There's not much Lovecraftian horror in Clockwork Empires at the moment. Besides strange traits/memories, there's only fishpeople. But of course, more is to come shortly. I've experienced one very effective Lovecraftian horror moment in Clockwork Empires thus far. It was probably not even intended to happen. Felt more like a bug/coincidence. It happened on one of my best runs. Everything was going well. Suddenly this creepy music started playing. It lasted for a few seconds then ended. As far as I knew, nothing had happened. No gunshots had been fired for a while. No people had died throughout the game. No fishpeople either. There had been no signs of cult activity. I checked memories of all the colonists. Not a sign of anything. The run had been successful - no hunger or madness. Whatever actually happened, didn't matter. Might have just been a glitch. What made this experience horrifying was my lack of knowledge of the things happening around me. Thus far I thought I had been in control. I've had no such experiences since then. Thinking about it later, I remembered an extra credit video that talked about Cthulhu in games. So I would like to know what all of you think about Lovecraftian horror and the Cthulhu mythos in games, and not just in Clockwork Empires. Here are some sites to get your juices flowing: Wikipedia article about Lovecraftian horror TvTropes article about the Cosmic Horror Story TvTropes index of Lovecraftian Tropes GG blogpost: "Storytelling as Game Design" GG blogpost: "States of Things: Abstract Resources & The Meta Game" Feel free to add your own links below. PS! Keep in mind that this is not a suggestion thread! Here's an interesting question for a start: How to give players the feeling of "going insane" and "loosing control" without making the game feel like a waste of time?
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. The sanity effects in that game mess with the player as well as the character, but they're not exactly a natural fit for CE.
Wow, I've never heard of this game. But just watching a video of all the sanity effects made me feel uncomfortable. SuperHobbit89 - "Eternal Darkness - All Sanity Effects" Spoiler: A list of sanity effects nicked from the video's description 1. The game will appear to encounter a "Blue Screen of Death" error. The error message itself is actually quite clever, I recommend you pause the video and read it. 2. Your TV will appear to shut off. 3. Your TV will appear to change video modes while it sounds like your character is getting attacked. 4. The game will pretend to reset, showing the first few seconds of the Edgar Allen Poe intro sequence. 5. The game's audio will mute. 6. If your controller is left idle long enough, a still image "screensaver" of Pious takes up the screen until you press a button. 7. After saving your progress, the game will pretend to delete all of your saved files. 8. The game's audio will turn its volume down incrementally. 9. Your inventory will appear to go empty. 10. After finishing a chapter, the game pretends to abruptly end, saying that the story will continue in an eventual sequel titled "Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Redemption". 11. Blood will leak from the walls and ceilings. 12. Posters and paintings will change appearance. 13. The heads of statues will follow your character's movements. 14. Bugs and flies will appear to crawl across your screen. 15. Previously unlocked doors will suddenly lock themselves but will give way after a few attempts. 16. Books will fly across the mansion's library. 17. Fake zombies will appear when you enter a room. Their attacks do no damage and they disappear after one hit. 18. Your character will turn and shoot at the TV screen. Note that this does cost you one bullet from your currently equipped gun. 19. Your character's footsteps will echo after you have stopped moving. 20. Someone can be heard banging on a nearby door. 21. Loud, heavy footsteps can be heard nearby. Note that these footsteps are independent of your character's movement. 22. Sounds of a Horror approaching can be heard nearby. 23. Descriptions of NPC's become violent or grotesque. 24. The game pretends that your controller has come unplugged upon entering a room full of zombies. 25. You enter a room to find the floor covered in fake ammo. Checking your inventory reveals that the ammo is not counted when you pick it up. 26. You enter a room full of tiny monsters. The monsters can be killed instantly by shooting them or stepping on them. 27. Your character sinks through the floor like quicksand. 28. Your character gets "scared to death" upon entering a room full of zombies. 29. Your character grows larger as he/she moves. 30. Your character shrinks smaller as he/she moves. 31. Your character's body parts break off as he/she moves. Note the funny message that displays if you attempt to equip a different weapon after both arms have fallen off. 32. You enter a room to find that your character is walking on the ceiling. 33. You enter a room to find that your character is now a zombie. As a red or green zombie you will fall over and die after some time passes, but a blue zombie explodes. 34. Your character's head falls off, upon which you can pick it up, causing the game to recite the famous passage from Shakespeare's "Hamlet". 35. Casting a healing spell causes your character to explode in a fake instant-death. 36. Upon entering a new room you get ambushed by several zombies with the door locked behind you. 37. Max accidentally shoots himself while reloading his two flintlock pistols. 38. Alex receives a phone call from her grandfather beyond the grave. 39. Your character will experience flashbacks (or flashforwards) of their current environment viewed in the context of a different time period. 40. Alex finds a dead servant hanging from a noose by the piano in the mansion. 41. Max sees himself in the cell of an asylum upon descending the well in the basement. 42. Alex sees herself in a pool of her own blood in one of the mansion's bathtubs. But yeah, breaking the 4th wall might not really be fitting to CE. Would be awesome in more horror games though. I wonder if existential horror could also be done like this.
There is a fine balance between making a player accept giving up some measure of control vs serious cases of 'rage quitting' and no standard recipe for that either. What makes Lovecraft such a successful addition is when you mix it with what should have been perfectly normal. Like a bunch of colonists serving Queen and Country in a far off land. It creates a horror ambush even when you as a player /know/ it is there. The Old Ones touch on an ancient nerve that we as (mostly) rational adults spend our life denying. We tell our kids we are not afraid of the dark. And even when we are not, there will always be that niggle in the back of our minds that whispers: "maybe you should be"... Horror can work well either as a subtle suggestion or as a visible element, but too much of one side makes a player apathetic. You need to mix in the 'normal' - this would go for tabletop RPGs, computer games or even a horror story - and keep the player wondering what is going on/going to happen next.
So I just had a very long game. I don't want to spoil anything, but all hope is lost. I'm scared to touch it. Seems like inconsistency and confusion are two strong pillars under existential horror. But that's not what made me quit.
