CTHULHU CHRONICLES: A FIRST LOOK

AH, THE AGE-OLD QUESTION; "what to do in-between sessions, when no Keeper is around but you still want your sanity abused?"  For Call of Cthulhu addicts who just can't get enough this has long been a problem.  Over the years, video games have been the answer, alternate delivery systems for the mind-bending horror provided by the pen-and-paper game.  2005 saw Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, an unholy partnership between Cthulhu publisher Chaosium and Headfirst, Bethesda, 2K, and Ubisoft.  This year sees Cyanide and Chaosium unleashing the very promising Call of Cthulhu: The Official Video Game.  For those who simply had to take their Cthulhu on the road with them, iOS and Android provided Red Wasp's Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land.  All of these adapted the classic 1981 RPG to various engines and platforms...but were--and let us be honest here--video games.  Not that I dislike video games, mind you.  But they are by definition a visual medium where the horror takes place on the screen.  Call of Cthulhu (the table-top game) is a literary experience; it takes place inside the imagination.  I have never been wholly convinced that even the most gifted graphics team can create Lovecraftian horrors as hideous as the mind can.

Now Chaosium and MetaArcade have joined forces to try something a bit...different.  

Cthulhu Chronicles is perhaps the closest thing to the tabletop Call of Cthulhu experience that gamers can reasonably expect.  Released today for iOS, with Android coming soon, Chronicles essentially takes tried and true Call of Cthulhu scenarios and adapts them to text-based solo-play.  About a week ago, via TestFlight, I had a chance to look at the game for this review.  Here's what you need to know.   

Players choose one of six Investigators to play.  These can be changed between scenarios, or if they survive, continue into the next story.  These characters come with a Bio and some equipment, and are defined by 5 statistics.  Health measures how much physical damage you can endure, Sanity tracks your psychological injury, while Appearance, Athletics, and Knowledge each allow you to face different tests during the game.

Players also select which scenario to pursue.  These are all genuine tabletop Call of Cthulhu scenarios adapted to Chronicles.  We have, for example, the introductory 7th edition scenario Alone Against the Flames, and the 6th edition's Edge of Darkness.  Others from the Chaosium archives are Dead Border, Eyes of the Law, and Paper Chase.  

 

Actual play is fairly straightforward.  Chronicles doesn't have the animated sequences that something like the Steve Jackson's Sorcery! line has, though game play is similar.  A page of text is provided with a picture or illustration, and this will give the player a series of choices to pursue.  It's a time-honored approach going all the way back to those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books.  

 

Sometimes these choices lead to a test.  These are the equivalent to rolling dice in the tabletop game.  Tests come in various difficulties, and these modify your chances accordingly.  A wheel appears and spins, resulting in either a pass or a failure.  Consequences depend on the test.  You might simply fail to notice a clue or to persuade an NPC to talk...or you might take damage.

The game is free to play, but as with all games of this sort there are in-app purchases.  These take the form of "tickets."  Basically, players get a number of free trials of a scenario, after which they must purchase the scenario and play it to their heart's content or spend tickets for additional single play-throughs.

Are multiple play-throughs worth it?  Taking different characters through the scenarios changes the text considerably, and I applaud MetaArcade for tailoring the text to each character.  We've all played games like this where it doesn't matter what character you are playing...the text is the same.  This is not the case here.  Also, multiple plays opens up different story paths, either through making alternate choices or passing tests you might have failed before.  On the other hand, just like a pen-and-paper scenario, the second and third time you play it some of the fun derived from surprise and the unknown is dissipated   This isn't a fault of Chronicles, just the nature of the beast.  I suspect players will want to try at least two or three play-throughs at least.

Cthulhu Chronicles is without doubt the closest thing to playing Call of Cthulhu you can get without a Keeper, and this is really the most attractive feature of the game.  The writing is atmospheric, and the music provides suitably creepy immersion playing in your earphones.  The real success or failure of the platform will depend on what scenarios are offered in the future (a massive adaptation of Masks of Nyarlathotep, anyone?).  A steady stream of classic spine-tingling tails will certainly keep drawing players back.  And since the price of admission is free, why on Earth haven't you downloaded it yet?

I give this solid adaptation of Cthulhu three-and-a-half Elder Signs out of five.  Recommended heartily for those who need their Cthulhu fix between sessions and for people who are curious what the whole "Call of Cthulhu" thing is about.  Find it right now in the iOS App store.        

SWORD & SWORCERY: A GAME REVIEW

A lone figure makes her way through the Caucus Mountains.  It is somewhere around 1000 B.C.  In the shadow of Mingi Taw ("the Eternal Mountain," what today we call Mt. Elbrus, the highest peak in all Europe), she comes across a lone shepherdess that the locals just call "Girl."  Further along she meets a woodcutter named "Logfella," and his canine companion "Dogfella."  Hidden in the dreams of these mountain people are the forces she needs to complete her woeful quest.  But first, she needs the woodcutter to lead her up the lost roads to the Kingdom of the Clouds.  He agrees but isn't "super jazzed" about it.

So begins Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, an indie game phenomenon that combines Jung, Robert E. Howard, and Joseph Campbell in a world that looks and feels like a living Georges Seurat painting.  Just to prove how timeless and eternal myth is, the game is set in prehistory, the characters speak like modern twenty-somethings, and the entire project is drenched and dripping with the "feel" of fantasy from the 70s, when D&D was a secret you had to be initiated into, you had Heavy Metal magazines under your bed, and Tolkien was woven like secret threads in Led Zeppelin lyrics.  For something intentionally designed to look like you might have played it on your Atari or Commodore 64, Sword & Sworcery isn't a game but rather an experience.  It's what Greg Stafford would call a "HeroQuest," a journey outside profane reality into what Mircea Eliade's "sacred time."  It's not about treasure, levels, or stats; it's about truth, dreams, and above all else "death."

Don't get me wrong, there are puzzles to solve, monsters to fight, quests to be won.  But spend ten minutes within this game and you will immediately recognize this thing is an entirely different species from Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, or World of Warcraft.  The inclusion of "EP" in the title is there for a reason; it's not so much a traditional RPG as a concept album you can hang out in.  Designed in collaboration with Canadian progressive rock artist Jim Guthrie, whose stunning soundtrack is a vital part of the experience, the "record album" association is part of the architecture, often literally.  On the menu screen, a spinning record album charts your progression through the game, the needle gliding towards the center the closer to the end you get.  Every time the protagonist travels back and forth between the waking and dream worlds--the two interconnected settings of the game--the record album is seen "flipping over" (the Dream World is "Side B").  The "sworcery" of the title is not tossing fireballs or shooting lightning from your fingers, but rather a song the protagonist learns to sing which expands her consciousness so that she can perceive the unseen.  And in the Dream World you have the chance to meet album composer Guthrie himself and have a jam session with him. The soul of this game is the music.

As for gameplay, Swords & Sworcery has little interest in established conventions.  There are no rules to learn before play...you just jump right in.  You are prodded at times with enigmatic phrases; Trespass, Look, Listen, Touch, Believe, and part of the challenge is to figure out what they mean.  At crucial stages the game's narrator--a Rod Serlingesque dude in a suit with a cigar and a really big chair--will appear to address you, the player, directly, with cryptic instructions and explanations.  Because in Sword & Sworcery there is no "fourth wall."  From the very start the game makes it clear that you, the player, are going through the journey as surely as the protagonist is.  In fact she--the Scythian warrior monk you play throughout the game--never once says "I."  Her pronoun of choice is "we," speaking for you and her.  Combat is handled by blocking with a shield and parrying with a sword, and you start the game with five "health levels" (the only stat you have).  In a brilliant and complete inversion of other RPGs, after each of the game's four episodes one of those health levels actually disappears.  This is a game about mortality, after all, and she is growing old, making it harder to reach the end.  For the rest, this is your Hero's Journey as much as hers.  You begin a novice and learn as you go.

On a random note, the game was released in the US on the vernal equinox and in Japan on the summer solstice.  The phase of the moon--our moon, the real moon up the in the sky--is essential to unlocking some of the game's episodes.  That means you need to play it over a lunar month at least, waiting for the moon to be in phase.  If you can think of anything cooler, drop me a line.

In conclusion, there is a line in the Indian epic, the Mahabharata (composed around the same period as the setting of this game) that kept coming back to me as I played.  Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the author of that epic would stop every now and again to address the reader directly too.  Anyway, it was there in the back of my head as I encountered each Jungian archetype--the Sheperdess, the Woodcutter, the Wolf, the Deathless Spectre.  "This is a story about you...and if you listen, at the end you will be a different person than when we began."

That's Sword & Sworcery in a nutshell.