What does it take for a game to actually nail the feeling of cosmic horror that isn't about a deadbeat alcoholic detective investigating a harbor town of unreasonably angry fishpeople before having wild shootouts and discovering a deep dark secret about himself that makes him go insane?
Quake 1 kind of nailed the atmosphere, though it's gameplay isn't really about cosmic horror.
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Best way would be to sneak it into another game entirely.
Enjoy your otherwise stellar game about whatever the fuck then boom, wander or get summoned into or discover somewhere, and you're in a place so big you can't even visualize how big it is, filled with something so fucking massive and in the distance you can't see more than a bit of it at a time. It just takes up the entirely fucking screen and then some.
That'd be cosmic horror. I don't think you could do a whole game around it, it'd just be a sledgehammer of "you are so impossibly small you can't even visualize it".
The best lovecraftian games/ movies are the ones not based of Lovecraft.
The King in Yellow game when?
You can't make gameplay about "cosmic horror" you brainlet
Cosmic horror would have to involve some sort of unknown ancient evil that cannot be defeated and whose intentions are not understood at all, this usually does not translate well to games
Darkest Dungeon ending.
Mass Effect 1
>Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh, you touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding.
>Lovecraftian
Tentacles LMAOOOOOOOO,insanity,too deep for you,you just can't comprehend,muh fear of unknown
this
Ash Lake unironically gave me panic attack, and I don't think any other game managed to do that
DUDE TENTACLES LMAO
The best and only good Lovecraft is the hidden Lovecraft. Sunken city is shite
Is the sinking city bad? I just started downloading it and the atmosphere seems pretty good, beyond the shit gameplay is the dialogue and story and good? Any anons beat it that can give me a quick rundown
The best Lovecraftian game ever made is Eternal Darkness on gamecube. Play it if you want to know what it feels like.
You are a very stupid man
What? How? It's just a fucking beach
you forgot "niggers"
It has to be fully incomprehensible and feel like something infinitely larger than you. Lovecraft's concept of horror was idiotic to begin with and only worked at that particular time, because the societal collective ego was swelling too much before realizing how little they actually know and it was a huge blow to their self-esteem. Nowadays we have a good grasp on the size of he universe to understand that our knowledge is infinitely small and that has turned into a concept of hope and determination, that's why you get stories like Star Trek or Gurren-Lagann where the tiny size of a human being is the accolade of humanity because we still can grow infinitely and will potentially be able to understand it all. What was scary in Lovecraft's time is an inspiration in ours. All that's left of his style that can still scare a modern person is scary tentacle monsters in the dark that are a direct threat to you.
He has "panic attacks", he's obviously mentally unstable.
Bloodborne
...
Not a single tentacle in the ending cutscene of DD
Based and timeperiodpilled
It's bad. It started off decent for me and I started off enjoying it for the same things you listed as getting into it. But they only lasted so long and as the game went on it just became worse and less interesting and then outright bad.
I would love it if a game clued you in that your character is insane and/or royally fucked in such a throwaway casual way as the line from In the Court of the Dragon where the narrator is just like "I was here to try and soothe my nerves after reading The King in Yellow"
Lovecraft is old shit, now Dunsany is where it's at
>kill cosmic horrors by hitting them enough times while running around
It has the aesthetics but not the theme of humanity being completely insignificant and powerless in the universe.
If you want cosmic horror in your game then you just need to make the player and the playable area feel really small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Like the Reapers in Mass Effect 1, you only encounter 1 Reaper but you know there's a bunch more coming to fuck everyone up and they've been around in the game's universe longer than anything you see in the game.
Only if i can be frens with Hastur
Pathologic, the void, darkwood, amnesia the dark descent.
lovecraft was a fucking awful writer
No, it's pretty good. It did lose steam by the end for me, but for the majority of it I thoroughly enjoyed it. The strongest aspect is the immersion and detective work, figuring things out by searching the archives, reading the quests and marking the locations on your map that's the good shit. Combat's alright at first, because your ammunition is very limited and you don't get much resources, but by the end you both beat that problem and grow tired of the same enemies. The sidequests are good, but there are a couple where you just have a massive list of places to go and just kill a bunch of monsters in, those tire you out a lot. There are some choices you make along the way and they're curious, but in the end they don't really amount to anything. I really hated the finale of the game, where you're a big room and have to chose one of three endings all of which suck. I'd still say it's a pretty good game and recommend it.
Make player a cosmic horror/Elder Thing/Mi-Go/Great old one
That's Sims. You are an incorporeal being infinitely larger than the tiny humans in their boxes, you can influence their minds, making them do things they'd deem illogical by their nature, and your intentions will never be fathomable for them as you may start torturing them on a whim.
Pathologic and the void ARE NOT Lovecraftian. Go and actually play them instead of watching your snoyboy "based" vidya reviewers
Why aren't they?
Because it's fucking not is it? Where are the themes of cosmic horror? Stop sucking mandalores dick and go play it
Retard. Stop shitposting on Yea Forums and go play video games.
It is very and I mean very repetitive. Sotry is badly presented altough atmosphere itself is quite good. Combat is pure ass and final chapters seems rushed.
Over all it's fine for the first few hours but than it becomes 4/10. Also minor bugs and glitches everywhere.
San Andreas is pretty good
where was the cosmic horror in "the rats in the walls"? are the rats the cosmic horrors?
The Ritual was kino
Yeah I think people miss that not all the horror in Lovecraft's stories comes purely from big alien unspeakables beyond the ken of man etc. Like, Shadow Over Innsmouth is the story that gets pulled from most for video games, and most of the horror, tension, whatever in that comes from being in a town full of weird fuckers that you can't trust.
10/10
I feel like the only way to realize cosmic horror in a modern age is through technology and social pressure. Like, one day you're just shitposting like normal, the next day everyone around you starts becoming progressively more unreasonable and hostile, and you find that people are behaving more like bots devoid of humanity. Then you're forced to watch as the communities you hold dear to your heart are devoured by an apathetic intangible mass which only seeks a base dopamine rush at the expense of destroying everything, and there's nothing you can do but watch and hear them chant CUMBRAIN, CUMBRAIN, CUMBRAIN, CUMBRAIN
You don't know why it's happening, and you can't even ask anyone why it's happening because everyone lost all reason.
any game where you kill niggers
Didn't Black Mirror do that?
Amid Evil, kind of.
Shit overrated cliche tv show
I think Death Stranding is doing a good job at it. While its not fully lovecraftian some scenes from trailer really do make you feel small and that you are in a place that is beyond human comprehension.
This summs it up youtube.com
which episode?
one of his best fucking stories.
the ending was kinda stupid but the atmosphere catched me.
holy shit, i never thought about it that way
Cultist simulator kinda pulled it off.
Most of his work isn't related to ze mythos, really. Most are just cool horror short stories that are reasonably well written.
People always only focus on The Shadow of Insmouth and The Call of Cthulhu
It isn't too lovecraftian, but has an other pretty fucking nice flavour.
fuck i wish i were autistic enough to keep playing it
Why was dark souls' level design so fucking superior to 2 and 3?
Not that user, didn't have a panic attack personally, but it did make me awe struck. You travel this huge world and suddenly after going down a tree forever, you reach the beach. It is just that baffling sensation of being beneath the entire world. You see all those trees and realize just how big everything have to be. There is this endless, overwhelming feeling and surreal feel of the place, it's just a beach and so much more. Definitely one of my favorite moments in gaming.
I think you have narrowed it unfairly down to fit your argument and just overlook all the aspects that can inspire horror in his works. Cosmic horror is just the idea, the core element, the starting point. I feel you have simplified and reduced this to just concepts. The existence of monsters, the gore, the claustrophobia, the tension, the paranoia, the consequences of monsters and the merging with humans. Not to mention the parallels to other human fears and troubles. You're right about the cosmic horror aspect in relation to our different society, but there is troublesome ignorance and unfairness in your process.
now you know why girls like it so much. they can create people they love and people they hate.
I might as well ask here. What is up with everyone's homolust for Lovecraftian? Its like every fresh out of college indie dev team needs to make some kind of "homage to Lovecraftian" game.
What are some good Lovecraftian movies/manga/games?
Lovecraft was a cumbrain
Cube 1
It's just a trend and he has amazing short stories. He evokes a particular eerie feeling.
Also Reddit has a boner for nihlism
Same could be said for other games like Rollercoaster Tycoon
>not having panic attacks over random non threatening things
Fuck off normie
Oh fuck, I forgot the word fuck induces panic attacks in me oh fuck OH FUCK FUCK FFFFFFHCHHDNEJDJCNCKOSIWIWURUncbfuekksmnc
He’s a pioneer of modern horror. Most horror these days is in some way influenced by his work.
Tfw still haven't beaten DD after a few months
This.
Best Lovecraftian game is Bloodborne.
its not lovecraft
No but its Lovecraftian
no its not, if bloodborne is lovecraftian so is dark souls
The Lovecraftian story of a community degrading into shitflinging and buzzwords. Call it E/v/olution and release it on PS4 and PC with no Switch port.
>Bloodborne
>"Lovecraftian Horror"
>can kill Eldritch Gods with a rusty saw and a musket
H.P. Lovecraft would roll over in his grave if he knew,
No it's Eternal Darkness
That core concept is what defines it as Lovecraftian. Monsters, gore, claustrophobia and the rest are basic building blocks, they've been in horrors before Lovecraft and continue to be in horrors to this day. The cosmic horror is what makes a horror Lovecraftian, without it it's just horror and that is a timeless concept, which will always be around. Monsters ripping people to shreds in isolated environments is any modern horror movie from The Thing to Friday the 13th. I fail to see the connection between them and Lovecraft, because he surely didn't invent any of those.
Dark Souls is Lovecraftian
>cosmic horror
then u might as well say the movie Alien is lovecraftian, its wrong its not the cosmic horror, its the fear of unknown
then dark souls should be the best lovecraftian game, but its not lovecraftian
He’d be more upset that orientals are behind the games
That's my argument. To be Lovecraftian it specifically has to be about the fear of accepting humanity's insignificance. Any other element of his work is just generic basic concept of fear he has no credit over.
>accepting humanity's insignificance.
Pretty prevalent in Dark Souls actually
Any arguments why Bloodborne isn't Lovecraftian. It IS cosmic horror.
What would Lovecraft think of this?
Either this or just make it not about the lovecraftian horror. The thing that makes them so terrifying is that they are so horrible that humanity cannot even perceive them, so do it like Darkest Dungeon for example.
>Firstly, if it's suppose to make you insane when you gaze apon it, it should look like a ever changing blur of vague shapes that resemble what it looks like. Probably a hard effect to pull off, but it lets imagination go wild and make you understand that you simply can no comprehend what you're looking at no matter how hard your brain struggles to form an image of it.
>Secondly have the protagonist be an ex-nazi ravaged by guilt and ptsd, who fled to america after the war ended.
>Thirdly have it be mainly in a town covered by forests, who's a few kilomiters from the ocean. The main action takes place between the ocean it's self and the town. The crab hunters/fishermen coming back experience more and more visions, more and more nightmares, slowly finding them selves drawn to the ocean. There is no secret cult in town, the city is/was normal for the most part, the insane and odd comes from people who bring it back from the ocean. The "cult" will be deep under the ocean it's self.
>Have it so you lose sanity slowly, and can't regain it without great efforts. As you lose sanity you start hearing wispers, your ptsd triggers, you start seeing things move at the corners of the screen all the way to full blown, I'm seeing monsters in the distance, the whole world is under water and the walls are bleeding.
if you can kill the cosmic horror in hand to hand combat its not lovecraftian
>isn't a Jew
He certainly wouldn't marry it.
Perfection
The mc slowly transforms into a horror in Bloodborne. It’s not like a perfectly normal human does all the killing
The only eldritch god you actually kills that is not a failure or a recently born baby is the moon presence, and even then you are able to do it because you consumed three umbilical chords that completely throws the moon presence off guard.
I thought a huge part of Bloodborne was shedding away your humanity in order to fight these beings
Yea, this as well, alien/god creatures that supposedly make you go insane once viewd, or slowly with proximity, is something that should probably not have clear motives. One thing you could do is have the character understand the motives once he loses his mind and because he understands kills him self for "reasons unkown". You the player still won't because because you're not "insane" enough to understand. Could be a cool concept. And a reason to not let your character go fully "enlightened" and then end him self.
Anyone have the quote from his wife about how Lovecraft showed affection? It was cute.
i dont get it, if they are so horrible we cant perceive them then how do they convey fear?
>What does it take for a game to actually nail the feeling of cosmic horror that isn't about a deadbeat alcoholic detective investigating a harbor town of unreasonably angry fishpeople before having wild shootouts and discovering a deep dark secret about himself that makes him go insane?
Holy fuck, never noticed the pattern before
They pretty much are. But you wouldn't know, because you know Lovecraft from tentacles, old ones and other scary monsters.
Leave Lovecraft to Yahtzee
>a town full of weird fuckers that you can't trust.
a bunch of games will evoke this, especially RPGs, where you encounter some village and there's a dark secret to it, and you get that paranoia as you try to find out what exactly is hidden, but I just don't think you could build a whole game around it.
Yahtzee's a moron.
What about Ebrietas? She's not recently born nor failure.
DoL is peak Lovecraftian
Is the presumably bottomless body of water in Ash Lake supposed to be the "deep" Dark Souls 3 fucks on about witlessly?
I agree with the other user in that it's not especially lovecraft-y in tone, but I think you could use its "figure it out as you go" mechanics to make something that is. The original Call of Cthulhu's framing device was a guy inheriting a bunch of disparate notes, and when pieced together they form the actual horror narrative. I could definitely see Cultist combined with some kind of Her Story -esque game to emulate stumbling on something you shouldn't have, and falling down the rabbit hole as more and more material comes to light.
Generally though, I think this sort of thing is better done as a small vignette unrelated to the rest of the game. Have it as a morbid sort of world-building and let it colour the player's perception of the game world, instead of beating them over the head with it.
THE FISH PEOPLE
I want a Ligotti style Lovecraft thing that's just a hateful and disturbing existential crisis. Something like his short stories, not True Detective season 1 Matthew McConnehehey style Ligotti.
and speaking of FISH PEOPLE, how was that Sinking City game? I had my fill of FISH PEOPLE from the Call of Cthulhu game last year so I never checked it out.
really many fish people. you even talk to them. and there's fish people/ape people racial tensions
False. You're confusing Lovecraftian and Cosmic Horror. The term Lovecraftian encompasses all typical elements of Lovecraft stories, not just humanitys insignificance. Slime and tentacles, going mad from revelation, stories within stories, etc all belong in the term Lovecraftian.
You'll find all of that in Stephen King's stories. Are you going to call them Lovecraftian? Because they aren't. Any complex concept is defined by its core. You can put other external elements to the core it'll still be that concept, but you replace the core itself and it's no longer than concept no matter how many external elements remain.
>You'll find all of that in Stephen King's stories. Are you going to call them Lovecraftian?
I just might. Recently read Needful Things and it's straight up with name dropping a giant reference to Lovecraft which he has himself acknowledged to be a huge inspiration. Now Stephen King took a lot from Lovecraft as a starting point and you can see how he has evolved it to his own style of writing make it more in depth and human which is his style.
You don't kill ebrietas. Upon "killing" a great one they simply wake up in their respective plane. Idk if moon presence is any different like that user said but you're not killing them, just holding them back
All you need to do is to rob the player of agency. No matter what they do, they cannot change the outcome of the events unfolding before them. It's this futility and insignificance in the face of beings so vastly superior to us that we cannot even comprehend their nature let alone motivation that defines Lovecraft's works.
To give an example, think of all the stuff you can do in Bloodborne to get different endings. If the game was truly lovecraftian, none of that would matter and you would get the ending where you succumb to the moon presence regardless of what you did, and the narration would make sure that you know your efforts were wasted.
so a normal jrpg?
unironically this and it's mental
Of all of his work only one short story contains this, but game devs think he only wrote cuthulu and innsmouth for some reason.
>No matter what they do, they cannot change the outcome of the events unfolding before them
Yeah, that's pretty much how games work.
it either has to be an extra to the already made game or some intangible force, like having certain characters start to behave in strange ways as game advances or if there are choices having the protagonist slowly starting to get more strange and out of place choices if they did certain things or came in contact whit certain items
Fuck, that's how I'm going to roleplay in Sims now: I'm an eldricht monstrocity trying to drive my sims insane.
Games can offer you choices that do change outcomes of events within the game, though. A lovecraftian game would offer you those same choices, but they would ultimately turn out to be meaningless and the story would make it clear to you that you never had a snowball's chance in hell to survive or even have an impact.
That would fucking suck though. Multiple choices are done in games because people want to see the outcome differ depending on their actions. When the outcome is the same everyone criticizes the fuck out of it. It is in fact one of the biggest faults in The Sinking City, because whatever you do throughout the game the outcome is really the same and you've been warned multiple times about that: chose to seal the femCthulhu and the world's fucked because new protagonist immediately comes to replace you, and one of them will release her; chose to release her - the world's fucked because she ate everyone; chose to walk away - the world's fucked because everyone's gone mad and will try to release her.