![]() Townspeople wander back and forth on preset paths, only a handful can be conversed with, and most of the city is a Potemkin village of prop doors painted on empty buildings. Scratch a little deeper, and the lower-budget indie side shows through. Being an open-world game, the potential for wandering the city and discovering new things feels huge, at least during the game's earlier hours. The art direction is all rain and ruin, like a 1920s Fallout. I played the PC version of the game, via Epic's online game store, and it looked great. The freaky stuff unfolds slowly, easing you in until you realize this is a very strange alternative universe. The city has a dreamlike quality, a step removed from reality, with cults, fish-human hybrids from a neighboring town, and a local economy that has abandoned money in favor of trading spare bullets. The game's central hook is that Oakmont is a bit like a haunted version of Venice, half-flooded, with large portions only accessible by motorboat. ![]() It sees you become a detective drawn to the fictional Massachusetts town of Oakmont, where you must investigate mysteries, find missing people and occasionally fight monsters, although ammunition is scarce (and your 1920s guns are pretty puny), so don't expect run-and-gun action. Lovecraft's work has always had an outsize influence on video games, board games and novels, but these are some of my favorite games that directly credit him, including two new ones for this Halloween season, Stygian and Moons of Madness.Ī Lovecraft game as reimagined by David Lynch. (And to be clear, part of why his work was so creepy may have been because he was himself a creep.) ![]() The creepy 1920s supernatural New England detective yarn he specialized in has become an established story archetype, and if you call something "Lovecraftian," at least a good portion of the room will immediately know what you're talking about. Lovecraft's interconnected stories are linked by a backdrop of ancient creatures from unknown dimensions waiting for a chance to reclaim the Earth. While he achieved little fame and no fortune during his life (1890-1937), he's become incredibly influential in the decades following his death. "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown," said cult-favorite horror writer H.P.
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