Fans of Cthulhu – unconventional horror

Film films of horrors inspired by the writer HP Lovecraft could experience wealth. As a fan of works of art, I tried many of them, including less or less known. But I was often disappointed with how superficial most of them were. What was even more surprising when I found out how original and at the same time this building strategy was able to capture the atmosphere of a book from a smaller Polish studio, offering a completely different way of the depth of madness than most of the games inspired by Lovecraft.

• Platform: PC
• Date of issue: 22. 5. 2025
• Manufacturer: Crazy goats of the game (Poland)
• Genre: Construction strategy
• Czech Republic Localization: No
• Multi -user: No
• Download Data: 10 GB
• Game time: 30+ hours
• Price: 599 czk

In the depths

You are the highest priest, the leader of the cult, worshiping Cthulhu. After a long and demanding payment, your damaged ship and an exhausted team finally arrived at the prohibited archipelago, where he should enter his empire. As a first step, analyze your ship on the material that you build the first houses on the island. You will no longer need a ship, because there is no return from this trip. The next step is to search for ancient ruins of overgrown jungle, where you can use the correct (and bloody) rituals to arouse the forgotten power of this place.

Source: Martin Zavheel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavheel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavheel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavheel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavheel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavheel / Zing.cz

Source: Martin Zavheel / Zing.cz

But you are not alone. The surrounding islands are inhabited by people who do not understand the importance of your task and try to stop you. Even more dangerous are competing cults that worship their own gods and can not only attack you, but also accept all kinds of curses. In addition, you also need to regularly sacrifice your people in prohibited rituals. Fortunately, however, your growing activity and success in the opening of the path to depth will gradually attract other ships with new servants of your cult. The only question is whether you can bring this gloomy and ruthless mission to the end.

There is no return in this journey.

Although this is a relatively smaller game in India, the expedition is surprisingly good. The individual chapters of your campaign approve and end the engine with the narrator’s voice. All types of random events during the game, such as Frostpunk, also illustrate very impressive works of art that cause the correct atmosphere, often maintaining a frosty sound (if you sacrifice a member of the cult or make the rune into your body). Your consultants, human and inhuman consultants often talk with you with different tips or warnings during the game. All this is beautifully framed by a gloomy color palette, depressive music and most of the time of endless rain, which is a combination that makes the game really effectively maintain the right atmosphere.

Honest strategy

From the point of view of the gameplay, the game works in real time, but you can stop it at any time to change your opinion or press further steps in advance. Nevertheless, the game is balanced, so you do not need to stop the time, because it does not push you excessively and at the same time the approach means that the participants of your religious benefit and continue to build or rituals. Almost each of the chapter and cards of the game has several islands, so after the first time you must transfer the expedition to the neighboring ones, mainly in order to “free” them from their inhabitants and properly build another city. In many ways, the game resembles, for example, the popular strategic series of Anno. However, in addition to the construction of buildings and the extraction of raw materials, you will also directly control individual members of your cult, including their retraining, elevation and movement, which is really a solid micro -administration, and this can be somewhat murders for some players.

The main content is the construction and thorough balance of your resources, which are dozens at the end of the game, so the economy and strategy are really quite complicated. The battles take place in real time, but they are not the main content of games and occur only occasionally, each time on the water and through all kinds of monsters that you create to help from the depths or mutations of your members of the cult (then press them, as if you were your military boats). The complexity of the game is regulated, you do not need to worry about the bottom, even if you have never played this genre. The only unpleasant moment may be the third chapter of history, where resource management may be too complicated by the need to collect limited excess raw materials. On the contrary, the last chapter is surprisingly dynamic, actions and fun. I did not face technical problems, on a more old computer (i7-9700F, 16 GB of DDR4, RTX 2070 Super), I played 4K, saying that smoothness sometimes fell below 60 frames per second, but it did not matter for a strategic game.

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