An in-depth look at Lovecraftian Video Games

[Music] [Music] the fear of the unknown the mercy of ignorance an existential dread there's an appeal to Lovecraft that's hard to deny an ability to get under the readers skin and transport their imagination to places with disturbing and fascinating over the years the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft have grown in popularity and gone on to cast a long shadow over many facets of popular culture from Lovecraft conventions to cute Cthulhu merchandise it seems many people just can't get enough of a lot of crafts Ian and there have been many new pieces of work that have drawn inspiration from and continued the legacy of Lovecraft himself ultimately the works of HP Lovecraft haven't just spawned their own horror sub-genre they've become a major part of pop culture and perhaps no medium makes that more obvious than videogames you don't have to look far to find Lovecraftian elements or entities in popular games while crafty and creatures are pretty much a staple in most high fantasy settings from multiple enemies in Dungeons and Dragons to everything about the old gods in World of Warcraft - some of the Daedric princes in the old scrolls or Dagon and the Buddha annoy in The Witcher and it doesn't stop there games like XCOM fallout quake League of Legends terraria and many more all either feature multiple references to or take heavy inspiration from the works of HP Lovecraft but this video isn't about games with Lovecraftian elements it's about those games that take things a whole step further games which either described themselves as Lovecraftian or have been wildly described by others as such and which by design have tried to deliver specifically Lovecraftian experiences this the dive into the world of Lovecraftian video games oh look at most of the best-known Lovecraftian games out there and a few of the lesser-known and in so try to answer a simple question why aren't there more successful Lovecraftian video games because there is clearly an audience it seems pretty obvious that there are lots of people that play video games who either like the works of HP Lovecraft or just enjoy Lovecraftian ideas and concepts you hear people who play games say over time but they're fans of Lovecraftian horror game reviewers often praise Lovecraftian elements just by virtue of their inclusion any new Lovecraftian game that's announced always gets a decent amount of hype just because people are so eager for lofty in games and older Lovecraftian games often enjoy a cult following there are lots of people out there that wants more Lovecraftian games so where are they there seems to be two common answers to this firstly that games as a medium are bad at telling Lovecraftian stories either because of a desire to be power fantasies or because games are a visual medium that can struggle to depict certain Lovecraftian things the second answer is that the creators of these Lovecraftian video games just don't understand love crafts or Lovecraftian horror and so failed to do it justice but the thing is I don't find either of these answers very satisfying the first is something I reject entirely and the second seems overly simplistic but I suppose that is a discussion which will have to wait until a bit later because if there is one thing that I can't disagree with it is unfortunately but there really aren't that many Goods Lovecraftian games out there and having played so many of these games recently in preparation for this video that's been made more obvious to me than ever but there is still a lot that can be learnt by looking at these games and so join me as we delve into the abyss of eldritch abominations cyclopean nightmares and indescribable cliches to look at where these games have went right and where they've been wrong and maybe see what lessons can be taken away for the future but before we truly get underway a quick note on spoilers this video will look at a range of games the most prominent of which are shown on the screen now and because I will be covering a range of games I'll do my best to keep things spoiler free but you should still be aware that there may be some minor plot details that might be revealed over the course of this journey anyway to start things off to modern games we've a lot in common which make for a great double feature of pure mediocrity cast your mind back to the summer of 2018 and the gaming future looked pretty promising for Lovecraft fans with not one but two upcoming full lamp standalone Lovecraft themed adventures probability-wise it seemed like fairly good odds that at least one of these might actually be good but alas it was not to be cyanides Call of Cthulhu and frog where's the sinking city are not very good games each is riddled with its own technical and gameplay related problems that bring the experience down although it should be made clear that despite many similarities gameplay wise these two titles are quite different Call of Cthulhu is relatively short and largely linear a few like stealth and puzzle sections break up what is otherwise a pure walking simulator and what actual gameplay bear is is simplistic and unengaging with the few shooting sections feeling so poorly executed it's a wonder they were actually left in the game Call of Cthulhu is main selling point is its light RPG elements and the choices the player is allowed to make in what skills they choose to level up and what dialogue options they choose in conversations this sounds great on paper and Call of Cthulhu even uses some of the systems of chaos eum's popular pen-and-paper role-playing game of the same name but don't be mislead the RPG elements provide little more than an illusion of choice with both what you choose to level up and what you choose during dialogue sections playing almost no role in how things actually play out the best-case scenario is you don't realize just how shallow these systems actually are and so I can get some enjoyment from thinking you're making choices that matter but if you do look a little closer call of cthulhu flimsy facade of player choice quickly crumbles as for the presentation it's probably one of the game's stronger aspects with facial animations and voice acting being of a decent quality and environments looking firmly okay although it has to be said that there aren't many different environments in the game with many locations ending up being reused still special mention needs to be giving to the audio mixing which is frankly terrible every cutscene is far far quieter than the rest of the game's audio making each in-game transition jarring that is precisely you know each other our paths crossed briefly there's no way to adjust this and it really comes across as just amateur so what's good about this game well it's short and if that doesn't sound like very high praise well let me introduce you to the sinking City Call of Cthulhu is a short shallow and linear narrative experience that is certainly poor value for money but at least it doesn't overstay its welcome by contrast the sinking city is a sprawling and bloated mess which shows far more potential but also features far more tedium with repetitive and buggy gameplay unnecessarily stretching out its playtime it's an open-world game with plenty of contents that have open-world is both a blessing and a curse oak montt the city that is apparently sinking is in its own way quite impressive not only is it large it also has a strong sense of place threats with plenty of NPCs and different districts that have their own style it may not be quite as impressive as some of the urban environments seen in other modern games but compared to the small collection of buildings in Call of Cthulhu that are somehow meant to pass as a town Oakmont feels like an impressive step up and when the story of each game focuses on a new in town detective investigating their surroundings it helps a lot that there is an actual believable town here to invest the gates but snare is a downside to this sprawling slimy metropolis which is that it's not very fun to traverse you see a lot of the city is flooded which means you need to take a boat the controls very clumsily and get stuck on things all the time when this happens you're going to need to swim which is not only slow but the water is also filled with monsters which just kill you so that's always something to look forward to the city is also surprisingly restrictive with many paths being blocked off increasing your travel time later on you have enough quick travel points that the problem of wasted time spent traveling is lessons but there's still plenty of frustration in store before you get to that point in an interesting twist to the open mode formula the sinking city also forces you to actually use your map rather than quest markers showing you where to go NPCs and your quest log instead give you a district and street name and then leave the rest to you you'll have to open up your map and scour the streets of Oakland yourself to find the place where two streets intersect so you can then set your own map marker to follow this is more difficult than it sounds but while repeatedly having to waste a couple minutes each time you open your map might annoy some players it's a small addition that I ended up liking quite a lot what can I say I like maps and I wish more games would make you actually use them still there is more to the sinking cities gameplay than staring at the map screen it also has plenty of third-person survival-horror esque style action against a small number of very often repeated Lovecraftian monsters and it's fine I mean I have played worse but here we see the problem with shooting your way through hordes of Lovecraftian abominations which is that shooters and action games are often enjoyable because they function as power fantasies whereas Lovecraft stories are at their very core the exact opposite of this and so the action gameplay of the sinking city creates a noticeable disconnect between its own narrative themes what's even worse is how nonchalantly everyone seems to act about these things just a few minutes into the game you're getting attacked by these monsters and no one ever seems to think this is a big deal not far into your in-game journey you can incent down into abandoned basements to clear these things out as if they're no different to common health spiders or something and some of these monsters are pretty intimidating like I don't know about you but if I went down to my next-door neighbours basement and got attacked by these things I'd have something to say about it it would be a pretty big deal and the next time my neighbor was like hey man I want to go down to my basement clear out a few pesky critters and Jeff a couple bucks I'd like no I wouldn't because those things I'm not normal not even not even close but in Oakmont apparently they are these horrible monsters are just a normal part of everyday life and if that's the case then what's the point in them what's the point in putting scary Lovecraftian entities in your game if everyone's just gonna act like they're no big deal and the player is able to blast through hundreds of them as you run around doing side quest number 27 to find mr. Fiddlesticks lucky pen and yeah by the way the sinking City has lots of boring side quests because it's an open-world game so of course it does there's also detective work this is a feature of both Call of Cthulhu and the sinking city and in both it involves wandering around and interacting with various objects which is then accompanied by your characters generic detective inner monologuing but while that's about the extent of things in Call of Cthulhu the sinking city actually has what could be considered detective gameplay you do need to be certain crews together and at times work out where to go next yourself rather than just click objects and rying the game to tell you exactly where to go and what to do that doesn't mean the sinking city's execution of the detective work is always good it can be frustratingly vague at times but at least there's an attempt at delivering on the basic premise of being a detective and for that it certainly deserves some credit so when it comes the gameplay these two games are quite different and which is better it's down to preference Call of Cthulhu is simple and inoffensive while the sinking city is ambitious and flawed in both cases it could probably be argued that the biggest problem is unlimited budget and travel development with both games coming from small studios and have had several delays ultimately though gameplay isn't really the primary appeal of these games and so maybe many of these faults could be overlooked if they were able to deliver a good Lovecraftian story but they don't to give you a brief spoiler free overview it's the 1920s a new play as a boston-based grizzled World War one veteran turned private detective with a drinking problem and a troubled past a new mysterious case sends you off to a remote an isolated fishing town that's obviously inspired by Innsmouth where you meet distrusting locals that have their own sinister secrets throw in some kooky side characters a few coats some generic monsters a couple elder God things and a whole load of ominous visions and then top it all off with a healthy dosage of protagonist insanity and that's about it now you may be thinking hang on a second you didn't mention which game you're talking about here and that's true because of course I'm talking about both because in premise and setting they really are that similar I mean there are some differences one has a big subplot about spooky art while the other has this weird monkey person and there are all sorts of other important differences like how one protagonist has a full beard or the other only has stubble but despite the existence of such radical divergences it has to be said the amount of similarities is shocking and in the end that's what makes these two games so easy to condemn the sheer amount they have in common displays a complete lack of originality that's impossible to ignore even if you are to be charitable and give a free pass to their many gameplay and technical failings there isn't anything underneath to make these games worth experiencing they are overwhelmingly Lovecraftian but it's to a fault they're so busy shoving every love crafting element they can think of into the mix but there's no room left for actual creativity and though and given to genuinely decent storytelling because it should also be said that both games stories are a mess with major characters or plot points being introduced that later seems to just be forgotten and with endings that are exactly what you expect them to be just a whole lot less satisfying in the end the most accurate description of Call of Cthulhu and the sinking city is Lovecraftian fan service both games seem to overcompensate for their many shortcomings by trying as hard as possible to throw in things they think Lovecraft fans liked but as my grandmother used to say too many tentacles swirled the broth and the thing is if a jumbled mess of Lovecraftian fanservice is all you're after well it was done better before back in 2006 in many ways Call of Cthulhu dark corners lobby Earth sets a low bar for the most part it's a dated first-person shooter with clunky stealth bad complain overly long an empty level design and terrible AI the story isn't exactly good either once more you take the reins of a boston-based detective who takes the wrong case dark corners of the earth starts off as a kind of retelling of the well-known Lovecraft story by shadow over Innsmouth before the need for first-person shooting 10 to intimate kind of Lovecraftian Rambo then you meet and get tortured by J Edgar Hoover who recruits you to go explore a factory where you fight a shot off and you then end up on a boat and have a gunfight with Dagon and after that things start to really get wild so if not for the story why is that corners of the earth better than the previously mentioned games well it's because despite its many flaws there are some things it does really well like the entire opening segments where you explore Innsmouth not only is this recreation of the rundown Harbor town faithful to its source material it's also manages to capture its the fining unwelcoming atmosphere without becoming too over-the-top to the points it feels like parody dark corners of the Earth's Innsmouth is unsettling the player is dropped into the center of town and left to puzzle out their own way amidst the constant scrutiny of the locals the feeling of being an outsider is pervasive and signs that something sinister waits around every corner leads to a slow building of tension that culminates in an adrenaline pumping chase across rooftops as your position is outsider to intruder and your hunt for answers ends with you being the one hunted if you've never read or heard of Lovecraft before in your life this is a fun and effective introduction to the game setting that can easily create a real sense of unease and dread in the player and if you are familiar with the story this section is based upon its a delightfully indulgent adventure which comes as close as you will get to allowing you to play and therefore experience for yourself what it's like to be inside an HP Lovecraft story there's little about this that's breaking new ground it is at its core a kind of fanservice but it's the satisfying kind that doesn't pretend to be any more than what it is and as for the other things the boss fights with great old ones or the hordes of cultists and monsters you mowed down over the course of a game well they are a problem in fact every YouTube video or games media article that's popped up over the years to complain about how games just don't get Lovecraft may as well have been specifically talking about dark corners of the earth because not only is it guilty as charged it's also one of the only serious games where you actually do fight large Lovecraftian monsters in rkd boss fights and I'm not going to deny but it is pretty dumb you see the purpose of entities like they'd gone and even more so your Cthulhu's is that they are big and mysterious and scary and that humans seem insignificant by comparison so if these creatures do just pop up as boss fights where they act as obstacles in your path to be swatted away it goes directly against their main purpose and undermines many of the themes that Lovecraft stories tried so hard to evoke the fact that dark corners of the earth uses actual creatures created by love craft himself makes this even more egregious if you take your Lovecraft law seriously enough this is no mere faux pas it's more akin to sacrilege but we should be clear about the reason this game is the way it is which is that it came out in 2006 and that was a time when full priced games weren't allowed to call themselves narrative experiences and get away with not having any actual gameplay dark corners of the earth wasn't always envisioned as a straight-up first-person shooter originally it featured more RPG elements with a nonlinear story and deeper investigations but as with many a game the combination of low budgets and not enough time led to revisions and ultimately the end product we see today where levels are filled with enemies needing to be shot down just to give the players something to do and as was fashionable for the time lackluster boss fights were inserted to try to create some kinds of gameplay set piece that might temporarily distract players and critics away from the games other failings as for the idea that games are inherently power fantasies and that combat should always be avoided in a Lovecraftian game well that's not necessarily true just because this is something dark corners of the earth does fail that doesn't make this a universal rule a game can have combat and boss fights without being a power fantasy look at something like Silent Hill 2 which has players fighting through many enemies over the course of the game and even fighting several memorable bosses without ever coming close to feeling like a power fantasy whether a game wishes to empower or disempower the player is up to the developer and they have the tools and their disposal to do both but just because it is theoretically possible for a game to have combat or boss fights while still being classified as Lovecraftian horror doesn't mean that's what dark corners of the earth is make no mistake Call of Cthulhu dark corners is an interesting piece of rock crafting fanservice nestled within a fairly bad game those issues I raised at the start of this section like weak gunplay and bad AI and not so easy to just cross over when you're the one actually playing the game so make of dark corners of the earth what you will it's no lot crafty and masterpiece but it may be worth experiencing for a certain type of fan still if dark corners of the earth is marred in part by being a product of its time with its fanatically disconnected and clunky first-person shooter gameplay maybe it's instead worth looking to the indie scene for answers where games are less beholden to mainstream gameplay conventions and have more freedom to do own thing the rise of the indie gaming scene has led to many breakout success stories of developers stepping up to cater to audiences previously unsatisfied so with lots of gaming fans hungry for more Lovecraft it would seem to be a perfect match in this section of the video we'll look at four different indie games each undeniably Lovecraftian and each successful in their own way the first of which is the short and largely linear narrative focused walking simulator Canarian much like the earlier segments of dark corners of the earth canary em takes a specific Lovecraft story to retell in its own way this time it is thankfully not the overly used shadow over Innsmouth but rather another well-known story at the mountains of madness which follows the chilling discoveries of a scientific expedition that on Earth's an ancient ruin hidden among a mountain range in the Antarctic in Canary M you play as one member of his expedition who awakens to find the research base deserted and journeys into the ruin in search of answers while the gameplay is limited to walking forwards and occasionally solving the odd puzzle Canaria at least succeeds in having a more limited focus than the games we've looked at already it doesn't try to be as many different Lovecraftian things as possible and it doesn't get bogged down worrying about how to combine its Lovecraftian setting with mismatched gameplay and so your descent into this otherworldly ruin fills atmospheric and the feeling of getting to walk through and experience something straight out of one of Lovecraft's novellas is appreciated unfortunately a narrative focused game lives and dies by the quality of its story and Canarian ends up falling a bit short of expectations it does deserve credit for breaking away from its source material to do its own thing and things do get pretty weird but in the end the conclusion feels confusing and unsatisfying the story is left feeling under explains and any wait the ending is meant to carry fills unearned with the player having little actual attachment to either the main characters or the events that are meant to have played out so on the one hand while Canary M suggests that a shorter and more focused Lovecraftian narrative experience has the potential to work well it also happens to be the case for this particular example ends up feeling a little unimpressive up next we have the last door an episodic pixel-art point-and-click adventure game kick-started on a modest budget way back in 2012 the last thought takes heavy inspiration from the works of HP Lovecraft as well as Edgar Allen Poe and was commercially successful enough to get a second season the plot revolves around a group of childhood friends seemingly innocent search for knowledge that takes a tragic turn the graphics are basic even by pixel art standards voice acting is non-existent and the gameplay is much like any other old-school adventure game but don't let that fool you the last door proves that less really can be more take a look at the game's first scene that serves as a mini tutorial teaching you the basics of control and gameplay [Music] [Music] what's the last door lacks in graphical finesse it makes up for in style and direction with clever use of music and sound effects doing a lot of the heavy lifting in creating a constant sense of foreboding that gradually builds tension the minimalistic graphics leave plenty of room for your imagination to do the rest of the work and the slow investigative gameplay really draws you into this unsettling mystery for a point-and-click adventure game the gameplay is pretty good although if you play both season 1 and season 2 back-to-back it's easy to start to get tired at the same drawn-out gameplay of wandering around and endlessly clicking and combining every item you find to try to progress things along there's also nothing new season 2 adds in terms of gameplay and some of the effective tricks the game uses so cleverly to build atmosphere start to feel a bit stale but without season 2 there's no kind of narrative conclusion so enjoying just season 1 as a standalone game doesn't work all that well either but despite this issue with length and pacing the last Thor is a good game and what's more for probably the first time in this video the last door is also a Kurt's horror game there's just one problem if Phil our store is a game that's clearly inspired by both Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe well it's the poe side of the game that's really good things do take a very Lovecraftian turn later on but this is probably the weakest part of the experience and the horror but the last Thor uses so effectively isn't very often Lovecraftian horror I mean it is somewhat psychological it's unsettling it gets under your skin but it's not exactly existential and it's certainly not cosmic more carb and surreal then again things do you take a clear Lovecraftian tone later on with questions raised about the nature of reality and the con sequences for the pursuit of truth but even then these questions feel more like they come from a place of post enlightenment rationalism that feels somewhat divorced to the more inescapable and hopeless cynicism of Lovecraft so velar store is a good horror game it might be going a little bit too far to say that it's a good horror game despite its Lovecraftian elements but I certainly wouldn't say it's a good horror game because of its Lovecraftian elements still the presentation of the last Thor certainly has its advantages to any Lovecraftian storyteller to show you what I mean let's return to the 2018 Call of Cthulhu at the very beginning of the game the protagonist examines a painting he comments on it's strange beauty and how it fills him with dread and stuff like this happens quite often in Call of Cthulhu and the sinking city where you're playing as a detective who frequently examines and monologues about various things HP Lovecraft was quite a descriptive offer so this is very reminiscent of his writing style where many things were described as hideous or as making one feel uneasy or faint and so on but this style of writing only works because you the reader have no reason to doubt beasts descriptions in a game where they are represented visually things are a bit different you can see them yourself and so you can come to your own conclusions let's go back to that painting do you feel this is strangely beautiful does it fill you with dread because for me this painting looks silly like it's trying way too hard and its style doesn't fit the setting so that makes a clear disconnect between what the player feels and what their character feels and when moments like this happen regularly there's a problem it's not previously mentioned problem of how to do Lovecraft writes in a visual medium such as video games you can't just adopt the same style and strategy that a book can because this isn't the book but in the last door where everything is represented with minimal details stuff like this works perfectly so if a game developer did want to mimic the descriptive style of Lovecraft there is a way don't show everything just show enough and leave the rest the players imagination [Music] you'll look at another game that is a great example of this later but for now let's look at another Lovecraftian indie game that is perhaps a bit better known than the two covered already darkest dungeon is one of those games whose reputations precede it's known for its high difficulty and punishing gameplay that combines the high stakes of perma death of a healthy side of orangey darkest dungeon is a turn-based grind heavy dungeon crawler that achieved a lot of popularity particularly with twitch audiences it's also a bit different to every other game so far in the sense that it's not a game that prioritizes narrative over gameplay instead darkest dungeons main appeal lies in its gameplay systems with its overall premise being fairly simple and it's law while interesting being placed firmly in the backgrounds the plot revolves around the players character inheriting an estate from their ancestor who had previously excavated the dungeons beneath their lands unearthing some kind of ancient evil in the process you send parties of hired adventurers whose bravery and/or desire for money far exceeds their common sense off into the darkness to bring back the loot and level up in preparation for taking on the darkest dungeon over the course of a game you'll fight plenty of dark fantasy enemies ranging from your normal selection of undead monsters to Eldrick Fishman and tentacled abominations in that sense darkest dungeon is not so different from Dungeons and Dragons or World of Warcraft in that it uses Lovecraftian creatures to add to and complement its otherwise fantasy setting what really sets darkest dungeon apart however is its atmosphere tone and the way in which its themes are reinforced for its gameplay one of the key parts of Lovecraftian horror is the feeling of helplessness and hopelessness that comes with being confronted by things beyond mortal comprehension and in the stories of HP Lovecraft mankind's fragility and vulnerability are laid bare often leading to devastating consequences for those involved now compare that to darkest dungeon humanity is depicted as inconsequential in quite a literal way you higher disposable humans who are sent off to die and be replaced with little regards emphasizing how small human life is compared to the ever-present creeping horror that infests these lands these disposable humans are the heroes of the story and their phal ability is always a central focus thanks to be a flexion system whereby characters accrue stress gradually through time spent in dungeons which leads to them potentially having breakdowns mid-fight the mortality of these humans is also hard to avoid as the potential of a permanent death lurks around every corner in darkest dungeon humanity is presented as weak human life is insignificant and fighting creatures of horror has very real and serious consequences the sense of dreads and despair is ever-present reinforced by both the mechanical and stylistic design choices the game makes even the incredibly enjoyable narration of the game has a slightly Lovecraftian feel to it with its antiquated use of language and share there basa fee so while darkest dungeon is not solely a Lovecraftian game its incorporates several themes and Lovecraftian elements which are conveyed by gameplay as well as story to great success and maybe that's part of why the darkest dungeon is such a good take on Lovecraft because being Lovecraftian isn't its sole focus it means the Lovecraftian elements don't have to do all the heavy lifting on their own instead these Lovecraftian aspects very Wilton nestled comfortably amidst its gothic and dark fancy setting where they can be used effectively and selectively to produce a feeling of atmosphere few games can match darkest dungeon isn't a horror game but it still might be one of the best examples of Lovecraftian horror out there the next game we have to look at is even less of a horror game released in 2015 sunless sea isn't an easy game to explain it's a story rich exploration based sort of rogue lights where you take the helm of a Z captain to navigate the world of fallen London a Victorian era alternative universe where London has sunk beneath the earth's surface thus it emits the vast underground ocean of weirdness known as the under Z there is a gameplay site too sunless sea with you manually navigating your ship engaging in basic combats with disease of inhabitants and with quite involved resource management going on still the bulk of the game really revolves around reading you travel the Z docking at different ports where you can read about what's going on and participates in events this leads you to gain or lose certain resources and most importantly increases your knowledge this includes knowledge of what the hell you're actually meant to do in this game which is initially not explained at all making this a very confusing game for new players but it also includes knowledge as a resource in a variety of different forms that you can use to make money or trade for other things outside of fuel and supplies most of what you do trade-ins on the sea is information which is represented as defined objects you currently possess secrets peals of Terror recent news etc the more the better and that makes for a pretty big difference than the norm in Lovecraftian stories where knowledge is dangerous and undesirable so why is some mercy in this video well it needs to be acknowledged that different people like Lovecraft for different reasons for some it's the horror the lingering unease behind the ideas these stories present whereas others might be fans of Lovecraft primarily as an author for his prose and writing style but for a certain subset of Lovecraftian fans it's probably more to do with the law the variety of inventive creatures great ones and elder things existing in some kind of weird shared universe for some it's this actual mythos and discovering the details behind it that make up the main appeal and there's nothing wrong with that you can be a fan of something for whatever reason you want the Cthulhu Mythos is weird and creative and maybe that's what draws you to it and if that is the case then some mercy might have a lot to offer it's something new that is weird and wonderful and just waiting to be explored you can never be too sure what to expect with sunless sea and a lot of the flavor of this universe has a distinctly Lovecraftian vibe to it you can lose your sanity run away from oversized Z monsters sacrifice crewmembers to the gods develop an addiction to human flesh and so on but while there is a tera meter in game I would say the witness of sunless sea is more charming than it is horrifying on one island you come across a civilization of feudal guinea pigs fighting a war against an industrializing society of rats you can choose to get involved and become one factions hero and its is a bit silly but that summer see as the game is largely text-based it doesn't mean there's really no limit for how weird things can get and much like the last door this allows your imagination to do a lot of the work and means the game can include things that would otherwise be too difficult to draw such as the intangible or absurd and so sunless sea is bound to appeal to the right kind of Lovecraft fan but for horror one is better off looking elsewhere so let's do that so far this video has covered several good Lovecraftian games and some less codes but it still doesn't feel like we've really found any good examples of true love crafty and horror so maybe we should look specifically at horror games and try to find which game best captures the fear of the unknown amnesia the Dark Descent is a game that has received quite a lot of hate it's been blamed for killing the survival horror genre and ushering in a new era dominated by jump scares designed for YouTube friendly compilations and make no mistake this is a game that changed the horror landscape it single-handedly launched the career of people who make more money in a day on YouTube than I will in a lifetime and led to several other imitators and viral horror sensations but no matter how much you might dislike amnesia the Dark Descent legacy you have to admit this game is pretty good at being scary in amnesia you wake up alone in an abandoned Prussian castle with no recollection of how you got there and only a few cryptic notes to guide you on your way these notes mentioned that you're not actually as alone as you may think in fact you're being chased by a shadow and with no way to fight back you're under no illusions as to who's the predator and who's the prey in this relationship and that's really all you're initially told you see amnesia may have its share of jump scares and horror cliches but the start's is a slow and suspenseful masterclass of horror that offers only glimpses of the thing pursuing you as you continue your dark descent with the tension rising and rising until the point where it's almost unbearable and at that point your pursuer is let loose and it is terrifying at least for the first couple of times amnesia doesn't exactly have a large range of tricks up its sleeve and it's not even remotely able to match the same level of intensity all the way through the experience buts that build up to the first few big scares is the stuff most horror games can only dream of achieving so you might be wondering how Lovecraft fits in here well if the oldest and strongest kind of fear really is fear of the unknown it might explain why I'm Nisha's early sections are so good you know something is out there following you and you're constantly reminded of this but it's never made clear exactly what it is so the fear of the unknown builds and builds and that also explains why later on in the game when you're cadaverous friend has become a familiar face amnesia scares just don't pack the same punch but is a protracted game of cat and mouse enough to make for good Lovecraftian horror well no although there is a lot more about his Lovecraftian - amnesia than just this over the course of the game you will discover more and more notes that fill the player in on what past events have transpired they involve a story of an archaeological expedition that went into a tomb in Algeria discovering a mystical orb that induced visions ultimately leading the protagonist down a rabbit hole that explains how it is he comes the be here the way this backstory is written is so similar in style to Lovecraft own writings that it almost feels like it should be a copyright issue Amnesia's main story also takes a pretty otherworldly turn later on so sure this game can easily be classified as Lovecraftian but I have to admit I don't think I'm Nisha's story is all that Goods and this game really might be a good horror game despite its Lovecraftian elements so I guess it's safe to say this isn't the best example of Lovecraftian horror as genuinely terrifying as it can be still the fear of the unknown is clearly important so what other games get this right well it might be time to leave behind the obviously Lovecraftian to look in any more experimental direction which brings us to the awkward and it should be said there isn't much about this game that is specifically Lovecraftian acid wizard studio took their inspiration from other sources namely David Lynch and that's the Gonski brothers and it shows but if you go to steam and look at popular user defined tags and we all know if steam tags are infallible bastions of truth that are never wrong Lovecraftian if I show up here so I guess I'm not the only one that sees some kind of connection dark wood is a cryptic top-down survival horror game set on a bleak Eastern European forest where things have went more than a little wrong dark wood plays like a slow surreal and suspenseful nightmare of exploring and scavenging materials in the daytime while hiding away at nights and your barricaded hideouts combat is a little clunky but wild I can see initially frustrating it's also a combat that is on paper simple yet seems to be very effective at punishing higher for panicking making it a good fit for a survival horror game even more interesting though is hell dark with handles perspective which is limited to a narrow cone that only shows the direction you're facing meaning you need to actively look around at your surroundings to spot both enemies and any useful materials that might be lying around and also meaning if you ever need to run away you won't be able to see what's following you still it's when night hits that you need to really start worrying because something is out that in fact several things are out there and sooner or later they're going to try to get in and I'm sure how much more needs to be said than that dark wood is again that speaks for itself in part thanks to its fantastic audio design as well as its persistent nightmarish ambience [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so if you're looking for a game that excels at making you fear the unknown dark wood is one of the greatest examples is its Lovecraftian well not exactly although there is a clear feeling of hopelessness and if you made a Venn diagram of fans of weird Eastern European horror and fans of Lovecraftian horror there has to be enough crossover but dark wood seems a fairly sensible recommendation but if we extend this video to the games Lovecraftian fans might like we might be here a while so I guess we should get back on track so why not look at a different aspect of Lovecraftian horror the psychological deterioration that comes with losing one's mind I've always thought that video games should be able to depict madness better than any other medium games are interactive they can put you in someone's shoes and change the rules in a way the books or films can't and insanity is a big part of what makes Lovecraftian horror work it's the consequence to knowing those things that are better left unknown the results of gazing into the abyss therefore may be the representation of sanity should be one of Lovecraftian video games greatest ramps so why not look at one of the best-known examples of this eternal darkness sanity's Requiem is a strange game released on the Gamecube back in 2002 it received great reviews and modest sales but that didn't stop it from going on to garner a cult following amongst horror fans and that might be because there just aren't very many games out there quite like it its closest relative might be something like the PlayStation ones Resident Evil's but eternal darkness has a distinctly them tens I feeling to it I wouldn't go as far as the say this game is family-friendly but it certainly doesn't try to be overly shocking or gory like some of its other horror cand Patriots and it often has more of an adventure vibe to it and strength up horror this might be because of its globe-trotting structure which spans over the course of 2,000 years as you take control of a wide variety of different protagonists who each have the misfortune of crossing paths with the time of eternal darkness and therefore get caught up in an eternal conflict between free ancient beans known as chatter or gah Zelo the although tough and you layer you off you lay off and if those names are a bit of a mouthful don't worry they are conveniently color-coordinated so you can just remember them as red green and blue which I suppose does take away a bit of their scariness but eternal darkness isn't really a very scary game that might be because it's gameplay is so forgiving it never really achieves any real tension in combat enemies are slow and can be moved around and hacked to pieces by melee attacks with ease you can also save any time out of combat and your HP mana and sanity meters all replenish over time again it all feels more adventure game even you'd expect from survival horror and the frequent use of powerful magic by the protagonist also gives off more of a fantasy feeling than you'd expect from anything by Lovecraft but despite this there is one big thing eternal darkness does have going for it which is how it represents sanity like many other games eternal darkness as a sanity meter which lowers the more your character interacts with enemies or other stressful things what sets eternal darkness of parts is the large range of inventive things that can happen when your sanity gets low some of these are subtle changes in the game modes like voices being heard in the background or paintings changing to more sinister versions others are fourth wall breaking mind trips that range from the absurd to the downright devilish my absolute favorites has to be the one where after saving your progress the game brings up a delete or saved files options as if you've chosen the wrong thing and proceeds to pretend to delete all of your game files stuff like this is great it messes with the player in a uniquely gamey way and it's creative as well I've seen people recommend playing the game with as low as sanity as possible just to get to experience as many of these tricks firsthand as you can and that makes sense because they are really fun but wait hang on a second is this how insanity is meant to be in a horror game a fun and novel experience the players go out of their way to seek out because that seems a bit counterintuitive are these low sanity events meant to be a punishments or a rewards either way this is hardly effective horror and that's not meant to belittle what is an enjoyable part of eternal darkness but turning insanity into a fun experience doesn't seem all that Lovecraftian so what about the way other games deal with insanity because of the games we've looked at many feature some kind of sanity meter that triggers various effects for example in the sinking city low sanity triggers this weird fisheye effect as well as visual hallucinations of your character killing themselves but might sound interesting enough that these effects are repeated so often they just start to feel silly in dark corners of the earth flow silently causes your vision to blur and the controls to become less accurate which is definitely annoying that it's hardly scary just a little frustrating what is the connection between a blurry screen and low sanity anyway there's shaking I can accept I mean it's pausable but if you see something disturbing your hands might shake so fine but why do so many games make the screen blurry I'm pretty sure blurred vision doesn't mean you're insane it just means you might need glasses anyway amnesia the Dark Descent is pretty similar with visual hallucinations and audio distortions but really the biggest problem with house is handled by obese games isn't the sanity part it's the meter part why do sanity meters even exist I mean obviously these games want to depict low sanity and these games need their own way of determining what should actually lower your sanity and what effect that will have on the player but why is this information even displayed to the player to quantify sanity and make it transparent Robb's its of its core meaning sanity should be unpredictable and if weird things are going to happen the player shouldn't know when or why or how to stop them all of the greats and not so great effects used by the games shown so far would have been much better in my opinion if there was no sanity meter in the first place and for some of them if they were also used much less frequently of all the games looked at in this video darkest dungeon and sunless sea for like the best take on sanity from a Lovecraftian perspective and it's likely not a coincidence that neva has a normal sanity meter sunless sea has a terror meter which kind of functions like a difficulty slider that you need to keep down because otherwise bad things will occur more frequently and it does its job fairly effectively meanwhile darkest dungeon has a stress meter which makes more sense than a sanity meter because seeing stressful things doesn't typically cause your sanity to be gradually eroded it causes stress to build up until you either break or maybe rise up and in covering in a strength isn't even though you had it's the unpredictability of what will ultimately happen which makes darkest dungeon stress meter both more interesting and probably more realistic so all in all maybe depicting madness isn't a strength of games or maybe just not Lovecraftian ones the act of turning insanity into a gameplay mechanic takes away most of its meaning and that might also be a problem with Lovecraftian games more broadly if Lovecraftian horror is about the alone and the unknowable well games might always struggle to represent that games need rules they need to quantify and codify various parts of reality to bring them into existence and really that's something that will always be a challenge when making a Lovecraftian game that challenge to make sure that the gameplay doesn't contradict or undermine the Lovecraftian themes inherent in the story and that's not the only problem games tend to be something that the player is meant to win even narrative focused games have a clearly defined win condition but Lovecraftian stories rarely have a winner and so even if a games protagonist goes crazy or dies at the end of the game it doesn't change the fact that the player always wins changing the overall feeling of the ending but while these are just challenges for a Lovecraft team game to come they're not insurmountable so where are all the great Lovecraftian games well some are out there although whether they are great for the exact reason you want them to be is another question but we do probably need to conclude that making good Lovecraftian horror isn't easy and I guess that since so maybe we didn't find all of crafting and masterpiece but I'm sure we've all danced a few things along the way and you know had a good time and as there are no other Lovecraftian games to talk about I guess my job here is done come on did you really think I'd make an hour-long video about Lovecraftian video games and not talk about blood-borne the most central idea to all of crafting horror is that there exist things beyond human comprehension and the next of them humanity can seem small and insignificant the stories of HP Lovecraft usually follow an individual who comes face-to-face with this unsettling reality B story shape a journey the individual takes to make this discovery and then their response you might think that blood-borne is something similar with you the player taking the role of that individual you journey to the city of yharnam you discover the Horace the city holds and you play out that response but the horror of blood-borne story isn't really focused on you or your journey it focuses on something larger humanity long ago a civilization known as the few Marion's discovered the existence of powerful multi-dimensional beings known as the great ones this discovery eventually doomed them the events of blood-borne begin years later with a group of scholars from a prestigious College called Bergen worth these scholars excavated the ruins beneath the city of Yanam uncovering the remains of a few Marion's as well as traces of something else the great ones they named these ruins the tombs of the gods and set about researching their secrets to try to understand the things that found but they were trying to understand something beyond human comprehension and we shall see the consequences they've had while the scholars of Bergen were four initially cautious a schism within their ranks led to certain individuals breaking away to form the healing Church the healing Church sought to advance humanity and to do this they decided to utilize that which remains of the great ones their blood this blood gave him the power to heal the sick hence the name the healing church and this was seen as a miracle a gift from the God but that blood had a side effect over time it would transform those who imbibe it into beasts monsters creatures that lack the rationality of man and care only fascinating their bloodlust in response to these beasts hunters were created the individuals who used the power of his tainted blood to fight sand-colored this new friends over time as these beasts became more widespread large sections of a populace would routinely take up arms and join in on this beastly purge creating the hunt but the more society hunted the more Bloods they consumed and the more beasts were created and so the citizens of yharnam became trapped in a vicious cycle doomed to become the very things they fight into the line between hunters and hunted no longer mattered the healing Church sought to advance humanity using the power of the Gods but it was a power they didn't understand and instead of moving humanity forwards they moved it backwards those humans who imbibe the Bloods devolved to a more primitive form bat of beasts ruled only by instinct who lack the capacity to even comprehend their own situation but the healing church weren't alone in their misguided mission but born shows many different attempts to advance humanity and gain understanding in the face of discovering something beyond us the great ones it shows attempts to do this free study free religion through artificial reproduction through ritual meditation and proof scientific experiments but it doesn't matter the results are always the same failure and those who seek to understand that which cannot be understood always pay a price whether it's with their life their humanity or their sanity this is the nightmare that the player wakes up to a city of Horrors governed by madness whose secrets lie hidden it should be noted that blood-borne wasn't advertised as a Lovecraftian game trailer showed something that looked like a conventional gothic horror setting and it could take hours into your first play free before the player starts to really see signs that something strange lurks beneath the surface everything Lovecraftian about this game is left for the player to discover themselves which makes it so much more effective late into your playthrough after the player has gained enough insights you gain the ability to see these large otherworldly creatures perched amidst the city's buildings for the most part these creatures aren't hostile they show you little interest in the player instead they just sit there drawing attention to help small and inconsequential you are by comparison of the monsters you do defeat there is little sense of meaningful impact on a broader scale each kill doesn't bring you one step closer to victory the nightmare only ever seems to deepen this isn't the power fantasy for starters the game's high base difficulty means bosses will often take several attempts and it can be easy to die even too weak enemies but thematically - you know any power you two have come through imbibing the tainted blood rather than from yourself and your inability to escape this reality even on death feels less like a strength and more like the consequence of being trapped as if you're in a nightmare you can't wake up from and while you do defeats more and more monstrous entities whether you ever actually fight a true great one is up for debate the only thing you can be sure of is that you don't really understand the very things you're trying to confront nor do you ever really understand why you're confronting them the only information you are told is that you came to the city of yharnam to seek healing everything that happens after that isn't the result of your own agency over these events and you're not on some great quest you're just being manipulated being used by something you don't have this found your a at all a disposable porn in someone else's game better to fight and buy and buy again always without ever knowing why and the ignorance of your character is mirrored by the ignorance of you the player there's a lot to discover in blood-borne slaw but you'll never get a complete picture you can go down the rabbit hole of loss seeking as deep as it goes but you'll never get enough answers just theories and speculation because blood-borne is a jigsaw puzzle that's had enough pieces deliberately removes so you can never be too sure what the picture is actually showing and that's because that picture includes that which is impossible to simply show the lynchpin of all these events the great ones but even though we can't understand we still try because we're human and that's what humans do we try to understand because we need to learn we humans see ourselves as the dominant species we are the ones at the top of the hierarchy we are the drivers of progress we are what religions were vulvar out to learn that there is something above us something beyond us isn't something we could just accept and move on we would need to know what and how when why we would need to know but what happens when we try to know the unknowable well that is blood-borne it's the story of what happens when humans discover something beyond their comprehension and the horror which comes from the consequences and for Humanity there is no silver lining here no chance of escape most sliver of hope just a doom unavoidable and absolutes brought about by ourselves bloodborne is without doubt Lovecraftian horrid done right sure there are differences between the works of Lovecraft and blood-borne but Bourne has more fantasy and more overt horror elements when compared to the more scientifically grounded approached Lovecraft tractor tank and the story of blood-borne takes a broader more all-encompassing look at humanity gazing into the abyss compared to the more focused and immediate stories of Lovecraft that these are just details details which also give blood-borne its own unique identity that make it something more than just a no Marg or love letter to Lovecraft because for all Blood Bones differences its central themes are never in doubt blood borne is a Lovecraftian masterpiece it skillfully mixes its many inspirations to produce something fanatically consistent while using the strengths of its own medium to draw players into the experience leaving its unsettling story hidden beneath the surface for the player to discover and come to grips with by themselves and if there was once any such notion that games can't be good examples of Lovecraftian horror blood-borne disproves them completely so what about the rest of the gaming world why aren't there more great Lovecraftian games well just because something can be done doesn't mean it's easy and the fact that there aren't a whole lot of grape of crafty and films or books by other authors is probably enough to conclude that making Lovecraftian horror isn't easy all of the reason for that might be because when judged as a product of his time love crafts ideas were original but by the time that originality becomes more difficult to find without an infinite source of new ideas and concepts these works of fiction often fall back onto regurgitating back which has worked in the past the things they think Lovecraftian fans want but the end result is these stories become what Lovecraft never was they become something familiar tame predictable and cliche a lot of these stories fall into the trap of thinking that as fans want something Lovecraftian then the more Lovecraftian they make themselves the better but that's not true sometimes less really is more and with the focus to be as Lovecraftian as possible it leaves little room left over for them to create their own identity and you know maybe more than anything else that's originality is the key to give a sliver of praise to a game I've always been fairly harsh on in the sinking city if you go to the town library you'll meet this woman she's the librarian and if you questioned her about why her mouth is sewn shut she mentions that it's a punishment and that this is a local custom in the City of Oakland and that's all you're told if there's more of an in-game explanation to this I didn't find it but that didn't matter because just the way this fairly horrible practice is treated as normal is enough to make it deeply unsettling this one glimpse into Oakland life made me feel more uncomfortable than every Lovecraftian monster also found in the game combines and it's effective because it's a more original idea that isn't presented in an over-the-top manner to emphasize how unbelievably Lovecraftian it all is I mean just compare the portrayal of the librarian to the overly cliche depiction of the NPC's with the Innsmouth look and the difference of approach and effectiveness is clear so instead of setting out to make something as Lovecraftian as possible maybe it's better to let Lovecraft be what he's meant to be an influence allow Lovecraft to be your inspiration but do your own thing make what you want to make without worrying about whether it follows some guy on the internet strict criteria of what Lovecraftian horror must be outside of blood-borne one of the best depictions of horror with some Lovecraftian elements is from the one game in this video that isn't Lovecraft dark word and there are other examples like that too if you want a game that captures their psychological side of Lovecraft the existential dread cosmic horror can tap into well then I'd recommend soma a game from the makers of amnesia the Dark Descent which trades away a lot of amnesia as brawn but makes up for it to have a whole lot more brain again it's not Lovecraftian but it is a bleak lonely and clever story that can really hit under the player's skin and leave them with something to think about when they walk away from it at the end and if you care more about Lovecraft for the monsters and you want to experience that fear in a video game then the best monster game out there would have to be some Nautica it's a long way from being Lovecraftian in atmosphere but it still has some of the most genuinely unsettling monster encounters you will ever find in a game which are able to induce many similar feelings to both seen in Lovecraftian fiction and if dark woods or soma or subnautica had instead tried to be consciously Lovecraftian particularly if they tried to be as Lovecraftian as possible they may well have been worst games that are actually less successful that evoke in the feelings of love craft and horror they somehow managed to tap into so there's something of a paradox there that the more a game tries to be Lovecraftian the less successful it might be but that certainly not a universal rule there is still blood-borne after all and there will always be room for love letters the Lovecraft as well providing they are done right so what does the future hold for Lovecraftian games and what [ __ ] it holds well I don't know I'm just looking for a way to quickly end this video and done Oh mom I'm glad that's over gotta say this video took a lot longer than it should have but at least it's finished now and just in time for Halloween I mean you wouldn't want to spend ages working on a horror themed video and then have to release it after Halloween when everyone's sick to death of hearing about horror games right [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: NeverKnowsBest

Views: 1,046,091

Rating: 4.9160166 out of 5

Keywords: lovecraft, lovecraftian, lovecraftian games, best lovecraftian games, top lovecraftian games, lovecraftian horror, lovecraftian video games, good lovecraftian games, bloodborne, the sinking city, call of cthulhu, darkest dungeon, sunless sea, lovecraftian games review, best lovecraftian horror, good lovecraftian horror

Id: 8Ca0vqiSPiw

Length: 77min 21sec (4641 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 17 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/MirrahPaladin]

The two games I can think of that nailed Lovecraft themes as best as they could are Dead Space 1 and Bloodborne.

Turning the themes of Lovecraft into a game, not just a trope or part of a game, isn’t easy. It can be tempting to be like the Call Of Cthulhu 2018 game and just cram as much Lovecraft as you can, but as seen with that game, that doesn’t work.

And how do you make a Lovecraft game anyway? Looking at Lovecraft, the last thing you’d expect it to inspire would be a Third Person Shooter and an RPG hack and slash, but in both cases they stick to one part of Lovecraft and just roll with it.

In the case of Dead Space we have this strange alien artifact that makes you go insane and see dead loved ones at best, or turn you into a wall of still sentient flesh at worst. It’s the idea of stumbling onto something so powerful and unstoppable completely by accident, and how it’s so alien yet through Nicole makes it so personable that DS1 nails Lovecraft.

Bloodborne takes a more direct approach. You see and fight Eldritch horrors that have knowable goals (they want children.) This game makes use of dreams being other worlds, humans being insignificant, and people calling in elder gods with disastrous consequences that make it a great Lovecraft game.

The point is that DS1 and BB’s Lovecraftian elements mix well with one another, whereas Call of Cthulhu 2018 just shoves so many things together without caring if it works well.