I have no idea where you get this idea that I wouldn’t like a game because it doesn’t have combat, but that’s crazy talk. In fact, as I tried to explain when I was streaming a terrible game called Phantaruk last week, the moment you introduce combat into a horror game, you compromise the horror.
And that particulatly applies to Lovecraft games. In fact, I’d argue that any truly Lovecraftian game wouldn’t have any combat at all*. Part of the point of Lovecraft is that you can’t fight against the forces of the universe, that they’re too vast and indifferent. Any combat I can think of in Lovecraft is basically the police raiding cults in a swamp or something. As much as I enjoy Fantasy Flights boardgames, and particularly Eldrtich Horror, it’s patently absurd that you’re shooting Hastur the Unspeakable with a revolver. Yet that’s how those games play out.
And that’s precisely why I think most of the games suggested in this thread make for an interesting conversation, but they have a thin claim to being truly Lovecraftian.
-Tom
*Although Cthulhu himself does get rammed with a boat and the US government does shoot torpedoes at the city of Innsmouth, so I guess you can have vehicle based combat in a Lovecraft game.
Hmm, it is definitely possible I am confusing you with someone else posting on the front page, but I agree. Combat shouldn’t be a big component of a Lovecraftian game, even though almost all of them feature it.
It is possible to beat Arkham Horror without any combat at all since the win condition involves closing gates. With Eldritch Horror, some of the mysteries actually require killing an Eldritch beast of some kind. I do think those mysteries are silly. If the Old One awakes in these games, it can get really silly but it’s pretty much a defacto delayed game over, see how long you can last before everyone is devoured. Last one to get devoured wins! (or is it the first?)
I finished At the Mountains of Madness yesterday, and I want a straight adaptation as an exploration/survival game that at some point have a twist to the fantastic.
Soma has a good rhythm, a good balance - if you want - between the scary parts and the more peaceful ones. But the scary parts were - in my opinion, at least - pretty intense. There were times when I felt like Frodo Baggins must have felt while trying to stay unnoticed by a Ringwraith who was leaning only a foot or two above his hiding place.
I have a Kickstarter game called Machina Arcana. It is sort of a dungeon crawl game that is steam punk and Lovecraftian. While characters do have weapons, usually the best choice is to run from the rather powerful (comparative to other games) creatures.
Is this where we pimp our Lovecraft games? Here is my offering, from a humble hobbiest dev:
#Chant Savant
A Lovecraft themed game where you chant into your microphone to summon monsters to fight other monster-summoners. It is a bit like Magic the Gathering, except real time, and more free form, and controlled by your voice. Windows Download Project page
Some example summonings: 1) “Enir Ogrdu Zur” would summon a monster with tons of health and an attack that can petrify other monsters. 2) “Yog Cuthulhu Ia” would summon a monster with damage reflection, that will split into several child-monsters on death. The child monsters it creates on death will also have damage reflection.
One basic strategy is to bring out monsters that counter what the other guy brought out, which in turn means learning the different summoning words and what their effects are. There are tooltips to help with this. :)
The game is feature complete, though I am still working on pacing and other general play testing improvements. It’s free for anyone who wants to try it. Feedback is appreciated, so long as the feedback in no way injures my ego. :)
This thread got me to try Anchorhead again, and while I’m sure I’m only a tiny ways into it, I’m further than I’ve ever gotten before and it is pure Lovecraftian goodness. I can’t imagine another game evoking Lovecraft as well, simply because Anchorhead’s medium is so much closer to Lovecraft’s.
PC Gamer has an article about the upcoming Cyanide Studios game, Call of Cthulhu and how hard it is to make a Lovecraftian game. Not a lot of insights into what kind of game they’re making, unfortunately.
EDIT: By the way, does anyone understand why it seems to be almost entirely continental European studios that make Lovecraftian games?
Most stuff pales in comparison with TSW. Just a shame they couldn’t keep their tech up to the standard of the writing so people would actually have stuck around.
Also; that Clive Barker game? Undying? Was kinda Chutulu, was it not?
On a related (albeit paperback) note, DriveThruRPG and its Indie-focused partner site, RPGNow, are having a big Cthulhu Mythos sale! (Both links are directly to the respective sale pages)
All I know is that Lovecraft has been really big in France. But then, he is also huge in Japan, which has a tradition of horror that incorporates many similar elements. There are even anthologies of Lovecraftian short stories written exclusively by Japanese authors.
Even not counting things like Atlantis (half fish, half frog beings that don’t die of age, like the Deep Ones) or Pretenders like Dagon, there are at least a pair of magical units directly inspired by Lovecraft (Otherness, Elder thing).
My own comment about similarities between Lovecraft’s fiction and a type of Japanese ghost stories (kaidan) made me realize - or, maybe, just better articulate - something. I think this thread can be summarized like this: there are many games, horror or not, that utilizes Lovecraftian mythos (namely story, names, imagery, tentacles, deep sea creatures as cosmic horrors, etc), but very few with Lovecraftian ethos (tone, failure of the reason and science, indifference of the cosmos).
What it bothers me it how extended is the Lovecraftian references and elements… but there are so few straight adaptations of his works to film/tv/games mediums.
