Lovecraft's Untold Stories

Started playing the game at version 1.11 The Bad : # 1 : It uses check point saves. No manual saves allowed. # 2 : You have no control over which area you travel to. # 3 : If you leave an area early, you can't go back to it. # 4 : If you leave an area early, you will not collect the necessary info on the Old Ones, that is required to survive the last battle. # 5 : If you are forced to load from a check point save, all items loose the abilities they grant PERMANENTLY. # 6 : Combat ... requires two hands on the keyboard and one on the mouse, SIMULTANEOUSLY. # 7 : EGA graphics make detecting the various traps / hazards and available paths, very hard.

You know, I understand that not every game will satisfy everyone but it feels an awful lot like someone organized a vendetta against this game, regardless of how good it is. That said, I personally LOVE this game. The gameplay can be summarized as Roguelike with procedurally generated levels made up of discrete rooms connected by hallways. All of the action happens in rooms, and there is an auto-mapping feature that keeps you informed of how the rooms connect to each other as you explore. The game does a lot of things right for the horror genre -- you don't get a 'sanity gauge' just some graphical hints and cues from your character as to how they are coping; Much of the damage done by enemies is damage over time so fights have consequence even after you've won; enemies will group up and swarm you if you don't deal with them quickly, and many are capable of charging right to you if you aren't actively taking cover. I play on Easy mode since I'm not a fan of twitchy gameplay and I'm in it for the story, and I'm finding it to be a fair challenge. The theme is what really sets this game apart. Clearly, the designers have read the source material well. The enemies that come from elements of Lovecraft's work are instantly recognizable, and the ones that aren't still fit the theme well. The clues sprinkled throughout the game will make references to characters and features from stories in a sensible way and the game rewards players for having a balanced sense of caution versus managed risk when interacting with 'clickables' and the choices presented. There are, of course, concessions to gameplay but at least there is an attempt to provide appropriate diagesis. The hub is strongly implied to be Yithian, which has implications for those who have read the stories, and the appearances of the gear shops are just priceless. This is a well-designed game that was clearly someone's love letter to classic horror literature, and it's Roguelike done right!

First of all: I like the setting, I really like, what the game did in regards to atmosphere, and I love the art style. But: The game is too frustrating. You often die without knowing what killed you. You have a ton of items, but don't know, what half of them do. You also have no way of finding out, since the game doesn't tell you anything. When you inevitably die, you lose about an hour of progress each time, since there is no free saving. The developer says, that this game is a rogue-like, but for that it has too many story elements, too many repeating content, and you will eventually get sick of seeing it for the fifth time, after dying once again because of sheer bad luck. I want to like this game, but it does not let me.

This game is horribly balanced and designed. Half the time the enemies are completely immune to status effects such as frozen or burning, making your items and abilities useless. Meanwhile, every single hit from them gives a status debuff that slowly kills or stunlocks you unless you have the right consumable or equipted charm to immune it. So it comes down to raw luck (getting and choosing to equip the right items). Even when you do things right, the gameplay is extremely tedious. Go into a room, get frozen instantly and die. Restart the entire level, this time equiping ice immunity gear. Replay the same level, go into the room, roflstomp the enemy, spam healing and cure items, run around looting everything to get more items, rinse and repeat. It would be one thing if there was a good story, but the game has absolutely no driving plot whatsoever. You just pick a hero, get a cute little backstory, and that's it. Aside from inspecting various items that usually make you go insane (even though you can mericlessly slaughter rooms packed with Shoggoths for hours on end and not go insane), there is no dialouge. You literally teleport from mission to mission with no explanation or plot to connect them. It's dull, mind numbing, and tedious. This is a by-the-books looter shooter/bullet hell game with annoying rouge-lite elements that's simply "skinned Lovecraft". Don't get me wrong, I'm a big Lovecraft fan, and the mythos is accurately represented here, so I don't have a problem with taking the lore and using it in a vasty different way. It's just that the game has to be good. I wasn't expecting some detective masterpiece, I knew this was a looter-shooter/bullet hell game going into it. It's just that the game has to at least be good by those standards.