Content Warning Review (PC)

When I first heard the title Content Warning, I immediately drew the curtains and set my speaker volume to zero, for in my mind, a game with such a title wasn’t about to pass up on the opportunity to disperse copious amounts of crass humor and explicit materials of some questionable origin. As it turned out, though, I was essentially preparing for the worst, unaware of the fact that, in reality, it wasn’t quite nearly as bad as it sounded. In fact, it was barely anything to fret about at all, as it was, in spite of its thematic connection with its title, little more than a Roblox-type survival-horror that based itself around two things: on-the-nose influencer culture, and a social networking application called, well, SpöökTube. Go figure.

Content Warning is all about capturing footage from within the vicinity of something of a “no-go zone”—a sunken location that is, rather inconveniently, only accessible via a rather hefty diving bell. As a simple-minded squadron with a shared hunger for social acceptance and internet stardom, you must embark on a series of horrifying stints into the anomaly-fueled abyss — all for the sake of documenting your finds and, through the power of social media, earning the commendation for the best streaming channel on the whole of the web. And if you think that sounds like a walk in the park, then wait till you get a load of the morons on boom mic duties. For the record, nobody looks good when they’re lumbered with the mic pole — especially during situations that involve having to keep it perfectly steady and, you know, out of the eye sockets of a potential stalker.

Lights, Camera, Diving Bell!

Content Warning grants you permission to delve deep into the “Old World”—a seemingly desolate network of opaque corridors and relic-heavy quarters, few of which contain the secrets of its former inhabitants, as well as a cabinet of unruly physics-based creatures, who love nothing more than to scare you senseless as you descend deeper into its dark and tainted waters. Fortunately for you, that’s what you’re after: evidence that helps to paint a clearer picture of the unnatural occurrences that orbit the sunken city.

Needless to say that this isn’t your bog-standard Indiana Jones-type adventure; you aren’t looking to acquire some form of ancient artifact to transport to a museum — or anything like that. Instead, your one and only objective is to become viral on a platform known as SpöökTube—a digital phenomenon that just so happens to reward those who have the stomach to stake their lives in exchange for views. Naturally, your ultimate goal is to earn enough money through the monetization of your streaming handle, and obtain additional gear to tackle deeper dives and, well, keep your career from hitting rock bottom.

Content Warning adopts a pretty straightforward gameplay loop that doesn’t require a technical genius to understand: you flesh out your toolkit with a set amount of batteries, oxygen tanks, and camera equipment, and submerge into something of a monochrome world to capture visual evidence of the beasts and ghouls that occupy its darkest quarters. Think Phasmophobia–meets-Lethal Company, and you’ll have a rough idea of what it’s all about. To cut a long story short, you acquire footage, and upload it to a channel; the more views you obtain, the more cash you earn for additional technical improvements and other nifty gadgets and gizmos. It’s simple, effective, and a stone’s throw from being clickbait.

The Horror

Let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room here: Content Warning — it isn’t the scariest game; at least, it isn’t in the traditional sense, anyway. However, this is partly due to the fact that you aren’t alone in each of the runs you take into the Old World; this is an option, though it does take a lot of the fun out of the overall filmmaking process, I’ll admit. If anything, it’s a bit of a two-for-one thing; on one hand, you have a vibrant and communal atmosphere that mostly takes shape on the surface, whereas on the other, you have a decrepit environment that’s atmospherically on point and equally bursting at the seams with twisted apparitions and various layers of nightmare fuel.

To be absolutely clear — neither of the two sides of the coin are overly scary. It all depends, really, whether or not you’re saddled with a troupe of role-playing aficionados, or stuck with a group of playful souls who’d soon rather smack a clapperboard at the back of a tormented creature’s scalp; full disclosure — I was the one who spent more time smacking the clapperboard at people than chronicling genuinely hard-hitting evidence for potential streamers. Weirdly enough, that approach made us a lot of money on SpöökTube — so it wasn’t exactly a bad idea, all things considered.

What makes Content Warning all the more engaging is the amount of replayable content that each descent into the Old World forks out. Due to each of the monsters belonging to no particular portion of the map, each dive comes across as inexplicably unique and interesting—a feature that I was always keen to explore, even on the dozenth time, and when, to my best knowledge, I had already seen a great deal of what the game had to offer.

Like, Share & Subscribe

There are a surprising of customizable components here, too, such as avatar skins, emotes, and other textbook aesthetics that, while not entirely necessary for the story’s development, do manage to give you a little extra bang for your buck and something new to work towards. Moreover, as it’s still only finding its feet, and is still a few field goals from laundering additional content into the core blueprint, it makes our decision to commemorate it and sing its praises all the more easy to make. And that’s a good thing, truly.

Of course, there are one or two minor issues with the overall design, one of which is the storyline, or lack thereof. Suffice it to say that, concept-wise, Content Warning doesn’t go into much more detail than it needs to; it mocks influencer culture, if anything — and that’s fine, given that it does manage to replicate a lot of the social aspects remarkably well. In addition to it emulating a lot of the core elements of, well, YouTube, it also offers a well-balanced mixture of promotional materials and various avenues to publicize the content that you unleash to the audience. Granted, it isn’t quite on par with some of the more refined creative suites out there, but then, it doesn’t need to be; it isn’t the primary focus, but rather, one of several stepping stones in a much, much bigger picture.

Verdict

For the record, Content Warning isn’t all that much of a horror game, though it does make the occasional effort to produce some pretty chilling frights—moments that hit much harder when experienced under the appropriate circumstances, i.e, with a gang of skittish content creators who are more likely to cower at the sight of their own shadows than anything else. Again, it all boils down to the team that you’re partnered up with; a like-minded group can, and often will, generate far more memorable stories to share with the community, whereas a team of untethered individuals who rely on strict regimes are far less likely to gel with the aesthetics of the Old World in exchange for a greater share of the target demographic.

When all’s said and done, Content Warning could’ve stuck with a shameless cash grab and monetized the heck out of it for a few minutes of fame — but it didn’t. Instead, it conjured a surprisingly lionhearted and compelling co-op game that, while no longer free-to-play, makes the oddly low price of admission of a mere $8 seem like an absolute steal. The fact that it’s also structurally sound and without a slew of technical issues, too, makes it all the more inviting, doubly so given the amount of content that it also provides right off the bat.

If you’re struggling to remediate those post-Lethal Company blues, then you ought to consider sinking your teeth into Content Warning, as it’s not only one of the best co-op survival-horror games on the current market, but arguably one of the most entertaining underdog indies to ever breach the outer borders of the genre, period. In other words, it isn’t a piece of generic clickbait; it’s a piece of art that’s deserving of its viral status.