Conscript is, in almost every way that matters, a classic survival horror game. You’re alone in hostile territory, surrounded by enemies, with limited available resources. Everything you try to do is blocked by obstacles, puzzles, or strange locks, and your primary goal is to get out alive.
The twist is that it has no overt supernatural, conspiracy, or science-fiction elements. Conscript is about one man trying to live through the Battle of Verdun, despite constant artillery strikes, enemy soldiers, disease, pestilence, trauma, rats with a taste for human flesh, and most crucially, your commanding officers’ incompetence.
Conscript is the debut project from Australian solo developer Jordan Mochi, who’s been working on the game for the last 7 years. According to Mochi, he made Conscript as a combination of his love of both history and the Resident Evil series. The resulting game makes an implicit argument that having to participate in WWI-era trench warfare is at least as terrifying a scenario as any zombie apocalypse, and you know what? That’s a good point.
Conscript begins in the summer of 1916, 5 months into the Battle of Verdun. At this point in what’s still known as the Great War, the German strategy is to “bleed France white,” by hitting a single point in the French lines with everything it can muster. It’s a pure battle of attrition.
You come into this as André, a private in the French army, who was drafted alongside his brother Pierre. On July 16, the Germans launch another ground assault on Verdun. Pierre is wounded and taken off the front lines before the worst of the fighting begins, while André is knocked out and left for dead.
When André wakes up, he’s alone and unarmed in what’s now suddenly German territory. He’s forced to fight his way back to the French lines, and along the way, try to find out where his brother went.
Everything around you is gray, brown, or black, unless it’s either blood red or mustard gas yellow. You’re constantly finding the remnants of people’s lives from before or outside the war, like old photographs or mementos, or a burned-out field that’s just barely recognizable as what used to be a farm. One of the most common obstacles in your way is a crater from an artillery strike that’s filled with rain and/or corpses.
The game opens with an extended combat sequence where you as André must defend the French lines from yet another German attack. You’re sent to randomly run around the trenches while other soldiers die at random around you, while your commanding officer yells orders at you from relative safety.
Conscript might be the only game I’ve ever played where I was given a machine-gun turret, but felt sort of bad about using it. The Germans come at you in groups of two or three, and most of them aren’t armed with anything more than a shovel. Every once in a while, one of them drops a grainy photograph of a family member or a beloved pet. Conscript’s version of WWI is impossible to see as anything other than a tragedy.
On paper, this is a brilliant match between two similar concepts. One of the most brutal, violent combat theaters in military history works well as a setting for a genre that’s often known for its brutality and violence.
Conscript doubles down on that with combat that, like Resident Evil 4’s, is primarily about space control. Most of the enemies in the game have one plan, to rush you down before you can shoot them, and once somebody’s in your face, you don’t have a lot of good options to get them back out.
Long guns in Conscript typically force you to slowly work a bolt or rack a slide in between each shot, then reacquire your target. Meanwhile, the guy you just shot isn’t dead yet, and he and his best friend are coming to kick your hairstyle in. Most of my fights in Conscript seem to degenerate into me frantically beating somebody to death with a pickaxe, which I am given to understand is a realistic recreation of the World War I trench combat experience.
The general idea seems to be similar to the original Silent Hill’s, where the combat’s deliberately janky in order to communicate a specific narrative point. You’re supposed to be frustrated and desperate, because André usually is. I can’t say it doesn’t work, but there’s a substantial learning curve attached. I ended up dumping all my upgrades into the first semi-automatic pistol I got, so I didn’t have to deal with the bolt-action gimmick.
The purposeful awkwardness of its combat is a useful example of the (other) conflict at the heart of Conscript. It effectively recreates a particular point in history as a horror scenario, but it also wants to be a ‘90s survival horror game.
Sometimes that combination works to its benefit, with puzzles or challenges that reinforce the theme. At other times, particularly in Chapter 3, Conscript’s balance tips all the way over into survival horror and it lands with a thud. There’s a lot here that doesn’t make sense as anything other than gratuitous shout-outs to the games that inspired Conscript, and that can’t help but damage the vibe.
For example, there’s one sequence that requires you to navigate a series of gas-filled tunnels in search of four clues that let you decipher the solution to an elaborate combination lock, while another sends you on a key hunt through the bombed-out French countryside. At another point, the rolling boulder trap from the original Resident Evil makes a surprise cameo, which is hand-waved as unexpected debris from an unstable mining tunnel.
I’m more familiar with survival horror as a genre than I’d imagine most people are, as I have a terrible obsession. That said, it’s difficult for me to not experience this sort of thing as someone gently elbowing me and saying, “See? It’s a Resident Evil reference. You get it, right?” The more elaborate and surreal the puzzles are, the further Conscript gets from its strengths.
As a result, I’ve got a mixed opinion on Conscript. When it’s reenacting World War I as a grimy, futile horror scenario, it’s genuinely harrowing, although the combat takes some time to click. On the other hand, when it’s self-consciously trying to be Resident Evil: 1916, it loses that edge.
There’s a good idea at the heart of Conscript, and I could see someone else really enjoying its dark, atmospheric style of historical horror. It’s a little too eager to pay homage to its inspirations, however. If it stuck with the mood of its first chapter, with more down-to-earth puzzles and obstacles, it’d be a more satisfying overall experience. As it is, Conscript is a must-play for survival horror fans, but it’s uneven.
