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‘Claustrophobic”, “oppressive”, “pretty depressing” – these are the words Jeffrey Tomec and Dave van Egdom volunteer when I ask them to reflect on their work as part of Swedish indie developer Wrong Organ. I’d add “nightmare-inducing”, too. Their last game, Mouthwashing, was an acclaimed work of horror storytelling set on a scuttled space freighter, in which players uncover the horrible things its desperate crew have done to each other.
When you’re planning a follow-up to something so pitilessly nasty, how do you raise the stakes? Well, you could set the entire game in the stifling crew compartment of a heavily armoured tank, a coffin-like interior you share with two other players as you co-operatively attempt to pilot your beleaguered war machine to safety through the crumbling remains of a city in enemy territory.
While there’s undoubtedly tonal overlap, the roaring engine powering Carcass Clad is gameplay rather than scriptwriting. “In Mouthwashing, every single thing we were doing was about trying to make that script come to life in any way possible,” says Tomec, the gameplay lead. “Every gameplay sequence, everything you do at every point is just there to make that story hit. And Carcass Clad is fundamentally not that kind of game. This is a gameplay-driven experience.”
That gameplay is physical, tactile and always high pressure, whether you choose to play as a gunner, driver or commander. “You’re surrounded by this awesome but scary machinery,” says technical designer and self-described tank nerd Van Egdom. “It should feel as though you might lose a finger if you put your hand in the wrong place.” And you will put a hand wrong at some point, since each role is designed so that your attention is stretched to breaking point between urgent competing priorities. One crewmate’s foul-up can have cascading effects for the entire crew.
If all that sounds a bit, well, claustrophobic, oppressive and depressing, it isn’t even the worst part. Your adversaries aren’t run-of-the-mill camo-clad baddies. No – your lone crew is pursued through Vhorgorod by the last remnants of the broken city’s defenders, the most dogged and fanatical element of the military force once stationed here. It’s a dynamic that was inspired in part by Battlefield V – specifically one mission that casts you as the crew of a German Tiger tank still defending Cologne in March 1945.
Vhorgorod’s defenders, the Green Lions, hunt you through wreckage and ruins. Tomec hints that their supernatural dabblings have “unleashed something on the city”, and now strange growths of flesh and gold fester alongside the rubble and debris. If that’s not grisly enough, the Green Lions’ tanks are festooned with divine livestock, living armour that moos and grunts and bleeds as shells fly.
But for all that horror, Carcass Clad is a co-op game, which means that it is also, on occasion, a bit funny. For all the grimness and tension, players are still going to be laughing when the driver inadvertently slams the Yksiö tank into reverse at a critical moment.
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“When you’re designing a co-op game, you’re trying to take into account the fact that every co-op game is inherently a silly game,” says Tomec. “We want – both narratively and at the gameplay level – the feeling that you’re a team fighting against these very oppressive odds, coming together and still finding revelry and enjoyment in being able to overcome something that is pretty miserable.”
On some level, that might be the biggest difference between Mouthwashing and Carcass Clad: a belief that in spite of everything, people can hold together, work together and even find something to smile about.
