Carimara: Beneath the Forlorn Limbs [REVIEW] – Brief, Beautiful, and Unsettling

Some games don’t need to terrify you to get under your skin, and believe me, Carimara: Beneath the Forlorn Limbs isn’t a horror game in the traditional sense. There are no jump scares or monsters chasing you down, but instead, a constant sense of unease… you know… the kind that lingers quietly, keeping your toes curled as you explore its off-kilter world to try and unravel its mystery… it’s brilliant.

Check out some screenshots down below:

At its core, Carimara: Beneath the Forlorn Limbs is a mystery adventure with light horror and fantasy elements thrown in the mix for good measure. You play as the mute exorcist-detective Carimara, summoned to a lonely cottage to deal with a ghost haunting an old woman’s cellar. The task seems simple enough: identify who the spirit once was, who killed it, and what weapon was used, but as the story unfolds, things become much stranger. It’s a fantastic premise that’s wonderfully delivered to keep you hooked in from start to end.

Rather than using traditional dialogue trees to converse with others, Carimara: Beneath the Forlorn Limbs introduces a clever card-based communication system. I mean, you’re mute, so you have to be practical, right? Every time you interact with an object or creature, you receive a card representing it, which can then be shown to the characters of the world as a way to speak to them to discover nuggets of information. These cards essentially become your vocabulary, and if you’re going to have any chance of uncovering the truth, you’ll have to scour your surroundings to find them all and use them in conversation efficiently to get your facts straight.

“Carimara: Beneath the Forlorn Limbs is a short, stylish, and wonderfully eerie mystery that trades cheap scares for a deep sense of unease and tension.”

It’s a system that sounds more complicated than it is, because in practice, it functions much like a set of dialogue prompts – albeit one with a satisfying layer of logic and experimentation. Finding the right combination of cards to unlock new insights always feels rewarding, and when you finally piece together the mystery (choosing the right trio of cards to solve the ghost’s riddle), there’s a real sense of triumph that makes the whole thing feel worthwhile. Honestly, it’s a real joy to play, and whilst no aspect of the gameplay ever gets too deep, it offers more than enough to keep players engaged from start to end.

While Carimara: Beneath the Forlorn Limbs is billed as horror game, it’s not frightening in the conventional way. What it excels at is creating an atmosphere of dread and discomfort, with everything in the world just feeling… off. The old woman’s cryptic remarks, the owl’s unhinged ramblings, even the faint sounds echoing through the house all work together to create a steady pulse of tension, and whilst I won’t give away anything here, the unsettling tone, minimal soundscape, and sparse dialogue all come together perfectly to just make players feel uneasy when playing.

Check out some screenshots down below:

Visually, Carimara: Beneath the Forlorn Limbs looks really impressive too, and much like some of Critical Reflex’s other releases, it embraces a stylish old-school aesthetic with grainy textures, jittery animations, and a deliberately limited colour palette… it’s gorgeous. You can just tell the game was created with care, with every scene feels deliberately composed to draw your eye toward tiny details and flickers of motion, and it comes together to result in an environment that feels dense with hidden secrets and eerie curiosities.

It is worth noting that Carimara: Beneath the Forlorn Limbs isn’t a long game though, with it easily completed in under an hour if you spot the clues quickly. There’s not much replayability beyond a few optional secrets either, though if I’m being honest, I found myself taking my time on my second playthrough just to completely soak in the world. But hey, with the low price point and the fact the experience managed to feel so impactful in a short amount of time, it’s hard to complain too much -it doesn’t outstay its welcome, and by doing so, keeps the game’s mechanics feeling both fresh and engaging from start to end.

Developer: Bastinus Rex
Publisher: Critical Reflex
Platform(s): PC (Reviewed)
Website: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3570370/CARIMARA_Beneath_the_forlorn_limbs/