Decline So much potential for Lovecraftian Games, yet so little effort

[Contrite]

I'm going on a bit of a rant here so bear with me as I vent.

Lovecraftian fiction and it's 'universe' are in the public domain, AFAIK. Even if they are not, it should cost a pittance to license Call of Cthulhu from Chaosium. I just don't get why companies don't do it. There is a fuck load of potential there. From RPGs to survival horror FPS's. The sole CoC game we got, a survival horror FPS was quite well done. It had issues yeah, but it shows how much potential you have.

Games like Amnesia are fun, but the no combat thing where you just have to run away gets old. At the same time the constant gunning of the Resident Evil series get boring fast too.A real CoC game, whether rpg, action adventure or survival horror FPS would straddle the middle line. Not only that, but between the Sanity mechanic, ability to create your own character, ability to cast spells and the rich mythology with unique cults and creatures would make for great games, if done right.

I don't get why no developers go in this direction. Why are we getting Wolf, Doom, GoW, Halo, CoD and Half Life again when there is so much potential just waiting in the Lovecraftian mythos. It would be so refreshing to play a game where the objective is not saving the world, but surviving or at the least retaining sanity.

 

[Surf Solar]

Combat/fighting your way through the game just doesnt Fit to a lovecraftian experience. I would even go so far and say that These stories work the best when consumed in Textform so your mind can fill in the blanks about the Horror etc. Seeing it all visceral onscreen would destroy Part of what makes the universe interesting, IMO

 

[chestburster]

Games like Amnesia are fun, but the no combat thing where you just have to run away gets old.

Wait what?

Are you sure you want "Lovecraftian" games, or just games in which you shoot tentacle monsters?

Perhaps the likes of you are the reason why true Lovecraftian games are seldom made.

surviving or at the least retaining sanity.

You don't survive or retain your sanity in the face of a Lovecraftian being. Period.

 

[aleph]

Games like Amnesia are fun, but the no combat thing where you just have to run away gets old.

Wait what?

Are you sure you want "Lovecraftian" games, or just games in which you shoot tentacle monsters?

Perhaps the likes of you are the reason why true Lovecraftian games are seldom made.

surviving or at the least retaining sanity.

You don't survive or retain your sanity in the face of a Lovecraftian being. Period.

Attitudes like yours are the reason there are no lovecraftian games.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

I wouldn't mind a Lovecraft-inspired RPG set in Nazi Germany, that copies the dialogue style and b/w color scheme from Call of Cthulhu movie.
In such a game, I would like to have little to no combat. Focus more on exploration, drowning in the atmosphere of paranoia even in the very beginning, when your only enemy is your own stupidity, because there is no such thing as quest marker.

Alas, kwans would be butthurt, cuz NAZIS, NO VO, NO COMBAT WTF. No one would make such a game.

 

[Telengard]

People have tried, they don't usually sell that well. And in a market based around copycats, a previous game with high sales is kind of a necessity.

Shadow of the Comet
Prisoner of Ice
Anchorhead
Dark Corners of the Earth
The Wasted Land
Necronomicon

I suppose you can also count the Alone in the Dark series.

 

[Excidium]

Good lovecraftian game would require some unorthodox approach so tough luck in this day and age

 

[octavius]

I guess it's kind of hard to translate "unspeakable horrors" from text media to a visual media.

 

[chestburster]

Attitudes like yours are the reason there are no lovecraftian games.

And nothing of value is lost.

You want an authentic Lovecraftian experience and be fucked shitless by the cosmic insanity? Go read Lovecraft study science.

 

[rpgcodexusername]

you would have to come up with some gameplay mechanics/puzzles/story instead of just saying, "set in nazi germany!..in black and white!"

A man once drove his boat into cthulu's face and knocked him out so it is possible to prevail against these things.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

you would have to come up with some gameplay mechanics/puzzles/story instead of just saying, "set in nazi germany!..in black and white!"

A man once drove his boat into cthulu's face and knocked him out so it is possible to prevail against these things.

I didn't think about any gameplay mechanics, but I always imagined it as a Dark Corners of the Earth type of gameplay, specifically: scene where you have to escape from the hotel, any scene that involved puzzles.

Except without combat.

 

[Excidium]

DCotE gameplay fucking sucks though

It was only mildly entertaining when it focused on ripping off Shadow over Innsmouth

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

http://infraarcana.wikispaces.com/

 

[aleph]

"Darkness within" is lovecraftian and quite good

And nothing of value is lost.

You want an authentic Lovecraftian experience and be fucked shitless by the cosmic insanity? Go read Lovecraft study science.

So edgy.

 

[~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸-AIN'T]

Not really trolling very much, since Sandy Petersen (aka the guy that literally wrote the book on Lovecraftian games when he was at Chaosium) did a bunch of levels for Quake (and Doom and Doom 2).

He also worked at Ensemble, which may have been...less inspired by Lovecraft than when he was at Id, but the guy's still a pretty cool video game designer.

 

[A user named cat]

Scratches was also quite Lovecraftian. As was Eternal Darkness for Gamecube.

The sole CoC game we got, a survival horror FPS was quite well done.

It was listed already but way to overlook Shadow of the Comet. That was the real CoC we got.

DCoTE was good up until it went full-on run 'n' gunner, then turned to absolute shit. All those delays, revisions and Bethesda publisher taint didn't help, and probably influenced that terrible change of pace the game took. What wasted potential, if only it had strictly been an adventure game.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Y'all also forgot to mention Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, which is also Cthulhu-themed, but without the actual CoC brand.

Also, as mentioned previously, the biggest problem when it comes to making a proper CoC game is that it's fucking hard to do. You have to properly combine mystery, survival, UNSPEAKABLE HORRORS, history, esotericism and being alone against impossible odds. Pulling off a proper lovecraftian experience really requires some top notch creativity and weird design, not to mention you're likely to be eaten alive by fans and lorefags who won't like your offering.

I guess it's kind of hard to translate "unspeakable horrors" from text media to a visual media.

I think Dark Corners managed that pretty nicely at some points, with all the everpresent darkness and screen blurring/shaking. Getting chased by the shoggoth around the refinery, the prologue encounter with the Yith, or some of the "hidden" places with deep ones jumping across rooftops in Innsmouth to name a few were really well done from a lovecraftian pov.

 

[Cassidy]

Wrong forum, here is the correct one to ask for more effort on Lovecraftian games and get results, or at the very least previews and concept arts for one:

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?forums/prospers-prison-camp.56/

 

[chestburster]

"Darkness within" is lovecraftian and quite good

And nothing of value is lost.

You want an authentic Lovecraftian experience and be fucked shitless by the cosmic insanity? Go read Lovecraft study science.

So edgy.

I seek edges like a Hound of Tindalos seeks sharp angles. Speaking of which, I'm sure a vidya game can do those Lovecraftian "impossible geometries" justice.

 

[groke]

droppin' a 40 for my dead homie Cyclopean ITT.

 

[chestburster]

BTW, the Half Life series is actually one of the more authentic Lovecraftian games. Here is what Half Life's writer Marc Laidlaw has to say about HL:

The Lovecraftian influence is buried pretty deep in Half-Life—perhaps you can spot it in the sense we try to create of mankind being a tiny speck in a vast cosmos. The most Lovecraftian passage is probably Dr. Breen’s speech at the end of Half-Life 2, when he is trying to entice Eli with glimpses of the wonders he has been shown by the Combine. This sort of teasing view of things beyond imagining is one of Lovecraft’s techniques, on display most clearly in “The Whisperer in Darkness.”

And if I may guess, G-man is the Nyarlathotep of the HL universe.

 

[Abelian]

BTW, the Half Life series is actually one of the more authentic Lovecraftian games.

The mention of Half Life reminded me of an episode of the Civil Protection machinima (made by the same guy who made Freeman's Mind) which is made in the HL2 engine. It picks up after the 6 min mark.

 

[Gregz]

Here's a quick fix from the flash games thread, a Lovecraftian TCG. It's quite fun to play if you can't sleep, or just bullshittin'

Necronomicon 2

 

[Ebonsword]

Combat/fighting your way through the game just doesnt Fit to a lovecraftian experience.

You don't survive or retain your sanity in the face of a Lovecraftian being. Period.

You guys need to read some of the Lovecraftian fiction that Robert Howard wrote.

A perfect example would be "The Hoofed Thing". It starts off as a typical Lovecraftian horror story with the hero becoming the acquaintance of a foreign scholar who seems to know many things about forbidden subjects.

But then it veers off into Howardian ass-kicking when the hero decides that, rather than go insane or meekly submit to the eldritch forces arrayed against him, he's going take a dusty heirloom sword off the wall and start hacking apart some monstrosities from the Elder Void.