How do we get them to make a deluge of games based on other authors? What about Kafkaesque or Orwellian? What about Dickensian? Tolystoyan, Shakespearean, Miltonic? Sophoclean and Homeric?
Why is it always Lovecraft.
How do we get them to make a deluge of games based on other authors? What about Kafkaesque or Orwellian...
That's because only Lovecraft kept saying the gamer word.
Why is it always Lovecraft.
Because he's the only good one.
What a Kafkaesque post.
easy + it's good + no royalties. Just splash some tentacles and fish niggers and call it a day and that's basically the only thing these guys will care about. Also you can't do horror as easily for the other ones
No meat-touching!
If I had to pick an author to plagiarize and beat to death, it would probably be Philip K. Dick. There's lots of material there. Minority Report? Blade Runner? The one with that guy and the time travel(Paycheck, I think). The man in the high castle? Flow my tears, the policeman said?
Philip K. Dick should be the Dick in Dickensian instead of Charles Dickens. He deserves it more. In fact I'm probably going to read another one of his books right now since I'm sure I haven't gone through them all yet.
All Charles Dickens is known for is the orphan/tiny tim thing, which, pretty much everyone has done. They're all orphans in english literature!
I've read like 10 short stories and novels by Lovecraft in the last 3 months and listened to about 3 more as audiobooks. There's like 5% of the horror element in them and the rest is (admittedly pretty pleasant to read) descriptions of environment and characters. Among those 5% there's MINIMAL amount of the whole "OH NO IT'S A SQUID/FISHPERSON/NON-WHITE, SAVE ME NIGGERMAN!"
For example, The Doom That Came to Sarnath leans a lot into worldbuilding and is super descriptive, and the horror element is almost negligible—and I'm being generous here because I understand that you can't really spook an intelligent reader with a written passage effectively, I'm talking even about the atmosphere: it's rather chill and the language itself is flowery but the descriptions are matter-of-factly, they don't even build up that supposedly horrible moment (when the aforementioned Doom came to the aforementioned city). It's a pleasant thing to read however, I think it would work even better as an audiobook.
I'd say something like Pickman's Model is a true horror story in the modern sense, it's not gonna spook a modern reader probably, but the horror is built up until the revelation happens at the very last lines of it but it doesn't involve any incomprehensible eldritch gods or whatnot.
Tl;DR: people who draw all those tentacled creatures and think it's all about insanity and squids didn't even read Lovecraft. And YOU, anon, should definitely at least listen to an audiobook of your choice. Wayne June (RIP) has a few of them right on youtube, they're short and won't take a lot of your time.
I do remember reading the one about this inhuman tiara, and it obviously bothered me enough that one time I had a dream that I was at the Lovecraft Museum and I thought: perfect, now is my chance to take a look at the tiara than cannot be comprehended by mortal minds firsthand.
I got to the placard for the tiara exhibit, but it was clearly mislabelled, it looked like something else entirely. A wagon wheel, or something. The worst part is the other exhibits were all way more interesting but I sped by them in my hurry to get to the one I wanted to examine. Then I ran out of time before I woke up.
Dream is all fuzzy now anyway, as dreams tend to be.
Anyway, that one movie was pretty good but probably only because that actress was hot. I might have read the dunwich horror once because it appeared in Fallout?
I'd say Dunwich Horror is actually one of the most "traditional" ones, the novel that would get recommended by some "top 10 lovecraft novels you have to read without a word "nigger" in them" list. It's also the closest to the public perception of what Lovecraftean horror is: it has actual fantastical monster, a character that becomes recurring in the expanded universe possessing occult knowledge (Armitage), it implies there's a larger cosmology behind the story (like Yog-Sothot being the real father of the "horror"), and has humans shooting guns at the tentacly thing.
Kafka
IQ requirement too high
Orwell
Too much like modern day living
Homer
Too associated with greek myth, would just become a Classical Mythology adaption generally rather than Homer specicially.
Dickenson, Tolstoy, Milton, Ect
Literally who?
Lovecraft is good enough and popular enough to use, has particular elements unique to him and his imitators, while not too smart that it becomes a filter. If not even the screams of racism can stop his popularity nothing will.
And it was more accurately Classism he was guilty of, as High Class blacks were treated bettet than low class whites by a long ways.
you can't really spook an intelligent reader with a written passage effectively
No, it definitely happens, but you do have to get into the spirit of things. I'm struggling to recall the last time it happened. Probably because it wasn't a book and it was in all likelihood some short story on an internet website, or something else that is hard to trace.
I'm actually really annoyed I can't think of an example, now. Maybe it was Lock Every Door by Riley Sager?
Maybe they should have made better books if they wanted to become beloved household names. Sucks to suck.
Rev 2 is Kafka-esq and it sucks
Miltonic
why did that make me laugh
Would be great if you remembered. The last time something on the Internet actually affected me like that was probably very early SCP entries? The ones where the [REDACTED] text was tastefully utilized and it wasn't a character circlejerk yet.
hmm yes I agree, we need more games with Kafka in them
I can certainly think of examples of days gone by because I've certainly been freaked out by some books, but things like the calls are coming from inside the house or "aren't you glad you didn't turn the lights on" may have worked once but don't hold terror any longer.
I wanted a contemporary example of me being scared even though I am all jaded and stuff now. And it has to be word form. I think this is the best I can come up with, you guys let me know if the following passage sends a chill up your spine:
Have you ever walked into a room and found a vampire?
No, not the sexy kind, but a foul creature with bony limbs and ashen skin? The kind that snarls as you enter, like a beast about to pounce? The kind that roots you to the spot with its sunken, hypnotic eyes, rendering you unable to flee as you watch the hideous thing uncoil from the shadows? Has your heart started racing though your legs refuse to? Have you felt time slow as the creature crosses the room in the darkness of a blink?
Have you shuddered with fear when it places one clawed hand atop your head and another under your chin so it can tilt you, exposing your neck? Have you squirmed as its rough, dry tongue slides down your cheek, over your jaw, to your throat, in a slithering search that's seeking your artery? Have you felt its hot breath release in a hiss against your skin when it probes your pulse—the flow that leads to your brain? Has its tongue rested there, throbbing slightly as if savoring the moment? Have you then experienced a sinking, sucking blackness as you discover that not all vampires feed on blood—some feed on memories?
Well, have you?
Maybe not. But let me rephrase the question:
Have you ever walked into a room and suddenly forgotten why you came in?
You should stick to modding for high-shelf super niche stuff, anon, it will do you good.
His horror tends to come mostly in scope and revelation, like yeah the chase at the end of At the Mountains of Madness is scary sure, but the real scary parts come well before that as they're going through the beautiful, but decayed ruins. Lots of his work carries these themes of either once great things falling to disrepair, cursed blood, or the cosmic insignificance of humanity when confronted by other beings like the elder things. I think the Phyrexian Walker from old mtg captures this a lot better than the more common AIIEEEE IS THAT A TENTACLE SAVE ME NIGGERMAN feel a lot of people aping him today go for, which makes me sad. The point isn't necessarily that the monster itself is scary, it's what that monster existing represents thats supposed to be scary. I'd say that they frequently boil down to a fear of the unknown in a fun way that's not really emulated properly by others, which is a damn shame.
t. has a well loved big ass tome of his collected works
Terror definitely lies heavily in misdirection, I think.
Suffer the Night had an excellent example I think, it put you in the shoes of the babysitter, from the story we all know. The lone female, guarding some children, when a stranger knocks on the door. There's a storm, and his car is broken down, just down the road, far enough that you can't see if he's telling the truth when looking out your porch window. He wants to come in and use the telephone.
The storm has disabled the phone lines. You can't let him know that, because he could be a prowler who attacks you as soon as you give him access to the house and let him realize you have no way to call for help. But luckily for you, you recognize the Urban Legend the game developers have placed you in. You know how the story goes. You tell the traveller to go away and subsequently weird things will start happening around the house. That's how it's supposed to go, anyway.
In Suffer the Night, as soon as you tell the man at the doorstep he can't use your phone, he drops the mask and says: "Oh, not a problem dear, I suppose I'll just have to find my own way into your house."
It's a real WTF moment. The bad guy isn't supposed to just say he plans to come in and kill you. This isn't how the script goes. The developers successfully got you into the mindset of the character, then fucked with your head.
old phyrexia
Based. And if you're an MtG nerd I bet you've seen firsthand as something you love is irreversibly ruined and corrupted.
Got a slight tingle out of me with this one.
Lovecraft is probably the worst author out of the group of author's who had a whole style named after them.
Indeed, it's absolutely tragic. Props to WotC for really going the extra mile to serve as the best example of executing lovecraftian themes, I suppose.
It’s more that he wasn’t a very good writer but had a lot of good, but vague ideas that could translate well to video games and could benefit from more detail.
anon loves dick and won't talking about it
And yet he won. Guess those other guys weren't such hot shit after all.
>Dickenson, Tolstoy, Milton, Ect
Literally who?
You’re brown.
Chorus of Carcosa did come out recently, but to be fair, we all know they just played Signalis and decided that they would also rip off the King in Yellow.
It's actually not a bad game, but I think there was a dissonance between me and the protagonist because he struck me as a whiny little bitchy little coward.
There was a segment where a spooky lady comes to your door and demands to be let inside and you are on the phone with the 911 operator who is also a ghost or something and she is telling you to "just let her inside bro" and I was also screaming at the screen to just open the door because the ghost lady looked pretty weak I bet I could take her.
So yeah, me, the ghost, and the imposter 911 dispatcher were all in agreement that we should open the door, but the main character just fainted like some big old wimp and I turned the game off.
Most of lovecraft’s popularity is posthumous, caused by more successful writers listing him as an influence. His contemporary, Edgar Rice Burroughs, lived in his success, and immediately spawned dozens of copycats who’d never even think to list him as an influence.
bro just wander around aimlessly and then die at the end
video games are kafkaesque enough by their very nature, they don't actually need to adapt it
fuck there actually is one about the stupid cockroach story jesus
I've taken a survey of the most popular books for video games and they are as follows:
Lovecraft
Sherlock Holmes
Alice in Wonderland
Nancy Drew
Dracula
Greek Stuff
I kind of thought there would be more Peter Pan, given how much Alice in Wonderland stuff I found. They're both books from roughly the same time period.
Bruh one could easily make the argument that anything about a kid in green jerkin running around bopping shit with a sword was at least influenced by Peter Pan. Even moreso if the kid is forever young, and if he can fly in any capacity, fuck off.
okay, but there's not a lot of games with flying children protagonists in green.
little directly copies it so it wasn’t influential
If the nips ever tried to say Zelda wasn’t heavily influenced by barrie they’d just be called liars. Some things are so influential that trying to deny it would just be either dishonest or ignorant.
Okay but that only counts as one.
now name another.
There’s only one Zelda game?
You only get to count the whole series as one, since it's the same character each time.
This. Dick is the king.
We have Tolkien for fantasy, Lovecraft for Horror, the closest for sci-fi is the Dick.
for me Bradbury and Lem are pretty close
Warhammer: Rogue Trader
Lovecraftian
So we’re ignoring all the variations of that “same character every time” that while distinct from each other are all clearly still Peter Pan?
Which also means you’re ignoring every game that was ripping off Zelda?
You’re trapping yourself in the position that Peter Pan wasn’t iconic.
What about Kafkaesque or Orwellian
That's the whole of AAA, unintentionally of course.
ok so any good game I should look into available on this sale?
I already beat like 4 games last week and I feel like I got nothing to play now. Not too much into horror but maybe there's an action horror game in there that is good.
Link is one character. He only ripped off Peter Pan, one time.
Feel free to name more video game characters you believe are ripping off Peter Pan.
why do so many horror games include lovecraft elements, a genre known for producing endless derivative slop?
As many lovecraft games as there are, nothing comes close to Tolkiens near complete domination of fantasy rpg's. 99% of that genre is inspired by his work.
I understand that you can't really spook an intelligent reader with a written passage effectively,
Stephen King might be babbycore but he is great at this. The new york tunnel scene from the stand is one of my favourite horror moments of all time.
Actually maybe it's better that Orwell's name isn't be slapped on every shitty first person shooter.
This one was a twofer because it misinterpreted H Rider Haggard and Lovecraft at the same time.
Link has had about a dozen different designs that all rip off Peter Pan. It’s also a different link in most games.
so lovecraftian. The weird stairs was the a trademark of MC Lovecraft.
not on sale, but Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners of the Earth is $5 and still the best lovecraft inspired videogame. A bit janky, but no other lovecraft game really gets the horror elements right like Dark Corners does.
lmfao
This picture is so reddit I double checked the url when I couldn't find the updoot button.
Kafkaesque
bureaucracy is a favourite subject of adventure games
Don’t forget one of the most successful indie games recently was checking passports for a dystopian government
i want more media based around pic related
For me, it's Lynchian.
Because Lovecraftian is far more specific/applicable to games.
It's existential horror with alien monsters and elements that are supposed to bend perception.
Kafka isn't known for monsters and generally didn't have tangible antagonists. What would the game even be? A ghost that tries to communicate their killer before they dissappate but nobody ever understands them?
Orwellian is just dystopian with authoritarian overlords. Those kinds of games exist, but it's such a broad label that people don't waste time calling them "orwellian"
A ghost that tries to communicate their killer before they dissappate but nobody ever understands them?
I know this one! It's Murdered: Soul Suspect.
ahaha
Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners
looks good enough. thanks
oh if you're only looking for games that are good enough, then Chronicles of Innsmouth would probably work.
There's also Dreams in Witch House, but that has roguelike and survival elements. If you are one of the people who threw an absolute tantrum over Blue Prince for daring to mix puzzles with RNG then enh...
I've come up with a new game genre boyses, it's going to be called "Open World Lovecraftable".
You won't be restricted to having Lovecraftianism in one location imposed to you by the game devs. you can lovecraft everywhere.
I think there's like 3 games now about a dead detective trying to solve his murder
o Dreams in Witch House, bu
I really liked it but I didn't find the replaying aspect very fun. One of few games I'll recommend seasoned gamers like on Anon Babble to start on easy just to experience it. There are multiple endings anyway so if someone falls in love with the gameplay they still have a reason to try the other difficulties.
Oh yeah? Name three games where this happened then.
I don't generally replay games at all, ever. I think people who try to get all endings sort of miss the point, to be honest.
Popular author with overarching story setting that has been contributed to by other authors
It's a mystery
Curious how other authors mention Lovecraft more than any of those other "better" authors.
What about Stephen King and Rose Red
Where's the Rose Red like video game?
Stephen King is a major league loser. He's been writing since an eon ago and has dozens of film adaptations but he can't manage a single video game adaptation? When even Lovecraft can pull it off even though he died before video games were invented? Imagine losing a contest to that guy?
Stephen King just latches himself onto better authors. He had the gall to write the foreword to a Richard Matheson novel. King isn't fit to lick the boots of Richard Matheson.
I don't like King because he's a liberal cuckold but that's some fresh hatred
don't all of his IP's need his approval before being adapted? Also any video game adaptation would need to be a bit loose which I can't imagine he would like
Murdered: Soul Suspect
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Wraith: The Oblivion - Afterlife
I think there's one more but it may have come to me in a dream and not actually be real
He was a good writer. Somewhere after(around) the Dark Tower ending he started to put his retarded politics everywhere into his books.
11/22/63 is a good cutoff point imo, it was full of political bullshit and it didn't got better after that, though I barely read him at that point.
He's still pissy because Kubrick took his story and made it better.
Anyway, there was that guy earlier in the thread who referred to contemporaries of Lovecraft all being forgotten, but Lovecraft was remembered as an inspiration.
King is like that. He will be forgotten when the age has passed. No one is going to claim "Stephen King" as their inspiration. Just some guy who was popular once upon a time, but had no lasting value.
Though to be fair I don't really see Lovecrafty's lasting value but whatever it's probably besides the point. The fact of the matter is Lovecraft stands the test of time, whether I see the reason why or not.
Not bad. I would have added BlackWell Legacy series, Blank Space, GreyHat, and Ace Attorney. Though that is being pretty liberal with "detective" since I can define anyone trying to solve a mystery as a detective.
Where's the Rose Red like video game?
Uh... Resident Evil 1?
Has anyone played Arkham Horror? How is it?
no he means Rule of Rose.
Both of those are not even close to Rose Red. Did you even read?
You're talking about Snow White's lesser known sister, right? Rose Red?
he means ruby rose who was a villain in one of the batman tv shows
I guess specifically I'm talking about the theme of a ghost detective solving his death but those are some I didn't know about, thanks anon I'll check them out.
He's definitely a good writer at times yeah, I just don't like how he's been everywhere at times and usually the stories are rather subversively leftist
I suppose it's that Lovecraft spawned his own genre of imitators, the man had clear skill but it was more so the creativity and the overall detail present. It's like how DnD writers make their fake mythology but it's actually sensical and not a hand-wavy after thought to make the setting more of a Not-Earth
The real Lovecraftian horror is reading Celephais followed by Dream-Quest and seeing Kuranes's story turn from one of embracing dreams instead of burying them away as an adult to one of idolizing England as the best thing ever for some reason.
Kafka isn't known for monsters and generally didn't have tangible antagonists. What would the game even be?
"Kafkaesque" is most associated with The Trial, and obtuse and hostile bureaucracies have oft been a theme of games
Orwellian is just dystopian with authoritarian overlords. Those kinds of games exist, but it's such a broad label that people don't waste time calling them "orwellian"
"Orwellian" is most associated with government surveillance, though it's actually a fairly minor part of the book
I'll take one Kafkaesque, lovecraftian, Orwellian game please. no shakespeareanism pls
Because saying you were influenced by more seminal authors is like saying you were influenced by gravity.
Could make a pretty decent game off of Romeo and Juliet or Midsummers. There's enough crazy shit going on though I guess the problem is they're too well known at this point
What if it had malapropisms. Is that okay?
Saying you were influenced by a better authors just causes you to be compared to them.
tfw there is no Thurberian games. no one seems to have even heard of that guy, but I find him hilarious. Kafka, if he was sort of funnier.
ah I screwed up the screencapture but you can read the excerpt here:
I can't believe it hasn't been mentioned yet
At the Mountains of Madness based vidya where?
I want one Lovecraftian Ashtonesque Howardic game
Hold the Derlethisms, please
ummm
Arctic eggs.
This game deserves to be more popular, it's pretty interesting.
Maybe we should just have anons drop these sorts of interesting psuedo-horror games they recommend
what the fuck does "covecraftian" mean?
Well, there was the Tartarus Key, which never really got traction but was excellent. It was Lovecraftian, in a certain sense. Probably not the sense anyone who read Lovecraft would use, but you know how it is. I don't know what other games there are. The Enigma Machine? Three Minutes to Eight?
Lovecraftian but taking place in or near a cove. Duh
I like swansong more than the stand even though it takes inspiration and copies a lot from the stand
The glass staircase, maybe?
I'll check them out, thanks anons
It's Zelaznian games for me, anons.
lovecraft fucking sucks, it's literally some dude going
whoa this is weird
wow that was really weird
anyways so that was weird and i died or i become a kraken or something. the end
Based Matheson appreciator.
A Night in the Lonesome October survival crafting game when?
store.steampowered.com
This one's oddly fascinating and addictive till the last few minutes, when it makes that awful indie horror cardinal sin of changing up the genres. Fuck that shit.
Hell, how about a Damnation Alley survival/driving game?
Okay but the one with living vehicles is objectively funny as fuck and the film version of The Mist is fun (and better than the story, frankly)
Okay but the one with living vehicles is objectively funny as fuck
store.steampowered.com
Wellllll...
Actual Lovecraftian game coming through.
Genuine spoilers after this, it's 15 minutes & free, go play it.
read some books about ancient evil
find some spooky information
die unsatisfied
Fun fact: All the street names in the original Silent Hill were horror novelists.
Jack Finney did the original invasion of the body snatchers.
Bachman was Stephen King's alias.
Robert Bloch wrote the original Psycho(movie was probably better than the book)
I actually don't recognize Ellroy off the top of my head.
Midwich refers to the Midwich Cuckoos, decent book. Christopher Reeve movie was the best adaptation, I think? Though the black and white one might have been good too.
Ray Bradbury should be obvious.
Dan Simmons, Dean Koontz, Michael Crichton, Carl Sagan and Wilson might be too generic for me to place.
Nuh uh. Lovecraft=Tentacle
That's a nice touch and they even work pretty decently as street names.
this game censors it's own title, has a nonsensical description and the screenshots are just closeups of people's eyes.
VERY lovecraftianesque
Actually forgot Ira Levin, who did Rosemary's Baby. That movie holds up really well and I'd recommend watching it if you haven't.
this shit is complete trash not even worth pirating
Dean Koontz
I can't read his books because seeing his name just makes me think of the Family Guy skit.
Sagan
Did he write fiction? I only know him as one of the le epic atheism guys the annoying cringe Reddit people wouldn't shut up about from back in the early 2010s before that whole thing torpedoed itself.
Half the fucking "Lovecraftian" games and media isn't even based on his works, it's using the August Derleth works where he just stole Lovecraft's settings after his death and slapped the lowest quality mythos bullshit on it
Carl Sagan was better known for non-fiction, but he did write Contact, which, ironically, was kind of Lovecraftian.
Are there any video games that capture the true eerieness of this bodycam video? If you'll watch it you'll see what I mean.
Just remembered this flashgame, just called necronomicon. Was pretty fun.
what game is that for
real-life horror movie
just some nigger that can't resist chimping out
The fact that the charges were dropped the first time just shows how awful the courts are in giving blacks preferential treatment
oh I saw a game where tentacles grab a girl
Where is look outside, the lovecraftian goty
Honestly I made it up.
I've never played that game, but I'm not talking about solving your own murder, I mean you know who did it and are trying to get other people to know. That's how you'd get the isolation, desperation and futility that I think defines Kafkaesque
Wow, just like in the books
Probably too new to be on sale, but it should be on the list, but then again there are not enough tentacles in the game.
I know who murdered me but no one will listen.
okay I'll be back after I find this game
what's the franz kafka rock opera of video games