CONSCRIPT Review: Is War the Only Horror You Need?
The developers at Catchweight Studios have taken a unique approach with CONSCRIPT, aiming to show that you don’t need monsters or viruses to create horror when war itself can deliver all the terror you need.
But does CONSCRIPT actually manage to be scary? I’ll get to that in a bit, and also share one piece of advice I absolutely wish I’d known before starting.
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A Retro Survival Horror Set in the Trenches of WWI
CONSCRIPT is a top-down, pixel-art survival horror game set during World War I, available on just about every current gaming platform. The game design feels like a love letter to the Resident Evil series, from the opening warning screen to the save rooms, shopkeeper, weapon upgrades, and inventory management system.
While the design echoes Resident Evil, the gameplay itself is quite different. In a campaign that runs about 10–12 hours, you play as a French soldier navigating trenches and war-torn locations. You’ll need to either engage or avoid enemy soldiers, use upgradeable weapons, and collect items to progress. I chose the default difficulty and went for the standard save system, without any checkpoints or unlimited saves… a choice I soon regretted. But more on that later.
Initially, I found myself getting lost frequently. It took hours before I finally hit my stride and CONSCRIPT started to click. However, the combat isn’t particularly engaging or challenging. The gameplay actually reminded me a bit of Metal Gear on NES, though it lacks any meaningful stealth mechanics.
Sometimes, you’ll creep up on an enemy and start charging your attack, only to watch them casually walk away.
Hits and Misses
Despite some clunky combat, there are mechanics that work well. There are puzzles to solve, and you need to burn bodies to prevent them from attracting diseased rats—a potential nod to the survival elements of horror games like Evil Within.
But as I played, it became clear that the “horror” in this survival horror game relies more on the grim atmosphere of war than on any actual scare factor. The truth is that I never felt genuinely scared while playing CONSCRIPT.
I’m a fan of retro pixel art in games, but I’m on the fence about whether it really works in CONSCRIPT. It felt fine on the Switch in handheld mode, but on a big TV, the visuals came off as a bit jarring. Still, I appreciated the animations and general art style.
The sound design does a good job setting up tension, while the music in save rooms becomes familiar and comforting, much like Resident Evil’s save room themes.
A Made a Big Mistake
Remember when I mentioned my choice of save settings? CONSCRIPT warns you that you can’t change the settings once you start, but I didn’t expect it to impact my experience as much as it did.
At one point, hours into the game, I was making good progress without any issues. I hadn’t encountered any new save rooms, but I figured it was fine. Then, I found myself in an inescapable situation, died, and realised I’d just lost around 45 minutes of progress. My motivation to keep going plummeted—especially because I hate replaying large chunks of a game. Unlike in Souls-like games, nothing is retained or learned; you just go back to where you were, like pressing rewind.
It’s my fault, right? I’m the one who made the choice at the start. But I don’t understand why I couldn’t turn the option on later, even if it meant some sort of in-game penalty. By the time I realised I needed checkpoints, I either had to accept the risk of major time losses or start over from the beginning.
In most survival horror games, I might die within the first 10–15 minutes, giving me a quick reality check. In CONSCRIPT, I could easily go an hour without dying, making substantial progress and feeling lulled into a false sense of security. So, when I finally died, the setback was brutal.
Verdict: If you’re a fan of survival horror or have a particular interest in World War settings, CONSCRIPT might be for you.
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