by Lloyd “Gus” Sabin, 3 July 2025
I am very seasonally attuned, and play games that somehow match with the season I am currently living in. In summer when it’s very hot I’ll play historical games that are set in, say, a Middle Eastern desert during the crusades or in the ancient Mediterranean. In the winter I enjoy playing games set in freezing cold climates like the Eastern Front of World War I or World War II or the North American wilderness in January.
click images to enlarge
I am writing this quick post on Conscript, a game created entirely by Jordan Mochi (and published by his company Catchweight Studio)…in the summer. It’s 90 degrees outside my office right now. And Conscript is set in the cold, damp, miserably muddy trenches of the First World War’s western front. For me to go so out of character like this…you know Conscript must be special. And it definitely is.
Gameplay for Conscript is simple, but the game itself is not easy at all. There are many complex set-piece scenes and a lot of difficult situations that the player, as an ordinary French soldier, has to work and fight through. Expect to get your arse handed to you, a lot.
Conscript is a mix between a top-down and side-scrolling action game, generated with GameMaker, a game engine that can take pixelated art and give it a 3D effect. It’s very effective, and the visuals can be disturbing, often.
The music and ambient sound of Conscript are also very well-done and add to the depressing, gloomy, dark atmosphere. I would even go as far to say that if you are feeling down, maybe play something else for a bit and then try Conscript out.
One especially well-done component of Conscript is the inventory. Everything in it is period appropriate, from weapons to tools to food, and further adds to the convincing world that the game creates. There is a crafting element to the game as well.
Ultimately it is the writing that stands out the most. Even with all the other aspects done so well by Conscript, the notes that piece together the story are excellent. What starts as a pretty simplistic war story of one soldier looking for another turns into a survival horror game that is extremely memorable.
Technically, the animations are smooth and the game runs flawlessly – even more so considering this is all the work of one person. Puzzles and levels can start to get repetitive, but if the First World War was anything…it was repetitive, eh?
If you have even a casual interest in the western front of the First World War, survival horror, puzzles and mazes, grabbing Conscript is a no-brainer. Just expect to be challenged.
And if you are seasonally, er, “attuned” like I am (ahem), your excuse for buying in the “off-season” can be the Steam summer sale, where you can grab it for $9.99 (half off!).
I hope Jordan Mochi continues in a game development career. Conscript is an absolutely excellent first game and only bodes well for any further games he creates in the future.
Just be careful out there in the trench line.
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