What makes the horror genre special is how diverse it is, allowing for unique stories to still be told despite many already existing. Sure, people often think about slashers, but there’s so much more to the category, including paranormal, cosmic, Lovecraftian, body, and more. This wealth of options and creative expression extends to all mediums, including books, movies and video games.
These days, there are a lot of multiplayer horror games, as well as numerous others that are like playing through a movie, alongside a resurgence of survival horror staples. However, as with the other mediums, there’s a lot more out there.
We recently reviewed The Shore — a Lovecraftian horror experience with a narrative focus and a mix of walking simulator and puzzle mechanics. The developer of that game — Ares Dragonis and Dragonis Games — just released another title onto consoles, as well, with that being Necrophosis: Full Consciousness. An updated version of a 2025 PC exclusive, it comes bearing a new DLC chapter. However, unless you know this you may miss it, so be sure to go back and play that chapter by going into the cycle (chapter) select menu after the credits roll.
Necrophosis is another walking simulator style game, with things to find and light puzzles to solve. The gameplay isn’t overly complex, or super involved, but it’s secondary to the incredible visual and art design. Both are used to tell a story, which is existential, otherworldly, depressing, dark and disturbing.
Players control a newly formed being, which is essentially an old cadaver with a different brain attached to it. This character, which is referred to as Consciousness itself, awakens in a sandy desert wasteland full of death and suffering. Disturbing statues of massive skeletons, demons, creatures and the like border this world, which is filled with cadavers, skeletons, and other suffering beings. The goal here is to get a massive, spider-like, thing covered in corpses to move. However, in order to do so, it’ll need three brains inserted into the three bodies hanging off its lower flank. As such, the player must look around, and find ways to obtain those organs.
As they progress from one region to the next, players will discover more disturbing sights, including bugs with babies’ faces, shambling corpse creatures, beings missing body parts, a massive skeleton that eats other beings and all sorts of different types of ‘monsters.’ Old gods, a Grim Reaper in search of souls, and tormented souls trapped in walls also make notable appearances.
At times, one will need to free, or at least utilize, other beings, including a massive giant and little, spider-like creatures that can crawl on statues. This is done by removing Consciousness’ brain and putting it into their brain-sized holes. This occurs several times throughout this 3-4 hour campaign and its 30-60 minute long DLC chapter.
Although Necrophosis: Full Consciousness is a horror game, and is full of dark and disturbing sights (like a bloated body you need to pull dead birds out of), it’s not very scary. You could say that the imagery is scary, and that a lot of it is disturbing, but the gameplay isn’t. That’s because the gameplay loop generally involves going into a large region of this underworld, and finding the things that are needed in order to satisfy the needs of the creatures inside of it. For instance, finding three souls, obtaining a number of statues, getting the ingredients for a ritual and the like.
The gameplay is relatively simple and straightforward, but there aren’t any objective markers, so players will need to listen to the many talkative beings and figure out what you need to do. At times, it can be a bit confusing, as well as frustrating. That’s because certain sections seem to boil down to searching for a needle in a haystack, or at least that’s how it feels. The first and second regions took me much longer than they should have because I failed to see a brain laying on the ground in a random spot, and also had issues finding souls. I searched every inch of those locations multiple times, but was still stuck.
As it turned out, I was on the right track with the souls, but wasn’t pointing the indicator in the right areas. You see, when you can interact with something, an eye (for an observation) or a black hand will appear. Usually, these interactions are noted by dark, purple/black spots with what look like stars floating in them, but that isn’t always the case. In this instance, I didn’t notice that I had to interact with a creature’s masked mouth instead of the open orifice that kept showing an icon, and also didn’t get an indicator when I’d been by the bird infested corpse. That got frustrating, because I’d been over those areas multiple times and had tried to interact with everything. Regardless, I got through the game without a guide, and didn’t have as many issues finding things in later regions, including the bloody underground labyrinth full of dangerous dead.
Taking one’s time exploring these varied regions of this realm, and the occasional portal that must be gone through, will yield results. There are occasional items, like disturbing dice, to find and look at. On top of that, there are numerous lore items, as well as sacred scrolls that provide strange observations about this world of death, old gods, suffering and eternal existence.
One can also find several coins, which can be given to prophets for advice. I thought that these would be tips as to what to do next, but they offered other existential information. A lot of this game is about existentialism, not to mention life, death, gods, and eternity. However, even though I took my time and explored every nook and cranny, listened to all the beings and read all of the scrolls, I’m still not sure I fully grasped the story.
There are obvious similarities to Scorn here, but that is a more challenging game with darker environments and some combat. Necrophosis is slow paced, and features decaying, dreamlike (well, maybe nightmarish) landscapes inspired by the paintings of Polish painter Zdzisław Beksiński. There are some cosmic, Lovecraftian and Giger inspired elements, as well, but no combat.
The art direction, creature design and world design found within this game all top notch. I would sometimes just look around in awe at all of the detailed statues, monsters, skeletons, decayed buildings and creatures that bordered the environments, all of which were quite large despite being contained by practically invisible walls. This type of effort, creativity and detail should be highlighted, and is worth playing for.
Similarly, the audio is good, immersive and haunting. A lot of the beings are fully voiced, with pretty good voice acting, but it could be said that some are overly wordy. That becomes noticeable because the player is unable to move when they are speaking. A lot of what they say also rhymes impressively, despite its disturbing content. This is a well written, dark and existential cosmic horror game, although some of it went over my head.
The four or five hours that I spent playing Necrophosis: Full Consciousness may have included some frustration, but they were enjoyable overall. This is a memorable, haunting and thought provoking game, which features great art design, unique storytelling and things that few others offer. Its gameplay may be a bit simple, and occasionally tedious and frustrating, but it’s worth it for the overall experience.
This review is based on the XBOX Series X version of the game, which we were provided.