Carrion, the promising 'reverse horror' game, gets free demo on Steam

James liked what he saw of Carrion, the upcoming "reverse horror" that casts you as tentacled monster, when he played it during this year's E3, naming it among the show's hidden gems. Now it's your chance to go hands-on: developer Phobia Game Studio has released a half-hour demo that you can grab on Steam. The demo will only linger until November 2, so act fast.

Carrion, which is due out at some point next year, tasks you with escaping a research facility, murdering as many humans as you can in the process. As you gobble up people you'll gain mass along with new skills that let you reach unexplored parts of its labyrinthine map. It's a horror Metroidvania, basically, where you're the hunter rather than the huntee.

You can also "reject" mass to change your available skills, as James explained. "A simple example: I had to eat several men to grow large enough to unlock a dash ability, making me capable of busting through hard wooden surfaces. But to open a door, I had to reject a good chunk of mass to regain the ability to spit out a little spidery arm. It fits into small crevices, which makes pulling switches through small cracks easy-peasy."

The feedback I've read on the demo via Twitter and Reddit has been almost unanimously positive. Head over to Steam to try it out, and watch the reveal trailer below.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.