Lovecraftian Game Mechanics

[Catnip1024]

I'm not really a fan of how any current games have carried out Lovecraftian themes. The very existence of a sanity meter takes away all of the uncertainty and unknowing that is a major part of Lovecraft.

Likewise, anything that you can physically fight and defeat is sufficiently comprehensible to not really be a Lovecraftian horror.

Fuzzy screens - not really Lovecraftian - Lovecraftian should be the horror of seeing clearly what is there, but not being able to understand it nor do anything about it.

Thematically, I did like the idea of Sunless Sea, but the combat / lack of a real penalty for dying let it down. Also, the sanity meter was largely irrelevant, because it was lack of food or fuel that usually killed you.

In my mind, for a Lovecraftian theme you want some concept of a greater story / set of objectives taking place beyond your realm of observation. Like the random things in the Elder Scrolls games that hint at something else happening, but never give you enough to figure out what it is (it's a while since I've played them, so I don't have many example to hand).

 

[CaitSeith]

I think part of what makes Lovecraft terrifying is its mundanity. My ideal Lovecraftian game would probably be one where you can get from start to some version of the end without realizing something is amiss.

As an example of something that freaked me out recently: No Man's Sky's Abandoned Outposts.

See, in NMS, there's these little tentelcle plants that will reach out and attack. On their own they're just some random plant type made to be mildly annoying. But if you read into the stories of the Abandoned Outposts a bit, tales of physical corruption, mental instability, and glimpses of things, and you realize Abandoned Outposts are chock full of mysterious oozes and bountiful numbers of those plants...and those plants will also just be around, unchanging except for color, on nearly every planet that can support life...

Freaked me out quite a bit, I'm not ashamed to say. In ways that "horror games", with their grotesque monsters, planned jump scares, and gore just don't.

Eh I feel like that's kinda' a waste of the Lovecraftian premise. Like when people think Imperial Guardsmen are the most interesting part of 40k, a universe packed with robots the size of mountains, legions of genetically engineered werewolf space vikings, gothic space stations, etc...

Lovecraft is at its best when you're dealing face-to-face with otherworldly horrors from beyond the veil. A bunch of messed up people doing messed up things?! Every IP and their grandma has that!
Lovecraft has sentient stars coming to end all life on Earth, and giant monsters sleeping beneath the ocean, and cults of a thousand breeds that need 1930s era stopping!

The issue is that in Lovecraft stories, the giant monsters rarely get stopped. Even most of the lesser monsters win over the good guys or get defeats more inconsequential than the ones in Saturday morning cartoons.