Call of Cthulhu®: Dark Corners of the Earth
OLD STYLE HORROR… Oh Yea!
Intro:
This game is based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft, author of “The Call of Cthulhu” and progenitor of the Cthulhu Mythos. It is a reimagining of Lovecraft’s 1936 novella The Shadow over Innsmouth. Set mostly in the year 1922, the story follows Jack Walters (previously a police detective) and now private detective who is trying to solve cases even when there wasn’t any evidence. On September 6, 1915, he was called by the police to investigate a decrepit manor where gunshots were heard. A group of an unknown cult (Fellowship of the Yith) lived there and it’s leader, Victor Holt, demanded the police only send Jack in exchange for their cooperation. Strangely, Jack had never met or heard of Victor Holt before. As Jack entered the manor’s compound, all hell broke loose and both the police and the cultists started shooting at one another. You take it from here. All hell is about to break loose in the game.
– Real player with 35.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best First-Person Survival Horror Games.
I am a fan of both Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s fantastic literary body having read most of his work and also the Role playing game the Call of Cthulhu (the table top one not the new one). I very much enjoyed this game despite the glitches (should you wish to play without the glitches I would suggest that you either buy this game on good old games or install the patch that can be found online, and turn down the resolution for the very last bit of the game to the lowest setting).
I have to say that don’t go into this game expecting something akin to one of Lovecraft’s stories word for word, while it deals with the same themes and even one of the same characters this game is a bit of Lovecraft salad. You get bits from The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Call of Cthulhu, The Shadow out of time, Dagon, At the Mountains of Madness and even some references to The
– Real player with 33.7 hrs in game
The Shore
Opening/ Information
Reading a review is not enough? Want to see some footage? Check the link and watch some game footage for yourself and decide if this game is worth your time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LT0M3aWkDI
The Shore is a running simulator with most of the mandatory Lovecraft Creatures (the old ones) and a protagonist who will not die automatically by looking at them.
This is the first game developed by Ares Dragonis who is entering the world of Steam with this game.
– Real player with 8.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best First-Person Exploration Games.
Review of the initial release.
Ebbs and Flows
Introduction
The Shore is a Narrative-driven Walking Simulator with some light combat and puzzles, heavily inspired by H. P. Lovecraft. You are Andrew looking for your daughter, Elle, on an island known for its unique geographic makeup; black sand and jagged, protruding rocks. And home to many shipwrecks. You’ve come to this little, unusual island in hopes of finding your daughter, only to find a bounteous sweeping phenomenon beyond the importance of your daughter.
– Real player with 7.2 hrs in game
Old Gods Rising
I really enjoyed playing Old Gods Rising. It is a first person exploratory adventure seen through the eyes of Professor Winston. At the request of a movie director, he visits Ashcraft University to research it for a movie location. The university is empty (film crew nowhere to be found) and the story is told through phone calls made by Tom and his radio conversations with the director.
The sound track and voice overs are well done. You will need to listen to them, as you can’t click through dialog or leave a scene during many of the conversations or narrations. The university is vast and has been created with great details. It was very authentic, with many buildings, corridors, rooms, gardens, artwork, etc.
– Real player with 11.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best First-Person Adventure Games.
‘Old Gods Rising’ is a cheeky and mysterious adventure game set in an English university. The main story line for our character, Professor Thomas Winston, is to investigate Ashgate University’s ancient artifacts for movie director, Maz Kayfer. Although reluctant at first, our character heads off to explore the university upon encouragement from his partner, Lex.
Throughout the game, the player is pushed in various directions leading to the player suspecting a few contrasting conclusions (I don’t wish to spoil things). This is realized through great voice acting (especially by the voice acting behind Lex, Tom’s partner) and a ton of satirical and amusing artwork.
– Real player with 8.5 hrs in game
Please Duology
Surreal dream logic story telling combined with body horror elements. Worth checking out if you’re looking for some pretty weird horror atmosphere.
– Real player with 3.3 hrs in game
Very Surreal!
– Real player with 1.3 hrs in game
What Lives Below
Hunt massive sea monsters armed with just a harpoon and a simple fishing boat.
Play as a lone fisherman, who takes on the gods of the sea.
In this fast-paced intense boss-rush game, there are various huge creatures to take on. From an electric leviathan to an volcanic octopus, the odds are not in your favor.
Currently, the Game Features
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4 Leviathans to Be Hunted
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Procedurally Animated Bosses
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An infinite procedural ocean world to fight the monsters in
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Interactive ocean simulation and boat physics
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Harpoon throwing with bullet time
This game is still early in development. The full release will have more bosses and the game is subject to change across development.
Eldritch Reanimated
Eldritch is a randomly generated roguelike FPS populated by H. P. Lovecraft’s creations.
You start off in a library hub (a safe zone which is not randomly generated), from where you can go to different worlds: Dagon. Nyarlathotep, and R’lyeh. Each progressively more challenging. In each world your main goal is to descend 3 levels until you retrieve an orb, and then return to the library. In the library, you can place each orb on a pedestal, and unlock the final world, “The Endless Library”. Reaching the end of this world, completes the game, and unlocks New Game+ for future runs.
– Real player with 24.7 hrs in game
Do you like stoning fish-men to death with big rocks? I know I do! But if you’re like me, it’s a private pleasure and no one must know. So you creep out at night, ducking behind cover, keeping low to the ground, slowly rotating your irregular bit of rock (sedimentary perhaps), finding the grip to put the perfect english on it, listening for the hop-hop sounds of the fish-man as you slowly peak out, glancing briefly to see that his dopey face is turned away revealing his moist, tender cranium…
– Real player with 24.6 hrs in game
Euclidean
EUCLIDEAN
Game Difficulty: 2/10
Story Completion: 1 hour
Story Rating: 4/10
Gameplay Rating: 2/10
Soundtrack: 3/10
Achievement Difficulty: 4/10 (Need to complete game without dying)
Estimated 100% Time: 2-5 hours
Reccomended Play Experience: Play through once (Probably in VR)
Overall Rating: 4/10
Overall Impression: As far as falling simulators go, this one is better than some. It’s also worse than some. It’s about as fun to play as coming back down from rockclimbing or walking down stairs. An interesting game world stuck in a game that’s just not fun to play.
– Real player with 2.9 hrs in game
WHAT AN AMAZING HEADBLANKETYBLANK!
This was really something entirely different. A glorious headbleepetybleep ! I thoroughly enjoyed that - THIS is the kind of stuff I always pictured in my head when ever I read Lovecraft’s stuff. Alien, inhuman, things beyond perception and euclidean space.
:P And yes, I did die quite a few times. Yet I never felt the urge to rage quit - the frustration of having to retrry stages almost, uncannily enough, felt like a part of the experience. Incredible feel; I felt so darn out of place and helpless. Just falling through an endless razmatazz of an abyss without any proper explanation or reasons. A different kind of horror - not only did it remind me of Lovecraft’s stuff but some of Neil Gaiman’s ideas from the Sandman series too. This game is the epitome of chaos, and a glorious one at that.
– Real player with 2.3 hrs in game
Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened - Remastered Edition
All of the sudden, it’s actually the quest. Compared to many other games - sorry, Red Comrades , but you too, - you really can make through the game, only using a good amount of thinking. Plus, it’s a long game, it would require 4-5 hours per run. That already makes me to appreciate this game a lot.
In this game, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson investigate the activity of some dark cult, which involved ruthless treatment with people, drug sale, slavery and turning hostages into mindless zealots, a mood provided by Lovecraftian stuff. While in original stories Arthur Conan Doyle didn’t rely on misticism, if only it’s not how frightened people see something explainable by reality, of course… those setting ties as a kind of apocryphical story indeed.
– Real player with 15.9 hrs in game
So once again another Sherlock Holmes themed point and click adventure. This one riffs on H. P Lovecrafts - Call of Cthulhu. Holmes and Dr John Watson are drawn into a strange affair involving the kidnapping of foreign nationals from the streets of London. Slowly but surely they realise that a dark and sinister plot involving dark rites and the darkest magic are afoot.
If you have played any of these Frogwares games before, then you know what you are in for. Classic point and click gameplay, punctuated by puzzles that will veer of simplistic versions of Hanoi Towers to quite brain shredding longitude & latitude number crushing. The graphics are poor and would have been so back in 2008 when this game was released. Voice acting is again a little patchy. But the main draw for these games is how good the story is.
– Real player with 15.6 hrs in game
Conarium
EDIT: Fixed formatting error
I think you can tell by my nickname that I like Lovecraft’s stories. So if you think “he loves lovecraftian horror, of course he’s gonna like this game”, you’d be mostly correct. There are some issues, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start out by saying what this game actually is.
Conarium is a first person adventure game with some elements taken from games like Amnesia our Outlast. The game is set after the events of story named “At the Mountains of Madness”, but it’s not a direct sequel, it’s more of a spinoff. It has puzzles, the story is driven by finding notes and visions, there are few monsters you have to avoid, there’s even short submarine scene where you have to find your way without taking too much damage and there are secrets on every corner.
– Real player with 11.8 hrs in game
A creepy horror adventure that actually understood Lovecraft’s approach
Conarium was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I enjoyed playing it, and it is by no means a “bad” game. At the same time though, I often kept thinking “this could have been done a bit better”. Then again, when I consider that the entire game was created by three people (plus two voice actors and two text editors), the level of quality that was achieved here can only be described as impressive.
Let’s go into the details. Conarium is first and foremost a narrative game, it tells the story of another expedition into the area described by H.P. Lovecraft in his novella “At the Mountains of Madness”. This story is mostly told in retrospect, via text documents and “visions” of past events that you witness or play through. The writing and the atmosphere nail the “Lovecraftian Horror” genre like few other games do. The game has no jumpscares and no fights - the horror derives from the realization that you are just a small, fragile, vulnerable human being who is dabbling with things so alien and powerful that we are incapable of understanding them, and even just learning about them may spell our doom. Unfortunately though, while the atmosphere is excellent, all characters remain underdeveloped.
– Real player with 11.2 hrs in game
Dagon: by H. P. Lovecraft
Beautiful and interesting storytelling of H.P. Lovecrafts ‘Dagon’.
Admission: the knowledge I have of Lovecraft comes from South Park, so I can’t tell if this a faithful interpretation of the book. The developer claims it is, and I take their word for it.
We witness the story of a veteran, who’s addiction to morphine brings him to the point of self destruction. We experience his dream, that consists of a classical Lovecraft world. If you have at least a very remote interest in Lovecraft, you should just play this game. It’s free and short!
– Real player with 2.5 hrs in game
A fantastic homage to the Lovecraftian genre
H.P Lovecraft is not an unrecognizable name. If Shinji Mikami was coined at the grandfather of survival horror, then this man surpassed that even further by being the face of eldritch horror. On the circumstances that you somehow doesn’t recognize the name, perhaps you’re familiar with the creature most associated with him: the Cthulhu. Succumb to madness.
Do not think from my slavery to morphine that I am a weakling or a degenerate
– Real player with 2.1 hrs in game