Although it plays more like a visual novel than the point & click escape room it purports to be, Centrum has a fascinating story if you can get through the early stages.
Centum is one of the harder games that I’ve needed to review. Whilst it’s easy to say that I found it to be fascinating, and that I found it a treat to explore its increasingly mad world, the story makes the game quite challenging to discuss. This is for two reasons. Firstly, going into any detail whatsoever means that there will be spoilers abound – something I’ll be avoiding in this review. Secondly, I’m not entirely sure that my interpretation of the story is even accurate enough for me to talk about with any real authority. What I can say though, is that Centum had a story that hit me hard in its dying moments and left me contemplating it for some time before sitting down to write this. Put simply, if you want a narrative that you’ve likely not experienced before and don’t mind putting your brain to work to follow it, then this is a game for you.
So, that first issue comes up very early, as I don’t really feel as though I can talk about who you play as in any detail without spoiling some of the narrative. The setup of Centum is you are using a workstation to run and monitor a simulation powered by an AI. You’ll then play through these simulations, which predominantly present as single-screen point & click style escape rooms in which you’ll speak to various characters, solve simple puzzles, and try to get out to progress to the next area.
Mechanically, this isn’t complicated. The puzzles aren’t too taxing and mostly involve you clicking on everything until you exhaust all dialogue options. This is what I mean when I describe Centum as being more akin to a visual novel, as really there aren’t any serious puzzles to solve, inventory items to manage, or information to carry from area to area. This isn’t a knock on the game as it’s designed in this way, but if you’re looking into playing, it’s worth noting that the majority of the game won’t challenge your puzzle solving skills.
Initially, you are trapped in a medieval looking cell, with nought but a creepy looking rat monster to keep you company. Clicking on the various items will present a bizarre world with objects that won’t make any sense at this early stage (or even by the end, if I’m honest). There’s a door, but approaching it makes you feel sick until you can solve a few puzzles that take place over a few in-game days. Subsequent areas also have you escaping from an apartment, and an unsettling playground. The atmosphere in each is thoroughly creepy, and this feeling doesn’t let up throughout the play time.
As you play though, the narrative becomes increasingly bizarre, with the person you’re controlling in each area seemingly being completely different. In fact, it will often appear as though one stage has little to no connection to the last, but is rather a completely new place to try to escape from. Going into much more here would enter serious spoiler territory, so I’ll refrain from further details, but suffice to say, this plot goes in some fascinating directions and does pull everything together by the end.
Whilst Centum is only around four to five hours in length, the first hour or so felt a little more of a slog than what came later. It took a little while for me to put my finger on exactly why this is, but I think I’ve settled on the lack of actual characters early on. Whilst you will communicate on some level during that early scenario, there’s no one who you could consider a main NPC to speak to for some time, and it makes that first part of the game feel somewhat tedious. When you look at other games that Serenity Forge have published, the likes of Slay the Princess, Doki Doki Literature Club Plus, and Paratopic all have grounding characters that provide interesting dialogue at regular points right from the off. Centum lacks this, and whilst you do get a lot more of it later on, you may be put off initially by the lonely nature of your first steps.
Get past that though, and there’s something really interesting to dig your teeth into. You’ll see all sorts of odd sights, from table ornaments turning into Cronenberg-ian flesh mutations to monstrous rotary phones made out of a cat. Something that pushed me forward other than the plot was the promise of seeing something else utterly bonkers that I simply couldn’t see coming.
This is all helped by an outstanding art work. I may from time to time bemoan the overabundance of pixel art games at times, Centum has an art style that really impresses. Everything is wonderfully animated, and the muted colour palette really sells the dour atmosphere throughout. There are no jump scares, just increasingly unsettling sights that will keep you constantly on edge. The music is a treat too, to the point where others in the room would comment on how pleasant or creepy different tracks were whilst I was playing. I will say that some voice acting would really help with some of the game, but I understand why it wouldn’t really work for reasons beyond budgetary constraints.
There are some hidden features too, that I won’t go into in too much detail either. The pause menu is your computer desktop where you can save, load, and handle game settings without breaking the immersion. I particularly liked how the desktop would become increasingly filled with more icons, all of which can be interacted with, as the game went on. This even fits into the narrative for reasons I won’t explain. Digging around at this level of the game makes the ending even more significant too, so don’t sleep on this part of the game.
Centum is quite a distinct narrative experience that you won’t find anywhere else. I can’t think of many other games with a story that had me going over it in my head for hours afterwards, trying to make sense of all the moving parts. Whilst there will be people who will bounce off this quite rapidly, those who are willing to give the plot time to breathe will get a lot out of this bizarre adventure that touches on such a broad range of themes. If you’re looking for your next deep narrative, this is almost certainly it.
Centum is available now on PC, Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo Switch.
