In my online wanderings, I’ve run into a number of Lovecraft-inspired games. If you’ve got a soft spot for shoggoths, here’s a roundup:<\/p>\n
The Commonplace Book Project<\/A> is devoted to creating interactive adventures based on the unfinished story ideas that H.P. Lovecraft collected in his “Commonplace Book”. They’re free for download in exchange for user feedback.<\/p>\n For you whippersnappers who are unfamiliar with the concept of interactive adventures, here’s a Wikipedia entry<\/a> to help fill you in. Kids today, with your fancy-schmancy graphics<\/em> and your abundance of CPU cycles. In my day, all we had were a brass lantern and an Elvish sword, and we couldn’t even see<\/em> them.<\/p>\n Uh, heh. Anyway, Lovecraft.<\/p>\n Another excellent example of this type of horror interactive fiction is Infocom’s wonderful The Lurking Horror, available for download here<\/a>. (The best part of interactive fiction games is that the text-based play looks entirely innocuous when glanced at by, say, your boss. Try doing that<\/em> with Halo 3.)<\/p>\n Sort of similar is Skotos’ “prose adventure” Lovecraft Country<\/a>, which isn’t so much a game as straight-up roleplaying in 1930s Miskatonic University. There isn’t really a point<\/em> to this one, you just sort of wander around and are vaguely menaced.<\/p>\n For the Xbox, there’s Dark Corners of the Earth<\/a>, which combines a first-person shooter with mystery and investigation.<\/p>\n Shadow of the Comet<\/a> is a PC-based game which combines Halley’s Comet with eldritch horror.<\/p>\n Alone in the Dark<\/a> is another PC game (a fairly old one) “inspired by the work of H.P. Lovecraft.”<\/p>\n If you prefer board games, check out Arkham Horror<\/a>, a cooperative game in which you’re part of a small band of investigators trying to stop unnamed monstrosities from taking over the world. Apparently the original module isn’t too hard to defeat, but there are expansion packs like Dunwich Horror<\/a> that significantly up the difficulty level.<\/p>\n The Hills Rise Wild!<\/a> is a miniatures game in which players vie for control of The Necronomicon.<\/p>\n For sheer weirdness, try Cthulhu 500<\/a>, which combines the Cthulhu mythos with…stock-car racing. Because, um, why not?<\/p>\n The same game manufacturer (Atlas) also brings us Cults Across America<\/a>, in which each player commands a separate cult attempting to dominate the U.S.<\/p>\n Chaosium offers the collectible card game Mythos, which includes a starter deck<\/a> and five booster decks: Expeditions of Miskatonic University<\/a>, Cthulhu Rising<\/a>, Legends of the Necronomicon<\/a>, The Dreamlands<\/a>, and New Aeon<\/a>.<\/p>\n :::whew::: That oughta be enough tentacles for anybody.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In my online wanderings, I’ve run into a number of Lovecraft-inspired games. If you’ve got a soft spot for shoggoths, here’s a roundup: The Commonplace Book Project is devoted to creating interactive adventures based on the unfinished story ideas that H.P. Lovecraft collected in his “Commonplace Book”. They’re free for download in exchange for user […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2518"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2518"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2522,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2518\/revisions\/2522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}