My fingers tremble as I type this, rendered useless from fear of seeing the words before me. Were there names for the ancient, snaking madness I have come to know from plumbing too far into the recesses of digital entertainment’s forgotten depths, it would be too much for my mind to give them form here. I can still hear their torrid song ringing in my ears when I wake in the middle of the night, alarmed by the sound of my own screams. I pray that you receive this in time. Do not blow on the cartridge, lest you unleash these torpid, starborn evils, and they consume this world slowly and deliberately!
*ahem*
Right. When we stare down the past three decades of gaming, it is repulsive to see just how many motifs are repeated again and again. Yeah, you see some novel premises here and there. But psychic summer camps plagued by traumatized mad scientists are far less common than Tolkien/Albionic fantasy (elves, swords, goblins, etc,) militaristic science fiction (let’s be honest and just call them Aliens games,) supernatural horror (vampires, spooky little girls,) Disney-esque anthropomorphic romps (Sonic and, yes, even Mario,) or even good ol’ fashioned zombie apocalypse. More interesting than the extremes of cliché and originality, however, are those creative modes that only certain game developers are irregularly drawn to.
Infinite Lives’ latest feature, looking at the truly obscure Virtual Boy horror-FPS Insmouse no Yakata (Innsmouth Manson,) spotlighted the curious, dare I say sinister, influence H.P. Lovecraft has had on gaming. The infamous “weird fiction” writer’s fingerprints are on a number of games made since the early ‘80s, some explicit and others less so. Most popular is Lovecraft’s Cthulu mythos, popping up in Dave Lebing and Infocom’s beloved The Lurking Horror and in two separate series named Call of Cthulu, the first being Infogrames’ early-‘90s PC adventures. The second series, first-person shooters starting with Dark Corners of the Earth, came from the now-defunct Headfirst Productions. (Dark Corners of the Earth had two proposed sequels, Destiny’s End and Beyond the Mountains of Madness. Both died along with Headfirst in 2006.) But others ape Lovecraft’s style while avoiding direct allusion, none more famously than Silicon Knights’ Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem. Say what you will about Silicon Knights’ other games, but Eternal Darkness is truly an accomplishment: a modern Lovecraft story. Its arching narrative, spanning millennia and focusing on a specific lineage’s relation to an ancient, evil book penned by even more ancient, evil gods mimics Lovecraft’s idiosyncratic style quite well, but more impressive is the game’s take on Lovecraft’s constant theme of descent-into-madness. Where Lovecraft relied on first-person narration to give his audience the feeling of going insane, Eternal Darkness turned it into actual play by actively warping the player’s perspective with “insanity effects” triggered by a falling sanity meter next to your health bar. If you haven’t played the game, I recommend not watching the following video, but it does provide a small taste of how Silicon Knights created a unique evolution of Lovecraft’s formula.
These games barely cover the Lovecraft gaming gamut. Even recent Castlevanias have critters running around their levels based on Lovecraft’s beasties.
Yes, beware reader. Out there, amidst those games that look so like one another, waits a select few titles that contain shimmering, gibbering horrors of cosmic namelessness. Do not seek them out. Do not seek them out!
Related links:
Question of the Day: How Do You Make a Horror Game Horrifying?
The Art of Gore in Project Origin
Gears of LittleBig Fable Music: Considering the First-Party Blitz
OST: Rule of Rose
Overworld: Friday the 13th
Screen Test: Alone in the Dark
Silent Hill: Homecoming is, Thankfully, Both Silent and Hilly