If you’re a fan of horror, then The Thing is on your favorite movies list.
Now, imagine for a moment, being able to play as the creature and that’s what you do — no licensing, no IP, no relation to the Carpenter or 50s original movie — this game is called Carrion (included with Game Pass as of January 2025: https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/store/carrion/9NPKKNBJ258V/0010) is your fix.
“CARRION is a reverse horror game in which you assume the role of an amorphous creature of unknown origin. Stalk and consume those that imprisoned you to spread fear and panic throughout the facility. Grow and evolve as you tear down this prison and acquire more and more devastating abilities on the path to retribution.”
Normally, we play as the gun-toting good guy taking out the baddies, but here’s the reverse horror: we’re the creature taking it out the humans.
This isn’t the first play as a monster game, of course. Remember the arcade game Rampage? Sure, you do! (Season 2 Week 26: Rampage (Arcade) – How to Join Us, Play, Beat Your Personal Best) Yup, we’ve score chased it. You’d eat the people to gain back life energy.
Unlike the 2018 film starting Dwayne Rock Johnson, Carrion makes me think more of The Thing From Another World (1951) and the 80s remake by John Carpenter, simply The Thing.
Whenever you hear of Carpenter people usually mention two movies: Halloween and The Thing.
PGM member and author Bob (https://playgamesmore.com/author/lucifer-bob/) recommended in his review of CARRION on Steam/PC (https://store.steampowered.com/app/953490/CARRION/) back in December 2023:
The ambience, the dark, creepy atmosphere and sound effects in CARRION are very well done. I liekd this game when I first checked it out back in April 2022, but it took me almost three years to get back to playing this more.
In 2025, it’s fun, entertaining games like CARRION that I want to return to and play more. Get deeper into the game, play more of them.
Have played it over 5 hours on the xbox. Having fun with this game. It’s a good metroidvania style game.