‘Conscript’ Review: Nightmare in the Trenches

Set during the Battle of Verdun in 1916, Conscript puts you in the shoes of a French soldier struggling to find his missing brother across bunkers that have turned into miserable graveyards. Survivors are scarce, and seemingly endless waves of German soldiers and vicious rats stand between him and any hope of escape. In stark contrast to the games under the Call of Duty and Battlefield umbrellas that are problematic for their glorification of violence and warfare, Conscript is memorable for the way that it presents war as ugly, grim, and devastating.

Graphically, the latest game developed and designed by Australian solo developer Jordan Mochi feels sprung from the 16-bit era of gaming, with a low-resolution top-down camera and limited color palette, but it’s gameplay emulates more modern PSX-era survival horror games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Save points are infrequent, the inventory limited and resources scant, forcing you to carefully consider each decision when venturing out into no man’s land.

The game is at its most effective when you’re completely isolated, carefully traversing derelict warzones as bombs drop in the background. Through it all, the state-of-the-art sound design features a variety of horrific sounds of war that are constant across the campaign. Explosions, gunshots, and screams are matched with an effectively unpleasant score by composer Sonny Igusti that utilizes both emotional music beats and total silence where appropriate.

The game’s retro graphics are a stylistic choice that works in lockstep with its harsh tonality and themes. Perhaps unexpectedly, Conscript invites comparison to Ocean Software’s underrated 1993 Jurassic Park video game adaptation for the Super Nintendo, which used a similar top-down perspective with realistic sound effects, as well as difficult, suffocating indoor segments, to immerse players in the world of Steven Spielberg’s film. At its best, Conscript is similarly immersive, making one feel hopeless as it captures the nihilism of the war to end all wars.

Occasionally the player will discover a brightly colored recruitment poster among the wreckage—dishonest propaganda designed to lure in the exact kind of hapless individuals whose bodies we’ve seen littering the corridors of the heavily shelled bunkers. In other games with similar subject matter, these would be simply collectables that grant bonuses, but not here.

Likewise, after killing an enemy soldier, sometimes the player will find a memento on their body, such as a photo of their family. The juxtaposition of these discoveries with the interminable violence of the combat around them never lets the player forget that the enemy here is also human, victims of a war where there will be no victors.

Conscript’s message is so potent that it’s easy to forgive occasional issues, including minor bugs and haphazard controls. Where the game most stumbles is in its difficulty, as it’s absolutely unforgiving. Even on the default difficulty level, the lack of resources, paired with sizable groups of enemies and long treks between areas, often risks the player accidentally putting Conscript into a fail state, and unlike most modern games, the difficulty cannot be changed once the campaign has begun. Other hindrances, such as dangerous rats that violently attack the player and amass if one doesn’t grenade their tunnels, are more annoying than scary.

To its credit, Conscript maintains a high level of intensity regardless and doesn’t cheapen the experience by adding unnecessary supernatural elements or moments of levity. Similar to its survival horror brethren, it features multiple endings, and while some are more impactful than others, all boast the same dedication to authenticity and the anti-war themes that put it in the same conversation as other Australian anti-war classics like Peter Weir’s Gallipoli.