, was part of the expedition that established the Antarctic base, but aside from that he can’t remember anything of recent events and he’s got a blinder behind the eyes. Did Frank overdo it on the sauce last night? We think not. A weird device is strapped to his arm, there’s a pulsating machine in the rec room, and everyone else has vanished. As you explore the base, solving some straightforward puzzles, such as restoring power, finding keys to unlock doors and crank handles to operate elevators, you discover notes and journals that fill in the blanks.