Why aren't there more games with heavy Lovecraft themes?

[CaitSeith]

Because games with zombies sell better and are easier to make.

Now seriously, remember how many zombie games and, zombie mods and games with zombies as iconic enemies have been released in the last 5 years? Between them there are some really popular games (from Minecraft and Half-Life 2 to CoD and DayZ). Lovecraft and eldritch horrors don't have the same kind of popularity (at least not right now).

 

[lionsprey]

as has been mentioned, it's because its REALLY hard to do a lovecraft game properly.
as a call of Cthulhu Keeper(DM) i kinda know this from experience. the thread you have to balance on too keep the game both fun and lovecraftish.
you can't let the players fight anything to big, or at least if they fight it they can't get away unharmed. Cultists are fine ghouls and ghosts you can get away with in small numbers but if your playing a Lovecraft game those aren't the ones you want to fight.
you want to fight deep ones, shoggoths, Mi-go and other famous and fantastical creations.
and there lies the problem these things are superior to humans. more often then not they are faster stronger and even smarter then a human and having the player defeat them outside extraordinary circumstances cheapens them and make them be something they are not.

the only game i played that kinda got the lovecraft vibe down was Dark corners of the earth and that only lasted about half of the game because you can only shoot deep ones so many times before they feel less like cosmic monsters and more like enemy variant B

 

[ensouls]

I've seen way too many games that are "Lovecraftian" but most of them fall into:
- cutesy or making wink wink nudge nudge references without really exploring the lore/atmosphere at all (the eroge games, the endless Lovecraft mods/expansion packs to existing games like Munchkin, comedy games like Breath of Death)
-some kind of rehashing of Call of Cthulu, because it seems to be the one Lovecraft story people want to make games out of (and somehow it's now inextricably linked to the hardboiled detective theme?)
-only vaguely connected. Ex. slapping some tentacles on a zombie and calling it a day.

I agree Bloodborne used it masterfully - it's truly weird, it's truly beyond your control, and even as the main character you really have to dig to find information and get involved.

I'd love to see some of his other stories because Cthulhu's getting a little tired by now. And I know it isn't Lovecraft, but could someone please make a good game concerning the King in Yellow?

 

[sXeth]

The core concept of Lovecraft's horror is you lose. Quickly and painfully if you're lucky, slowly and withering under insanity if you're unlucky.

Its not exactly something that lends itself well to the general concept of games that usually involve a potential to win.

 

[Buzz Killington_v1legacy]

There aren't even many BOOKS with Lovecraftian themes. For such an iconic name in horror literature, he has precious little in the way of imitators or homages. After reading "14" I went looking for Lovecraftian Horror and was endlessly redirected to the works of Lovecraft himself.

Have you tried Charles Stross's Laundry series? The protagonist is an employee of a British government agency that has the job of holding back Lovecraftian horrors. It's much funnier than Lovecraft, but the cosmic horror is still there.

 

[ensouls]

There aren't even many BOOKS with Lovecraftian themes. For such an iconic name in horror literature, he has precious little in the way of imitators or homages. After reading "14" I went looking for Lovecraftian Horror and was endlessly redirected to the works of Lovecraft himself.

Have you tried Charles Stross's Laundry series? The protagonist is an employee of a British government agency that has the job of holding back Lovecraftian horrors. It's much funnier than Lovecraft, but the cosmic horror is still there.

to add to that, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cthulhu_Mythos_writers
Not saying they're all *good* but there's plenty out there

 

[Aeshi]

I'd guess it's because it's rather difficult to make a struggle to just survive against a giant otherworldly nightmare you can't even comprehend or see without going insane, let alone have a chance of defeating probably doesn't make for good gameplay most of the time.

 

[Zen Bard]

The central Lovecraftian "theme" is that humanity is insignificant in the Cosmos.

He flipped mythology on its ear by having great and powerful gods that are genuinely indifferent to humanity. They don't care if we worship them. They're not plotting to destroy us. To them, we're like ants at a picnic...mostly to be ignored unless we annoy them somehow.

As such, most of Lovecraft's stories typically have their protagonist acted upon by some horrible thing (with some exceptions). There's no real conflict/resolution that could serve as structure for a game. The "hero" encounters some "unspeakable" thing, has his whole worldview shattered and goes on to understand his miniscule place in the universe.

It's tough to use that for a game. But some of his tangential themes (eldritch horrors, secret societies and dark dimensions) do tend to pop up in games from time to time.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

To be honest until games can draw out the darkest recesses of our minds and paint those images on the screen near-verbatim, either putting us into an insane concept only our unconscious could produce or outright putting us into the loony bin... I don't think you could ever truly do a proper Lovecraftian setting. Thats my opinion, and I'd never want to play that myself. I don't want to see those things I already see in my dreams and hardly remember represented on screen, pulled from those depths and given real-world shape. No, I've been institutionalized before and I'd daresay I'm happy not playing games that would put me right back there.
The reason I say this is because while I enjoy Lovecraft's work, I'm happiest with it being contained in my imagination and nowhere else and am extremely glad no one has ever been able to reproduce it in a non-literary format. I'm pretty sure there isn't a human out there who'd actually enjoy that subconscious horror lifted from their own mind and put on screen. It wouldn't be a good game, probably wouldn't make it out of development if it was faithful to the material enough to evoke the true horror of Lovecraft. Its just my opinion.

 

[Callate]

Because ninety-odd year old horror doesn't scare the way it used to?

Now, I like Lovecraft, and Lovecraft-style horror can be great. But it requires significant thought and creativity to make it work in the modern day; the notion of alien gods and people turning into fish-reptile-things alone doesn't horrify as it might have in Lovecraft's day, in part because the images and ideas that Lovecraft himself created have been marinated and recycled by other authors, film-makers, and game-makers for all that time.

As for games in particular, we're still often dealing with "madness" as yet another variant of "oh no, the screen is going blurry."

Effective Lovecraftian horror is hard work. The imminent threat of zombies, or serial killers, or even pizza-parlor robots run amok is easier to immediately grasp on a visceral level. If the characters are going "Ohhhh, this is so terrifying, I'm going maaaaad...!" and the player is responding, "Yeah, it's another squid-headed monstrosity, so what?", it quickly goes from horror to farce.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

If you want some recommendations of games with Lovecraftian themes, there are...

Shadow of the Comet

The Chzo Mythos series

Knock-Knock

Reveal the Deep

Wait - Extended

Eternal Darkness

Amnesia the Dark Decent

The White Chamber

Mad Father

suteF

(Caution with these two)

Saya no Uta

and

Demonbane


These are all games with either Lovecraft themes or direct references. I make no claims about the quality of these games aside from Eternal Darkness and the Chzo Mythos series but I figured I should give you my full list regardless.

As to why they're so rare, I wouldn't say it's because no one want to do a Lovecraftian game or story but because it's not an easy kind of style of horror to get people to understand. Even if someone goes into a game or story wanting to make it have his themes they can easily misunderstand or not succeed in replicating the kind of horror Lovecraft created.

A lot of people like to say that the big thing about Lovecraft horror is humanity's insignificance, but I think this is a big misunderstanding, what Lovecraft is about is the strange and unknowable. You encounter some sort of creature that is capable of things that shouldn't be possible but it happens and is real and it terrifies you you have no idea how it works and in turn you don't WANT to know how it works. Read Lovecraft's own book on his style of horror (The name of the book escapes me right now) where he talks about the predecessors of horror and his piers from the time he was alive and you'll hear him repeat that the kind of horror he writes is all about "the strange and weird".

On a side note, if you want a Lovecraftian story not written by Lovecraft then look up The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood. Really good stuff.

 

[Level 7 Dragon]

I'm going to say System Shock 2, primaraly the Many, which is basically the crew of the ship daisy chained in to a Shogoth.

Spoiler

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

I think as big a barrier as the basic subject material is the fact that Lovecraft almost never did action. His characters explored, ruminated, told stories, and reacted to the horrors they encountered, but rarely did more than put together pieces of a terrible picture. Other than puzzle games and point-and-click adventures, there aren't really any gameplay models that would allow you to live in the shoes of a Lovecraft character, which is so important in capturing the real sense of fear and awe that is essential to Lovecraftian storytelling.

This. Lovecraft's style of horror is very seldom graphic, rarely does it evoke the fear of imminent death or dismemberment and it is not fast paced. Instead it is a pondering, insidious style of horror that resides firmly on an intellectual level, the horror is not that the protagonist might be killed by a monster but the realization that the monster exists at all and comes from some place far beyond human understanding. Lovecraft wrote intellectual horror, horror at the prospect of all human achievements being meaningless and that human life, intellect and dreams were insignificant in the greater cosmos.

It could be turned into a proper game most certainly, but that game would either be a puzzle game or point and click or just a "walking simulator". It might be turned into an RPG that emphasizes problem solving, social interactions and slow burn mystery over fighting. But any game that relies on action is unlikely to catch the particular horror of Lovecraft, in favor of more traditional horror that borrows the trappings and vestiges of Lovecraftian Horror (which is what I'd argue that Bloodborne does).

Though it'd be great to see a mystery game based in a large mansion where the protagonist tries to discover its' dark secrets, akin to The Rats in the Walls.

 

[vallorn]

Now I remember it, don't the later games in the Marathon series sort of deal with themes of unbeatable and unknowable foes and the utter helplessness before them?

EDIT

I'm going to say System Shock 2, primaraly the Many, which is basically the crew of the ship daisy chained in to a Shogoth.

Spoiler

Just a word of advice, youtube embeds are a little oddball. The BBcode is;
{youtube=NUMERIC} where the {} brackets are replaced with the usual [] brackets
where you have a youtube address of either;
youtube.com/watch?v=NUMERIC
or
http://youtu.be/NUMERIC

So, for your embed, the code would be {youtube=9kfe_svOPqE} where the {} brackets are replaced with the usual [] brackets.

Ergo

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

I'll echo the sentiment many others have put out: it's bloody hard to do right. Especially considering it originated in written form, and in short stories. Even the mini-novel "At the Mountains of Madness", which to my understanding is the longest work in the Cthulhu Mythos, is largely just exposition and uncovering new secrets, not so much about situations, characters or significant turns in the plot. The brand of horror Lovecraft used doesn't bend into action-driven stories, which cuts out a large amount of game genres already.

However, I don't think video games are a completely unfit medium for it. I loved the Lovecraftian feel of Bloodborne almost to the point of humping my PS4, and especially its cryptic storytelling. The thing about Lovecraft is that the big baddies in the stories aren't meant to be fought, or even seen. It's supposed to be about trying to escape them, and whatever madness they leave in their wake. The new wave of adventure games like The Walking Dead and Life is Strange could really fit Lovecraftian horror.

 

[Halla Burrica]

It's pretty easy to see why Lovecraft isn't widely used in games. Games are often (not always, but often) about empowering the player, giving them agency over what happens, a sense of control in the world, having obstacles they can overcome if they just try hard enough, etc. If players don't get that kinda thing in their game, they feel cheated often and are likely to lose interest or react negatively to it, so developers are often afraid to try and do that. Lovecraft is all about how powerless, worthless, insignificant and fragile humans are in the grand scheme of things, which games often don't go for for reasons listed above.
A lot of games do utilise the aesthetic of Lovecraftian horror, but just looking like Lovecraft is not really being Lovecraft.

 

[Saetha]

I would suggest it's because Lovecraftian horror (as great as it can be) is relatively obscure, and relatively niche. Not to us, perhaps, but to your average cinema-goer, and even gamer.

Now, with the recent critical acclaim for both Bloodborne and Undertale (though I have little experience of the latter), I wouldn't be surprised if developers and publishers took notice.

I'm not really sure I'd call Undertale Lovecraftian in any way. I suppose the final boss and some of the monsters have pretty eldritch designs, but overall it's such an innocent, light-hearted game. Even when you touch upon the horror aspects, it fits slasher horror more than any Lovecraftian theme. It certainly never deals with the themes of madness or human insignificance. Really, with it's talk of kings and prophecies, it actually fits traditional fantasy better, although it fits neither very well.

To be honest, I'm actually baffled as to how you even got the impression that it's Lovecraftian. I know the game's about "monsters," but it goes out of it's way to show how every monster's a decent person, and that they're dramatically weaker than humans - to the point where a war that killed thousands of monsters didn't cost even a single human life.

 

[MonsterCrit]

Bloodborne was second place on my game of the year list, right under Undertale. I loved the world, the combat, the mechanics, even the initial lore caught my eye. I would have been heartily satisfied with the whole game (although it wouldn't be as high-ranked for me) if it was just a game about some shmuck fighting werewolves.
Except it's not. It's a breakneck descent into the realms of the eldritch abomination, even going so far as to taking the Lovecraft idea of dreams and nightmares being physical planes and making them the late-game areas. Between the horrible, ancient bosses with designs so intricately hard to understand (if you asked me to describe Ebrietas you'd get nowhere with me), I love the Lovecraftian elements in Bloodborne more than anything else.
So I'm pretty curious why there aren't too many serious games that delve into it -- you have They Bleed Pixels in a slight scale, Eldritch, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, but what other games are there with heavy, serious Lovecraft themes?

The same reason there aren't more lovecraft inspired films. His themes are very hard to nail down. But You could also count DOn't STarve in the list as well.

 

[Cartographer]

Because no artist has successfully been able to draw a road of tessellating octagons, under a pure void sky, with multiple additional dimensions, that would be necessary for even the simplest of true "mythos" games.

The best we've got are pale imitations (though sunless sea is awesome).

 

[Saetha]

But You could also count DOn't STarve in the list as well.

That's true. If Maxwell's comments are anything to go by, not only are the true villains of Don't Starve undefeatable, they never even show up, or can be properly challenged/set back in any real way. Even if you die immediately or do everything the game has to offer, you still play into their hands, since they only seem interested in throwing humans into awful situations to see what happens.

Not to mention the whole game's about how you're a measly human struggling to keep sane and survive the twisted horrors of this bizarre world. The creepy-cute aesthetic just softens the blow a bit.