Let’s not beat around the bush: Conscript is easily among the best indie games of 2024. It’s arguably the finest WW1-themed release since the superb Valiant Hearts, if not better. It’s even more incredible that something so excellent has an origin story fit for an American Idol contestant.
Conscript was created by solo developer Jordan Mochi, a former history student who openly admits to sacrificing a huge chunk of his 20s–six years, no less–to this debut, which he started with zero coding experience. If you’ve ever thought about making your own game, Mochi is the perfect muse– Conscript proves that nothing is impossible with time, passion, and dedication.
This top-down survival horror follows in the footsteps of the excellent Crow Country –another PS1 survival horror-inspired game–and like its fellow 2024 indie darling, Conscript adds a new and brilliant twist to the celebrated format. With it, you get a thrilling, challenging, and occasionally harrowing experience of the trenches in the First World War.
Conscript puts you in the muddy boots of a French soldier looking for his MIA brother between the trenches and ruins during the Battle of Verdun, starting on July 12, 1916, two years into the conflict. The story is rather light touch, but all the better for it; you learn more about yourself, your family, and your current predicament from fellow soldiers, posters, useful notes, and chapter-ending flashbacks. At the same time, its real focus remains on exploration, puzzle-solving, and brutal action.
Like Crow Country, Conscript lays the classic Resident Evil tropes pretty thick and right from the start. It works on a graded completion system, so you must be hardcore to get a coveted S+. You have a limited, slot-based inventory, paired with typewriter-based save spaces and storage chests. There’s a merchant you can buy, sell, and upgrade weapons with. Notes are paginated, in that classic RE1 style. The palette is awash with browns and greys, and darkness masks dangers around every turn.
Still, things start shakily. Conscript throws a few ideas at you, but they don’t all stick. Its ‘FMVs’ are short and strange; typefaces are inconsistent and all over the place; crucially, there’s next-to-no hand-holding. You have to figure out a few things for yourself–not just where to go and what to do, but how to work its interface and controls, as well as its crucial slot-assign system.
This old-school approach makes Conscript difficult to play in shorter, fractured bursts–its lack of hints, and approach to discoveries and puzzles, make you feel lost very quickly. Maybe that’s the point–anyone would be bewildered by the Western Front at the best of times–but it might not matter, because Conscript isn’t a game you’ll play in short bursts. It’s almost impossible to put down.
Once you get to grips with its throwback approach–getting your head around manual reloading, managing your stamina, understanding cigarettes as a currency, and appreciating the delicate balance of resource management, you can throw yourself headlong into its devious and distressing interpretation of the Great War.
More survival, less horror
While you could cut its atmosphere with a knife, Conscript is a little lighter on horror than its trailers may suggest. It has its moments–the graphics might be 32-bit, but that won’t stop your shock at seeing a soldier, with his legs blown off, silently crawling towards you for help; elsewhere, a distant, maskless ally falters in the gas, guttering, choking, and drowning in yellow fumes. The occasional photos of loved ones found on dead bodies tell entire stories of their own. There’s even the occasional jumpscare.
Instead, the fear factor comes more from the panic and worried anticipation of its survival horror-style combat–getting caught short with manual reloading, running out of bullets before you’ve felled your enemy, trying your luck with low health, or alerting one of the game’s tank-like heavies. Once you realize that, much like Resident Evil, you can often outrun your problems and know they won’t follow you through doors, you feel more equipped for the challenges ahead.
Much of Conscript relies on your patience and an understanding of your environment. Mochi reflects the back-and-forth nature of trench warfare with cleverly designed fetch quests, gradually opening up your surroundings. The level design is a feat of engineering–the mapping process must have taken at least four of the six development years to get right–and, like COCOON, you never feel truly lost, because there are only so many options available. If you’re out of ideas, you probably just didn’t pick something up because your inventory was full (this happened to me four times, because I’m greedy and nervous, so needed three weapons and ammo).
Still, certain situations feel too tough, especially early in the game. Some areas are so dark that you don’t know where you’re going, even when you eventually get the trench torch–though this runs on batteries you need to source or buy, and they’ll always run out at the worst possible time. Environmental hazards, too, are hard to decipher–the difference between a puddle you can walk through, and one that blocks your path, can be a guessing game.
Then there are the rats, arguably the biggest hazards in the game. They were everywhere on the Western Front, especially when bodies started heaping up, but the little bastards in Conscript are active carnivores, chasing you down–often after you immediately enter a dark room–nipping at your heels and regularly poisoning you. You can only kill them individually, with melee weapons; dropping rare grenades in their nests is the only way to stop them from returning. As with most enemies, it’s best to outrun them, but often, you don’t even know they’re there until your ankle’s been ripped to shreds and you’re poisoned.
Under control
Conscript is a reminder that certain, long-abandoned control systems still have a perfect place in gaming, so long as they complement or enhance the experience. Hampered movement mechanics only add to the feeling of helplessness, and you’ll regularly misjudge the distance of a visceral melee attack, or completely miss someone with a rifle shot under pressure. It’s reminiscent of the first-ever Silent Hill –like Harry Mason, you’re just a normal bloke thrust into a hellish landscape and hoping to hit your target.
Boss sections are real tests, too. You have to survey the area for environmental weapons at your disposal, such as exploding barrels, mud, and the occasional machine gun nest. Pacing your stamina, timing your reloads, and managing your meager rations is a stressful testament to those brutal PS1 games of old–especially because clipping and hitboxes, whether planned or not, don’t always work in your favor. A couple of these battles nearly saw me defenestrating my Xbox controller, but you just can’t help but have one more go.
A feat of indie gaming
According to the save screen, you’ll spend 12 to 14 hours completing Conscript, but that doesn’t account for your inevitable deaths–chances are you’ll sink a good 20 into it, and there’ll still be so much to uncover and solve on a future playthrough. The final payoffs feel perfect, and the whole experience is underscored with a gorgeous and often bleak soundtrack.
For all its little issues, it’s important to place Conscript in its true context: like Balatro, Mochi has started from nothing and created something genuinely spectacular. It might have taken a back seat to many other big releases this summer–including plenty of other great indie games–but Conscript is among the top 10 games of the year so far, independent or not, and you’d be a fool to give it a miss.