Omen Exitio: Plague
Omen Exitio: The Plague is the first chapter of a game-book hybrid series developed by Italian indie developer, Tiny Bull Studios. It draws inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, and combines his chilling tales with historical events in the late nineteenth century. When I began playing this game, it reminded me of the choose-your-own-adventure books that I enjoyed reading as a child. Every choice you make impacts the outcome of the story.
Omen Exitio follows Dr. Huntington, a recent widower, who was unable to save his wife from cancer. He joins the army to leave his past behind. Haunted by the visions of his deceased love, he tirelessly performs his duties hoping to suppress the guilt consuming his soul. His destiny was changed forever when he receives a mysterious message. The message eerily reveals that his skills as a physician will be required on the journey that lies ahead. The message is anonymously assigned “a friend.”
– Real player with 10.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Lovecraftian Casual Games.
My first experience with this genre of games.
It’s a lot of fun, obviously you will need to enjoy reading and relying on your own imagination. Despite this I still wished for more variation in the images. The images are used over and over again kind of to a point where they become somewhat irrelevant. I wish there was more variation and more going on in the images if they are to be used at all, since they are meant to be a way to also tell the story, especially since the story is given to you is such short sequences and the way that it is written I found it a bit hard to imagine the scene sometimes, as it’s written quite straight forward sometimes without much reflection or details described. I don’t know, just my personal experience and opinion with it. Sometimes the story also jumps significantly and I found myself a little confused. Time isn’t really described much in terms of the scene sometimes, especially when it jumps, at least not enough for me to really spark my imagination, despite having been to many of these places and lived in many of these places. Albeit, of course, not during this time lol.
– Real player with 10.0 hrs in game
A Place for the Unwilling
A Place for the Unwilling is an isometric story driven adventure game. I can recommend this game to players who have patience to read many dialogues and texts in a slow-paced world. The story is compelling to track from start to finish, but there are also missing pieces in the story. Depending on how you choose to progress in the game, the city player lives in changes and reacts differently. All characters introduced are vibrant, they all have stories to tell. They have the ability to manipulate player’s perspective in a direction based on your affinity to them. But the game doesn’t deliver its expected ending.
– Real player with 66.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Lovecraftian Singleplayer Games.
Solid exploratory adventure with deep, lyrical writing and time constraints.
The game’s aesthetics is absolutely delicious in its dark simplicity of the features, but lots of moving elements. It has the “cartoon Lovecraft” feel to it and the city streets simply beg to explore every nook and cranny. With all that beauty around, the controls are what dampens the overall fantastic first expression. Intuitive they are not. There is a mix of WASD and arrows involved, where every letter is not what you learned it to be from hundreds of previous games played… S acts like an “Enter” for example, and quite frequently you’d have to resort to “W – Arrow down – E” combinations which will result in lost money and/or some frustration. Since interaction of a character starts from him/her being turned to an object or a person in order to highlight them first, it’s also easy to imagine some annoying moments when you trying to angle your character just right. Perhaps, the only thing I’d want to lodge a complaint about.
– Real player with 47.2 hrs in game
At Eve’s Wake
High-quality visual novel with multiple endings, fantastic graphic and sound component, and intriguing premise.
The Good Parts:
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Fascinating set-up of family ties based on cult-like faith, bloody competition, and something outright paranormal with overall dysfunction taken to the next level.
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Great writing throughout. It manages to introduce a complex fictional idea in a manner that captures attention and makes you ponder.
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Atmospheric world-building. There’s sinister feeling intertwined with some outright shocking moments. “At Eve’s Wake” isn’t horror in the pure sense of the word, but more in a psychological one, so it has a very well-done horror element burning its way through the game, sometimes on slow simmer, sometimes as a wildfire.
– Real player with 11.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Lovecraftian Dynamic Narration Games.
Ahhhhh I was so excited for this to come out and it’s finally here! I’ve just finished my first playthrough and it lived up to my hype, if you’re having any doubts about picking up the full game then please try out the demo and you’ll see what I mean.
-Gorgeous art and music, just a delightful atmosphere throughout
-A well developed and intriguing story of mystery, murder and mishaps
-An incredible amount of dialogue choices with a variety of endings seemingly possible depending on them.
I love visual novels and narrative-driven games, so I feel that I know what I’m talking about to some degree, and I say this- At Eve’s Wake is a beautiful and eerie story that deserves your attention if you’re at all interested in Lovecraft, mysteries, visual novels, or graverobbing. Trust me on that last one.
– Real player with 7.2 hrs in game
Saint Kotar
It’s an interesting game, and has many excellent points. But all in all I can only give it a weak recommendation.
Pros:
–Excellent, dark art style.
–Very atmospheric.
–Subtle but fitting music, with a couple of tracks that are so good that I find myself excited for the soundtrack.
–Extremely dark, in a way that few games are willing to go.
–I played through it twice and generally enjoyed the experience both times.
Cons:
–Extremely thin story that often doesn’t make sense. A huge chunk of the game is spent wondering why your sister would have ever had you all come here. Having played through the game twice, I find myself still unable to answer that. Possibly the answer is, “Actually, she didn’t.” But if that’s the correct answer, a HUGE amount of story that fleshes out how the character who did knew to do that and why they’d want to just isn’t in the game (but absolutely should be).
– Real player with 41.6 hrs in game
Full disclosure: I backed this game’s Kickstarter and have reviewed it for the Croatian gaming portal FFA. You can find the Croatian review here . This is an abbreviated version of that review.
Saint Kotar is a traditional p’n’c adventure game trying its best to fit in with the rest of the adventure greats. It plays like most standard examples in the genre - you explore a variety of locations, examine and interact with objects, talk with people quite a bit and try to piece together what exactly is going on.
– Real player with 28.2 hrs in game
In Blood
After a night of drinking Eleadora takes a shortcut home through the woods. She’s angry, frustrated, and sad. At the crossroads she trips and cuts her hand on some broken glass. While looking over her wounds she mutters a wish out loud that calls upon an ancient and forgotten force that changes her life forever.
She wakes up in an unknown room, in an unknown house, on an unknown plane of existence. Surrounded by horrors and death she must attempt to find an ally among the other occupants of the house. It’s clear they don’t have her best interests in mind, and trusting them could be deadly.
Survive and try to maintain your humanity.
Escape, if you still want to.
Escape, if they’ll let you.
Features:
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4 romance options (3 guys, 1 woman)
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Multiple endings
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4 routes
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5 CGs in demo (More planned in final game)
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English voice acting in the demo (More planned for final game)
Characters:
Romance Options:
Credits
Writer, Developer, Programmer: Jaime Scribbles
Production Manager, Editor, Voice Director: PMscenarios
Character Artist: Illuminate001
GUI Artist: Sitraxis
BG Artist: Saleha Chowdhury
Illustrator: Meagan Trott and Scherville
Additional Artist: Jen Bird
Audio Director and Sound Designer: Tim Reichert
Music: Antriksh Bali and Kyle Mesce
Voice Actors
Brenton: Kevin K. Gomez
Karon: Kieran Flitton
Tristin: C. W. “Seedub” Brown
Seta: Abigail Turner
Nyarbalte: Bradley Gareth
Eris: Wes Haas
The Indigo Parallel
Gameplay will vary depending on the direction the player chooses to explore and the choices they make along the way. The Indigo Parallel incorporates numerous pathways leading to environmental puzzles to solve, the use of vehicles to progress, and communication terminals to interact with.
The goal of the Indigo Parallel is to create a game that allows the player to discover new and hidden pathways during each playthrough. Choices made throughout the game unlock new areas and alter existing levels.
Each element of this game, from the hieroglyphics to game play, the textures to the models, has been created through years of passion by a solo developer.
The Indigo Parallel is a unique experience. Its rich non-linear environment showcases a dark future with plenty of secrets.
Be prepared, this game is weird.
Key features:
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Non-linear gameplay with branching pathways, filled with hidden features.
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Levels that are altered by choices made, making each playthrough different.
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Beautiful and immersive environmental storytelling.
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Stunning soundtrack featuring music by J Ryan Halpenny and Decima1.
Blackout: The Darkest Night
Cool game if you like choose your own adventures.
– Real player with 6.2 hrs in game
It has my recommendation for solid writing and an intriguing little mystery, but the emphasis is on little.
Maybe this was my bad luck, but I happened to get to the bottom of the mystery on my first playthrough, about 40 minutes in. I’ve played through it a few more times since then and while it’s possible I’ve missed some side stories, and I haven’t gotten a halfway “good” ending yet, without the central mystery to drive the plot my willingness to keep playing is mostly gone. Most branching narrative games in this vein lock the True Ending type story behind a few playthroughs for a reason.
– Real player with 4.0 hrs in game
SONG OF HORROR COMPLETE EDITION
TLDR; Close, but no cigar. Very close, but still.
I finished Song of Horror at the highest available starting difficulty. 98% blind(Will explain later down the line), first play through, none of the characters were lost.
I can’t recommend Song of Horror for a very simple reason, which some can look past and some can’t. I fall under the latter category- The reason is not permanent death, but rather how it is handled; Very, very poorly. It absolutely affected my experience, very negatively. Most of my other issues, I could have looked past if it wasn’t mainly for this.
– Real player with 45.5 hrs in game
Pros
1. Variety of Characters, Stats, and Backgrounds = I enjoyed the opportunity of playing different characters with different perspectives of how they see the world. I like how each character had different stats to how they function and how they should adapt against the Presence. I also enjoyed how some of the characters know the layout of a particular area of the game to give the player a potential advantage.
2. Many Detailed Locations = It is refreshing to explore different maps of in the game to keep it interesting. From a haunted mansion, a shop, an abandoned hospital, and more.
– Real player with 42.5 hrs in game
Stars Die
Stars Die is an amazingly atmospherically dense experience. it’s a very short game but honestly doesn’t really need a whole lot of time to express itself and its ideas, and does a great load of work narratively and emotionally with the brief period it takes to complete. the game has 6 endings, including 2 secret ones, and going through all of these brought its own interesting character insights to the table. getting to explore the island itself was a real treat - the distant ambient thump that plays everywhere really added to the feeling that it might be alive, and each little area feels distinct while still flowing into each other naturally. the soundtrack is really great also - the swells of synth or heavy beat coming in at a dramatic moment to provide tension felt really perfect (and tbh the tracks all just slap, i’d love to see a release of the soundtrack by itself!).
– Real player with 10.0 hrs in game
I did not enjoy the story on my first playthrough because the second half of the narrative was too heavy on exposition, but the game has several endings that will add more context to the experience. It takes about 30 to 40 minutes to complete the game, depending on which character you align with. To my knowledge there are at least 5 outcomes not counting the secret quest. The format reminded me of Fatum Betula because the main character essentially decides the fate of the world, additionally to the retro aesthetic and exploration in general. The area that you explore is not very big, although there are hidden trinkets that can be difficult to find. As far as the gameplay, it’s a walking-sim with some dialogue choices, even though the conversations don’t seem to impact the outcomes - you can change your mind at the very end (with a few exceptions). If you need to locate a character, you can use a radio that can be obtained shortly after meeting the crew. There is a time limit which can be disabled in the settings, meaning that you could miss out on some events if you don’t get there in time.
– Real player with 8.7 hrs in game
Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
Just to preface this, I have played virtually every adaptation of Lovecraft in video game format. It’s one of my favourite fictional universes and the concept of otherworldly horror is one I am yet to find tiring. Below you will find many reviews of the game complaining about bugs, lack of polish, performance bla bla bla. As other RPG fans have, I have had to suffer through these things for many years in order to experience some of the best this genre has to offer. In the defence of the team that has put this together, I think that this is a noble effort for one of the hardest things to properly implement - a reactive RPG that is able to anticipate the different paths players will want to go down.
– Real player with 90.7 hrs in game
Update 30th Nov 2019: The game has been out for more than two months and there still has been no major patch addressing the numerous problems. Until the devs have taken care of at least some of the worst bugs, I can’t recommend the game at the current stage.
Stygian is definitely not a game for everyone, not just because of its theme, but also because it is both a gem and a train wreck at the same time. It is, in my opinion, the best Lovecraft game so far made, even better than Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. But it is also largely unfinished and riddled with bugs (at the time of its release).
– Real player with 52.7 hrs in game