Best Lovecraft Games Ever!

[Mandle]

Well, lately I've been on a binge of playing games based in or around the Cthulhu Mythos. I am considering my own game based on such, and thus decided I must check out what has come before both for inspiration and also to avoid unintentional duplication. And for fun as well of course...

So far I have played these graphics adventures:

"Shadow Of The Comet" and it's sequel "Prisoner Of Ice"
"Darkseed" and it's sequel "Darkseed II"

Which were all very good. "Shadow Of The Comet" was probably the best, despite a lack of anything resembling a decent interface and some impossibly counter-intuitive puzzles. Apart from its problems though it really captured the feel of Lovecraft and is a charming game to boot.

But the one main flaw that all these games had for me was the problem that all visual media hits when attempting Lovecraft, and probably why there have been few successful Lovecraftian movies:

Once you show the mythos entities visually they are just monsters. They are supposed to be sanity-sapping inconceivable-to-the-human-mind things, but the visual designs have been conceived by human minds and thus must always fall short of what the original stories implied.

So, I turned next to text-adventures:

I tried out Infocom's "The Lurking Horror" which was pretty good, but ultimately did not really satisfy me: It was so obviously Infocom-style above and beyond being Lovecraft...It felt a bit like playing Zork with a different setting. There is even a thief that steals your stuff and you get eaten as soon as your light source runs out.

So this brings me to:

BEST LOVECRAFT GAMES EVER

I downloaded two more text adventures which were made by indie-developers but seemed to have achieved tons of praise and awards. Both are public-domain so I will include the links now:

Anchorhead and The King Of Shreds And Patches

(The top link on the right-side of the screen is the game download link in both cases. You will also have to download the recomended emulators to play the games. Game files and emulator files are all very small in size due to the text-based nature. Once the emulator is installed just drag and drop the game file onto the emulator icon to start playing.)

And OH MY GOD these games are incredible! Nothing I have played, except for the Call Of Cthulhu dice and paper RPG, comes even close to these games in simulating the feel of being in a Lovecraft story.

Without going into spoilers I will just say that both of these games are masterfully written, both in plot and prose, and both have an epic scale, being about as long as a medium-to-longish novel. So yeah, if you're not into doing a LOT of reading then these games are not for you.

Also both games have fixed some big problems that people had with earlier text-adventures:

(1) Map drawing: If you ever played the Zork games then you know what I mean: Super-complex maps that you pretty much had to draw on paper or wander forever lost. Anchorhead solves this problem by keeping the layout pretty simple and the number of rooms to the minimum needed to tell the story. I never had to draw a map, except for one or two "maze" areas, and even those are fairly simple. King Of Shreds And Patches actually has a graphical auto-mapper which is always on-screen when needed, and also takes the time to tell you where new locations can be found (as your character is supposed to have lived in London (in the time of Shakespear) for years and is familiar with the geography).

(2) Impossible puzzles: Using the Zork games again as an example: They had those couple of puzzles which were just SO hard that you could get stuck literally for months or years or forever. With dozens of locations and dozens of inventory items and little to no telegraphing of what to use where, you could wear out entire keyboards trying every possible thing to make progress in some cases. The puzzles in Anchorhead and King Of Shreds and Patches are logical, well telegraphed, and just hard enough to require a bit of thought and planning, but I found I was never really stuck to the point of frustration. So the story is always moving forward and the immersion is rarely broken.

(3) Too long room descriptions: Remember when you would walk into some rooms in (again) Zork games and the entire screen was taken up by the description and even had the [MORE] at the bottom? In these two games the descriptions are concisely written to give you just enough atmosphere and information. Further detail is always provided by using "examine" on things and so in this way you still get the richness of detail but in snippets controllable by the player, not dumped in your face all in one slew.

The games do have what some may consider flaws:

(1) Dead ends: In both games it is possible to hit dead-end gameplay if you made too many mistakes earlier on. This usually involves something obvious like throwing an important item into the sea never to be seen again, and is in most cases avoidable. But still: save often!

(2) Time limits: Both games have a time limit, although it doesn't become so vital until later on. Anchorhead has the stricter time limit in the later parts of the game, but with a bit of strategic game-saving, and a stop-and-think-before-acting attitude (time is still frozen between moves as in most text adventures) players should have little real trouble.

The main thing that makes these two games the best Lovecraft I've ever played is, of course, in text it IS possible to throw the mythos entities at you without spoiling them by having to show exactly what they look like. It's done in pretty much the same way Lovecraft did it in the stories.

Another factor is that YOU are actually the main character in the story: Lovecraft usually had his characters already entwined in the mystery from way before the story began, although the characters themselves were usually unaware of this until later. In "Shadow Of The Comet" for example, you are an outside investigator trying to solve a mystery that you have no real connection with. But, oh my God, especially in Anchorhead you are bound to the story in ways that still haunt me even now, a week or so after finishing the game.

So...I hope this inspires some people to check out these two awesome games or, if you have already played them, please leave a comment below about your own experiences with the game(s).

Cheers!

[Secret Fawful]

I tried playing Anchorhead years ago, and had to draw a map, and got lost over and over with the game telling me that I hit a dead end and would never find my way back out of the streets, as they became some sort of impossible maze.

I'd love to revisit it, though.

Oh, I'm also a huge fan of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, even if the combat elements SUCK. The portrayal of Lovecraft's universe visually is unmatched.

[Mandle]

I tried playing Anchorhead years ago, and had to draw a map, and got lost over and over with the game telling me that I hit a dead end and would never find my way back out of the streets, as they became some sort of impossible maze.

I'd love to revisit it, though.

Oh, I'm also a huge fan of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, even if the combat elements SUCK. The portrayal of Lovecraft's universe visually is unmatched.

I know the part of the game of which you speak, and I thought the same thing at the time: "Oh God no, a maze!", but actually...

SPOILER WARNING:

Spoiler

...it's not a maze. You just go southwest to get back to the previous street. Most other directions lead you in a circle back to the same spot.

[close]

I will be sure to try out Dark Corners soon...I've heard a lot about that one on various boards but had forgotten about it. Thanks for the reminder!

[Armageddon]

Anchorhead is such a good game. I've wanted to remake it in 3D for awhile. Too complex though. I finished it in one sitting without drawing a map, seemed pretty easy.

[Mr Underhill]

Oh, I'm also a huge fan of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, even if the combat elements SUCK. The portrayal of Lovecraft's universe visually is unmatched.

Totally agree, it's hands down the best visual Lovecraft adaptation - they especially nailed it when it comes to Innsmouth and Innsmouthians. The most annoying part about it is the limited save system, but that makes it even more tense and unforgiving. By the way, the game turns 10 this year.

I'm working on a Lovecraftian game too, but it's a comedic spoof, so my job is admittedly much easier

[Mandle]

Anchorhead is such a good game. I've wanted to remake it in 3D for awhile.

I also had the thought in the back of my mind to remake it in AGS...But again: I doubt the really disturbing parts could be done better with graphics than they were done with text...

[mkennedy]

Anchorhead is such a good game. I've wanted to remake it in 3D for awhile. Too complex though. I finished it in one sitting without drawing a map, seemed pretty easy.

The original author was thinking about remaking and expanding Anchorhead, but I think he didn't get much farther than a partial demo. If you decide to go ahead you should probably contact him for his ideas/input.

[Mandle]

Anchorhead is such a good game. I've wanted to remake it in 3D for awhile. Too complex though. I finished it in one sitting without drawing a map, seemed pretty easy.

The original author was thinking about remaking and expanding Anchorhead, but I think he didn't get much farther than a partial demo. If you decide to go ahead you should probably contact him for his ideas/input.

Well, to be honest, I also doubt I would have the patience to work on somebody else's story for the years it would take to properly remake Anchorhead. It would just get too boring for me and that would show through with a lack of quality eventually. The game deserves better than that.

On a side note: I just finished "The King Of Shreds And Patches" finally. When I started this thread I had already been playing it for days and days and was assuming I was almost finished.

BOY, WAS I WRONG!!! That game is LONG! It's probably about 3-4 times longer than Anchorhead, probably about the length of a 300-400 page book in total text content.

It's also AWESOME! But...it's not as much a creeping-feeling-of-dread-and-disgust style horror like Anchorhead is. It's more in-your-face-gore-and-action style which, as it was actually based on an adventure campaign module released by Chaosium for their Call Of Cthulhu dice-and-paper RPG, makes total sense. So yeah, it's more like a Lovecraft tribute penned by Robert E. Howard in feel, especially towards the end.

Still a great game, just not quite as good as Anchorhead...

[Mandle]

I've found another quite good Lovecraft game:

https://thelastdoor.com/index.php/menu

You have to pay to download the game, but it can be played online for free. It comes in several Chapters and is point-and-click. The graphics are lovely, blocky retro style. The puzzles are kind of basic so far (I've played 2 chapters) but the story is good and the atmosphere is excellent!

The game is flash-based online, so make sure you push the 3 key to switch to full-screen, and I would also advise pushing the 1 key to change the font type as I found the alternative font nicer than the blocky one. Like they advise on the site: Play fullscreen, put on your headphones (the game has stereo sound that's used very effectively to find what's making certain sounds and this works best with headphones...the game has an option for the hearing disabled as well (push the 2 key)), crank up the volume and turn off the lights for the scariest experience...And yeah, despite the blocky graphics style there are quite a few good effective scares to go along with the slow-boiling horror story...

And yeah, it has many different language versions to choose from, and I mean many! The English translation is the one I can vouch for: It's good, not perfect, but good enough. The original version was made in Spanish.

Anyways: well worth a play!

[Meshle]

Chiming in to second The Last Door! It is one of my all-time favorite games.