Halloween might be a way off yet, but its never too early to get a little spooky. This week Epic is adding the H.P. Lovecraft-inspired Conarium for free to the Epic Games Store from today until September 19.
The indie puzzle-adventure replaces last week’s free games Abzu and The End is Nigh. Conarium is heavily based on the works of cosmic horror giant H.P. Lovecraft, and most notably his iconic novella At the Mountains of Madness.
The plot follows a group of researchers and scientists on an expedition through the Antarctic with the goal of uncovering the ancient ruins of an alien civilization known only as the “Elder Things”.
You play as protagonist Frank Gilman as you wake up in a suspiciously abandoned Antarctic base. With no memories as to what happened, it’s up to you to investigate your surroundings and piece together what exactly brought you there – and, more importantly, what happened to your crew.
Lovecraftian horror can be a difficult beast to translate into video games, although we’ve seen many attempts over recent years.
The idea of incomprehensible terror is often dulled by actually depicting and having you interact with it but, interestingly enough, indie games tend to fare better with the subject matter.
The Sinking City and Sunless Skies are great recent examples of smaller studios nailing the genre, and Conarium has similarly been praised for its atmosphere and adherence to the Cthulhu Mythos.
Conarium is free to download on the Epic Games Store now.
As for next week’s game, it’s still a bit of a mystery. It’s common for Epic to announce the next game a week before it replaces the current one, but this time they’re being a little more cryptic.
All that’s been shown so far is an image of Batman with the caption “???”. The picture is in the style of the cover of the Batman 80th Anniversary 18-Film Collection, but with games making up the mosaic tiles.
With images from the LEGO Batman games as well as the Arkham series, it’s possible that we can expect the release a multi-game pack. As of now however, we’ll have to wait and find out.
