Electronic Cthulhu

I’ve been wondering for a while why there haven’t been more computer games based on the work of H.P. Lovecraft.   People have pointed out to me that actually there have been quite a few, but I think what I really wanted is more games that capture the feeling that I get from reading Lovecraft.  Fear.  Point and Click adventures are all well and good, but they don’t have the ability to instil fear.

For me the greatest Lovecraft inspired games, well game actually, is Alone in the Dark.  The original.  It holds you with obscure camera angles and excellent sound effects.  Graphically it doesn’t hold up to today’s standards and the combination of drawn backdrops and low polygon counts on the active items isn’t perfect.  But it is an excellently executed game, requiring puzzle solving under pressure, and as in the Call of Cthulhu RP guns won’t always help you, which I love in a game like this.

The reason I’ve suddenly been reminded of this is that I’ve just found a website selling Alone in the Dark 1, 2 and 3 for $5.99.  Not each, but $5.99 for all of them.  While I found that 2 and 3 drifted away from what made the original good, and to a certain extent became nothing more than shooters, for that price you can’t go wrong.

 

Free Call of Cthulhu Resources

I always like free stuff.  With that in mind I thought I would start a series of short posts about the places to get the good stuff, so you don’t have to weed your way through the chaff online.

One of the gems that shines through is the CthulhuReborn blog.

A really nicely presented and growing blog with free to download scenarios and character sheets.  It doesn’t get a lot better than that.  There are currently two character sheet styles available, one in Art Nouveau and one for the Atomic Age of the 1950s. There are currently three character sheet styles available on the site, one Gaslight Era, one Art Nouveau (also a version in Polish) and one for the Atomic Age of the 1950s.

In addition there are a couple of scenarios for download, one by the blog author and a dream lands scenario, “Porphyry & Asphodel” by Penelope Love.

This is one of those sites that’s good now and will be worth checking in on every so often to see what’s new, so I will definitely be adding it to my favourites list.

Cthulhu Based Jewelry

Example of Noadi pendant, image copyright Noadi

I was browsing twitter last night when I got a message from @Noadi, so I pointed my browser at her range of Cthulhu and generally tentacule based jewelry.

She is currently selling through etsy.com which is am excellent site for finding all kinds of other wonderous and in some cases unspeakable items!

There seem to be all kinds of Cthulhu themed craft work happening at the moment but I thought that this was a really great example as the quality of the work looks high, while the prices are very reasonable.

I haven’t purchased a sample of her work yet, but with Mrs CthulhuGeek’s birthday coming up in October I feel an order may well be winging it’s way to her.  And when it does I’ll give it a fuller review.

I can highly recommend checking out her work.

The Call of Cthulhu Silent Film

OK, so three posts on day one is probably too many but I really wanted to let anyone who hasn’t heard about, or seen it, know about the fantastic Call of Cthulhu film from the guys at the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, purveyors of some generally wonderful things (some of it generously free too).  Lovecraft’s works are notoriously difficult to translate to film, they often deal with creatures almost beyond imagination and scenes just impossible to portray so it was with some excitement tempered with trepidation that I first sat down to watch this film.

Made to appear as if it had been made at the time of the original writing of the tale the film is not a talkie and is in black and white.  Don’t let this put you off, it really adds to the atmosphere that the film creates.  It’s definitely worth turning the lights off when you watch it as it completely absorbs your attention.

The film is an excellently crafted tribute to the original story and worth every penny.  I can’t recommend enough that you buy your own copy.  Mine came with a gorgeous receipt too that looked like it was straight of the ’20s!

Buy it and enjoy it!

Lovecraft for Free

For my birthday this year I was immensely pleased and grateful to receive a Kindle.  Now, I am a big fan of books, but I am also a big fan of gadgets and this seemed like a really good combination of the too.  I have to say the Kindle does work a treat, it might not quite be a book but it is really close and is very portable.

I can now carry around a lot more books than I used to, and I get a paper delivered to it too.

Anyway, the first thing I wanted for the my shiny new Kindle was the complete works of H.P. Lovecraft, I know that I already own well thumbed paper copies, but I still wanted an electronic version too.  A quick Google search later and I came across this wonderful site, CthulhuChick.com.  And, more importantly her version of Lovecraft for the Kindle…Get it here folks, it’s the real deal and she’s been kind enough to make it FREE!

Books About the Mythos

So over the weekend I decided that it was time to start cataloguing my books on LibraryThing, especially as I found a bar-code scanner that worked with LibraryThing for my phone.  Much quicker than all the typing I would have had to do.

I started with my favourite books, obviously this meant everything Lovecraft related.  LibraryThing kindly tells you who has a similar collect of books to you and sure enough right there at the top was the Miskatonic University Library.  It was at this point that I realised that I have such a long way to go with my collection of books.  The MU Library has 734 books in it (as of right now).  I don’t.

I shall have to redouble my efforts on the collection front I think…