Transient
I’ve betatested this game, and am now playing the full version for the first time. I may update this review after I’m through, but so far, this is what I can say about the game:
To summarize, this is a very interesting, story-driven, lovecraftian, atmospheric, cyberpunk adventure game, with great locations and attention to detail, that will appeal to any Lovecraft fan, and may just win over anyone who is not one already.
Now, onto the more detailed review:
This game is awesome. Once again, these developers deliver a truly lovecraftian story, set both in Lovecraft’s universe, and in the one they create and expand upon with each coming game. I’ve reviewed all of their previous games, and I never get tired of saying this: these guys know their Lovecraft. They really capture what was his most characteristic and interesting aspect, distilled into all of his tales: the atmosphere.
– Real player with 26.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Story Rich Puzzle Games.
! Just in case anyone ever reads this, I’m playing on v0.140 for reference. I’m giving this a thumbs up in part for the genre combination, and for conarium, a good game without too much in the way of a downside. I’ve read a few negative reviews about the end, which i wouldnt mind so much if I got to see the protagonist actually float into the sky eye of nirvana, just end sooner, or something(or just tease a sequel or something, it doesnt have to be cyber, but why not?). I’ve more of a problem with the beginning, let me notice ive got no shaman cinnamon, load into my chair and go to that street with jovarium sunset bar first so I can take a cyber stroll down the punk street to get some meta saffron from the electro apothecary, and maybe swing by the dystopian 7/11 for some digital donuts, and holo-cigarettes. you could have me cyber holo summon up the supplies(or get them from the locker) when i unplug from my nifty padded hacker chair and then put it in my wicken blade runner pantry down stairs. I could avoid a cyber dystopian cop by keeping my distance so i know they want to keep the octopus truth hidden from me. Then at the end near the train station, have my guy go like “wow! nobody would ever believe this train thing! those corporate goons were hiding this all along!”, otherwise the whole cyber punk part falls by the wayside. If you don’t want to add a more cyber start, maybe have the plot dump orb, not immediate go into the thou, and thees. You gotta ease me into thees, lowes, and theretofores, I was just playing some gta, and its a nasty shock. Also the voice FXs on the mushroom headed guy needs another pass, go listen to the starcraft archon merging is complete track guy for reference. Also the first encounter with red mystic goat skull head guy next after the raven explosion friend needs a voice fx rework too, either more cybery, or go listen to the haunting ghosts from deadspace voices or something idk. Also maybe a little more concern on finding my clone whacked, or just some more text logs on that. Also check your text logs for grammar and spelling mistakes. saw a few:/ I’m just posting on steam, you’re publishing. On the upside though, pretty environments, fun mash up of two of my favorite genres, and neat mini games. cool scitar, wind chimes, and chanting music. Fun retro computer consoles, but dont over use antewhateverthat word was, and dont copy paste the same admittedly well done description of indescribable horrors(even if it is a lore acceptable copy paste). I think some of the problems in this game comes from lovecrafts horror often being so different from a lot of cyber punk in it’s fear of the unknown, knowledge, inevitability, slow creeping mutations and occasion body horror. Though cyber punk(and maybe i’m just getting dystopias confused with cyber punk here) are often concerned with conspiracy(hooded cults, big future organizations), inevitability or alterations of self by technology, the focus tends to be more meditations on the ills of technology as opposed to forbidden knowledge in general, ignorance of hidden costs, or dependence on technology. I think there is great potential in the meeting of of the genres, but I don’t believe that Transient really takes advantage of that. It’s a shame because there are some overlaps there, and it would be pretty awesome(get some lovecraft style descriptions of cronenberged cyber monsters, maybe dwell on wires/gears meeting gross flesh the way love craft did on tentacles? Maybe cyber punk lessons brought home with fish/lizard themed horror?) particularly with some occult in there. I had fun though, so even if I can see where it could have been way better story/message wise, thumbs up. I just like this neon, smokey, conspiracy, and occult combination a lot, but played great, zero errors.
– Real player with 15.4 hrs in game
CHRONOPHOBIA
Driven by grief through the recent loss of his son, Aidan embarks on a time-bending journey in attempts to revive him back from the dead. But by the end of the journey, the horrors that are witnessed will make him question the credibility of his actions.
PLAY AS AIDAN AND TRAVEL THROUGH TIME TO VISIT HISTORICAL PERIODS IN A FUN AND NEW WAY THROUGH A PIXEL-ART STORYTELLING HORROR ADVENTURE!
SOLVE PUZZLES BY COLLECTING AND USING ITEMS IN THE ENVIRONMENT!
AVOID MYSTERIOUS TIME-BENDING MONSTERS IN THIS LOVECRAFTIAN HORROR ADVENTURE!
Read More: Best Story Rich Puzzle Games.
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 Story Rich Choices Matter 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
SUNLESS SEA
Wanted to pop a review out for this game, albeit brief.
The Sunless Sea is a top-down view game, where you make a captain and take a ship out to zee to explore the unknown, make adventures, probably die, and then make a new captain who might inherit a few of the things your last one had. For me, this was one of the first top-down games I’d played before, and its exploration focus was very different from my prior experiences of turn-based strategy games, or first/3rd person adventure/shooters and the Teltale games. These were my impressions coming from that background.
– Real player with 347.6 hrs in game
Is there a sea more sunless? This game is marketed as an immersive, story-driven, almost roguelike, nautically themed romp through alternate history London, circa 1890s. The people at Failbetter Games have created something both motivating and meaningful in their games surrounding Fallen London, utilizing hundreds of storylets that drive the player toward various choices and options.
At first playthrough, especially if you didn’t play the precursor game Fallen London, you will find yourself immersed in a world that follows many of the rules and expectations of our own, but with many questions and concepts left unanswered. I went in without having played Fallen London (though I did go back and play it once I was hooked on Sunless Sea) and my mind immediately was grabbed by the implications of what was going on in the game world around me. I loved the content and the lore that the world seemed to be steeped in, and loved it even more for the fact that it didn’t give up its secrets without its due. This game is primarily an exploration game with the pretense of combat and economics, though those are not the primary focus. That said, I very much enjoy the combat and trading aspect, but it does come easier as you get more established. It is the process of becoming established that I think turns so many initial players away.
– Real player with 276.5 hrs in game
The Innsmouth Case
This game has rather much text to read. It’s OK the first time … but the second, and especially the third time you play a scene it’s annoying. Because you will probably play the scenes several times.
I find the idea of the game nice. The cartoonish style is fun. But it’s too difficult to survive, and you get stuck in loops trying the same scene several times selecting different options. Or you take a decision, and after 10 min reading text it’s obvious that you can’t survive regardless.
I have played the game about six times - four times ended up dead and two times I returned home on the edge of insanity. It’s just after 13-14 hour I managed to gain 2 achievements. The game is too slow, and how to reach progress isn’t that clear.
– Real player with 14.8 hrs in game
The Innsmouth Case
The Innsmouth case is a brilliant new visual novel with a strong taste of Lovecraftian mixed into it. Built as a simple visual novel with multiple endings and a ton of options, the game did it’s part just right.
Right from the get-go, it’s pretty obvious what to expect from a game like this. A strong well-scripted storyline with fantastic visuals and artistry. But the choices you have to make throughout the game and how that impacts your overall outcomes of the game threw me off guard, which I absolutely loved as it gives the game a stronger sense of mystery and unpredictability.
*– [Real player with 9.8 hrs in game](http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198329404521)*
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## A House of Many Doors
This has quickly shot to the top of my favorite games of all time list, and about 6 months after release it's still there. That said, gonna do my best to be relatively objective about its good and bad points:
aHoMD has an amazing setting and top-notch worldbuilding, and digging through the narrative and trying to understand what has happened and will happen is as big a part of the exploration in this game as the physical exploration aspect itself. The House is a bizarre, fascinating place, so if you're a fan of surreal fantasy, magical realism, and slipstream works that toss you a totally alien place and tell you to infer everything from scratch, you'll absolutely love this. Additionally, the game tweaks quite a lot of itself based on your actions and choices, and much of what you do has consequences, from the innocuous to the absolutely devastating. I feel like each one of the characters I play is really a different character because of that.
*– [Real player with 164.0 hrs in game](http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198048192100)*
HOMD is somewhere in my top ten best games of all time.
It is an unspeakably rich, vast and beautiful universe and I'm on my second playthrough. Having taken a couple of years since the previous run, I found it haunting my dreams constantly, occasionally I'd lie awake in bed missing it like a former lover, and I had to come crawling back.
But let's start at the beginning.
HOMD is set in The House, a bizarre dimension that sucks in people from all kinds of universes, and dumps them into a world divided into vast Rooms many miles across, where people don't need to eat, but prolonged exposure to the ever present darkness is lethal. Light is life, and the population (numbering in billions) have gathered in quite a few vast cities spread all throughout the House, while intercellular explorers, like yourself, move between Rooms in crawling vehicles.
*– [Real player with 116.1 hrs in game](http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197988784261)*
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## Call of Cthulhu®
Lovecraft would be proud!
This game is not like most games that claim to be Lovecraftian but are just strange, horror games with no real plot or story-line. This one is quite the opposite. This game creates a rich story-line that gleans themes from many of Lovecraft's most loved works, and it has the best sanity mechanic in a game I have played! As someone who has read all of his stories (multiple times) this game is as close as they come.
Pros:
Story-line, soundtrack, ambiance, sanity mechanic, replay-ability.
*– [Real player with 32.0 hrs in game](http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197994320200)*
It's aite.
Like just aite. Nothing else, nothing more.
It be like that sometimes.
"Scripted insanity is just middling sanity"
*– [Real player with 15.8 hrs in game](http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198042049061)*
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## Call of Cthulhu: Prisoner of Ice
What a mess! After playing Shadow of the Comet (I loved it! Read my review! http://steamcommunity.com/id/pointnclickster/recommended/389470), I was looking forward to playing this. After ten minutes, my hopes were diminished, and after an hour, my hopes were dashed and by the end, I was a very very confused gamer.
Prisoner of Ice went backwards in terms of so many things. Trying to blend 3dish/claymation looking characters in 2-D settings just doesn't work. The setting is right before WWII, and as far as Lovecraft goes, thats a little too modern for my taste. The story is an absolute mess, trying to loosely branch off of The Mountains of Madness, and serve as a kind of continuation of Shadow of the Comet…..within 3-4 hours (Steam says 6 hours, but I had long periods of being AFK). Thats right. Short. It's so short, there is no time to care about really any of the characters, and those we do know from Shadow of the Comet, it feels like they threw them in so we could kinda care about somebody! Maybe if they had made this game longer, they could have developed the story a lot better, but they didn't and we are now stuck with this. I honestly couldn't even really explain to you the plot. I had to go to Wikipedia just to find out what in the world I just played. For those who know my reviews and what I play, that should definitely tell you something. Pixel hunting is back!...and man is it annoying. Shadow of the Comet threw pixel hunting out the window, and the graphics were all pixelated. Now in this mixed mess of a game, good luck finding the key you need in a timed puzzle. Oh yes, this game is full of timed puzzles. However, if you do die (you will), the game does autosave so you have a chance to quickly figure out what in the world to do.
*– [Real player with 5.6 hrs in game](http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198006176581)*
I wanted to play this game since it's release day back in 1995 but back then it wasn't easy to find the game you were looking for, so the years passed and here i am finish my first playthrough 25 years later.
Prisoner of ice is a nice short adventure game to spend your evening.The game is interesting with a good atmosphere and story and manages to keep the tension on a good level, keep in mind though that if you are a fun of Lovecraft you will not find many elements that remind a lovecraftian story and writing here.It's just a horror adventure game based on the mythology of Cthulhu and you shouldn't expect nothing more than that.That doesn't make it a bad game though.
*– [Real player with 3.9 hrs in game](http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198002737362)*
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## 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](http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198034402756)*
### 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](http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198400866229)*
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## Mythos Ever After: A Cthulhu Dating Sim
A very short uhm "Dating Sim" with a wide and eclectic cast of characters to interact with. TBH for me its was much more of a head scratcher than anything else. It was hard for me to really find and keep up with any real kind of story line, as there seemed to be several all playing out at once, with a steady rush of decisions to make on things that arnt really fully fleshed out enough to know exactly what you are making the decision about, nevermind guess as to what sort of out come any decision will have (in advance of making it that is, everything gets wrapped up in the end, even if you have know idea what you were doing as you played)
*– [Real player with 2.0 hrs in game](http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198053428824)*
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