The Cthulhu mythos in gaming
The gaming industry has been using motives and ideas from other types of media since the very beginning. So nobody should be surprised that it has been using one of the most ideas from one of the most revered horror authors H.P. Lovecraft.
Cthulhu, that weird tentacled monster, the God embodying all the horrors of our world has millions of fans, its own wikipedia and was at least indirectly a part of hundreds of games. And he even shows up personally in a few dozens of games. Nothing that surprising about it. Lovecraft's stories have such an unique aura and atmosphere that the horror is very attractive for both the developers and the gamers.
We will be finally getting an official Cthulhu game later this year with Call of Cthulhu: The Official Video Game. So this seems like a good time to take a look at three games that used this amazing mythos to create their world.
The Lurking Horror
Probably the first ever (and preserved) game with Lovecraftian themes is the text based adventure game The Lurking Horror that came out in 1987 for the 8-bit Atari and then later made its way even to the Amiga.
Source: Rick Tommy Youtube
The story of a student that is trying to make his homework in and purely by chance finds that there are miles and miles of abandoned tunnels under his school filled with monster and dark cultists didn't exactly include Cthulhu directly, but the inspiration was completely obvious.
Alone In The Dark
What new can be said about the legendary Alone In The Dark? Not much. The game came out in the year 1992 and you were playing as Edward Carnbyho a private detective. Again, you wont directly find Cthulhu in this game, but the inspirations are obvious. You can even find Necronomicon in game.
Source: Swizzley Youtube Channel
One of the interesting things about Alone In The Dark is the fact that even once you finish the game, if you try to open the powerful Necronomicon without the ritual, you will die. The aura of the Old God is just so powerful, that even finishing the game won't stop him from killing you.
Shadow of The Comet
Shadow of The Comet was probably the first "classical" graphical adventure game with the Cthulhu mythos and it came out in 1993. Here you become John Parker a photographer that goes to a little fishing town called Illsmouth.
Source: silenig Youtube Channel
Sadly, Shadow of The Comet wasn't the best Lovecraft inspired game. The dialogs weren't great, but the true horror of the game were the controls. As the game didn't support mouse control, you had to do everything with your keyboard and that was truly scary.
This post has been ranked within the top 80 most undervalued posts in the second half of Sep 15. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $15.85 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Sep 15 - Part II. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.
If you are the author and would prefer not to receive these comments, simply reply "Stop" to this comment.
@kralizec A pleasant put up..I am exciting. Resteemed.
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by Kralizec (Jakub (James)) from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews/crimsonclad, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
This post has received a 11.03 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @kralizec.
Wow thats great @krazilec keep going and good.job
this is a test comment, please disregard
I've played the last two, Alone in the Dark was one of the best games I've played, very loyal to Lovecraft's themes and very innovative in the time of publication. Unfortunately I've missed The Lurking Horror (although I loved text adventures), I did not own an Amiga or Atari back then, I had an Amstrad CPC 6128.
Prisoner of Ice is also a very good one, with beautiful graphics and capturing the mood very well.