Slithery squish 'em up Carrion has a free demo available this week

Since I first saw a gif of the squishy guts monster of Carrion I haven’t been able to decide whether its movement is nauseating or beautiful. Playing its free demo, which is available now through next Saturday, November 2nd, has neither settled my stomach nor my appreciation for its aesthetics. I think this is a good thing.

Part of the “reverse horror game” is bursting out to give players a taste, presumably because it’s scary-spooky Halloween week. You play as a monster squirming its way out of a lab, wetly pinging your way along hallways, hoovering up scientists as you go. I mean, they probably deserve it. Locking up clearly sentient creatures isn’t very nice.

Anyway, the morality of it doesn’t matter very much, because scooping up human beings makes you bigger, and being bigger is good. It gives moving more gorgeous, horrifying weight, and more mass for the inertia and momentum to ripple through.

“Includes violence, blood, and gore” says the demo’s store page. It certainly does. Not surprising, given the pedigree of the appropriately named Phobia Game Studio, who previously made blood-soaked Butcher. And have you see where those Devolver Digital E3 bits go? No wonder they’re publishing.

And yet, the movement. The rapid cohesion of the thing, like a much, much grosser starling murmuration. I can’t look away.

You can download the Carrion demo for free on Steam until Saturday, November 2nd. After that it'll be crammed back in its cage until its full release, which is scheduled for sometime next year.