9 Best Lovecraftian Games That You Should Know Update 04/2024

best lovecraftian games

When it comes to horror, H.P. Lovecraft could be called the father of cosmic horrors all over the world and the person who made the things that make people afraid and mad. It’s been a long time since his stories were told. Spin-offs are still made, and people are still afraid of what’s in the dark. Putting these stories into games has been a great way for them to come to life. What better time to look for them than around Halloween, when spooky games are the norm.

If you like Lovecraft, you’ll love these games. Many of them are older, but they’re still scary as the more recent ones on this list. Besides having to keep the lights on while they play, players will also have to make sure that nothing lurks in the dark when they’re done and haven’t played for a while.

1. Forgive Me Father

Forgive Me Father

Forgive Me Father’s looks a lot like XIII (the 2003 original, not the 2020 remake), both in terms of how it looks and how it fights. There are some differences between the two games, though. Forgive Me Father is much darker because of the seemingly endless waves of monsters based on Lovecraft’s work.

The game came to Steam’s Early Access programme in late 2021. So far, it looks like it’s going well. There’s still no word on when the full release will be out, but its low price and inclusion in a lot of bundles should be enough to get people to buy it now.

2. Remnant: From the Ashes

Remnant: From the Ashes is one of the most popular Lovecraftian-style games of the last few years. It has great co-op gameplay, a wide variety of fun weapons, and an interesting character customization system that lets players tweak and tailor their characters to better fit their play style.

Probably one of the best things about the game is how well-designed the bosses are. Each one gives you a good amount of nightmare fuel. There are some places where the story isn’t very interesting, and the melee combat isn’t very good, but people who enjoy taking down scary monsters should be able to look past these flaws.

3. Lobotomy Corporation | Monster Management Simulation

Lobotomy Corporation

This is one of those games that people didn’t know they wanted until they played it. Perhaps there’s not as much depth to the game than there is in more well-known monster games, but players can still expect to spend 30 hours or more playing it.

If you look at the games that the developers list, they all have a Lovecraftian theme to them. However, this isn’t really a scary game like some of the other games on this list. The game’s main focus is on monster management, not scaring people.

4. Sunless Sea

Sunless Sea isn’t a game that comes up with new ideas. Instead, it takes old ideas and mechanics and makes them work almost perfectly in its gameplay loop. It has a very well-written story, a lot of interesting characters, and a lot of death and despair in it, too.

A game that draws a lot of its ideas from games that came before it isn’t bad. A lot of people like Sunless Sea because it does this well and doesn’t really break new ground. The giant angler crabs and sentient icebergs are scary, but it’s the sense of uncertainty that the game is able to create that’s the most frightening thing.

5. Curse Of The Old Gods

Curse Of The Old Gods

Curse of the Old Gods is a lot like some of the point-and-click games from the nineties, and it doesn’t look too different either. It has some well-thought-out puzzles and a story that, even though it isn’t spectacular, still manages to keep players interested.

The writing is solid for the most part, and the colour palette, though not everyone’s favourite, adds a lot to the overall look and feel of the game and the game’s often jarring tone. Just over two hours long. But since the game is free and it’s so short, that seems a little unfair.

6. The Consuming Shadow

The Consuming Shadow was made and published by Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, who made Zero Punctuation. The game combines roguelike mechanics with survival horror themes in a simple but effective way. Use of silhouettes makes the game feel more real than it looks. This makes the game more immersive than it might seem at first.

Many interesting ideas were put into the game, even though not all of them worked out perfectly. Most of them made the player have a better time. After a few hours of playing, some of the game’s many abilities start to seem a little pointless. The game’s procedurally generated exploration areas can also become very boring after just a few hours. At the end of the day, though, it’s a good indie game that’s worth checking out at the very least.

7. Darkwood

Darkwood

Darkwood may have taken a while to get out of early access, but when it did, it didn’t let anyone down. In this top-down survival horror game, things can get very scary at times. It also has more content than you might expect from a game that was funded by people on the internet. It looks great and uses lighting and colour very well to make some very scary and scary-sounding environments and a lot of chilling moments.

There are many similarities between Darkwood and Lovecraft, even though the developers say that none of them had read any of his work before working on the game. Although not directly, it seems likely that some of the people and games that did inspire the devs had themselves taken some of their inspiration from the horror writer’s work.

8. Carrion

In Lovecraft stories, you usually find yourself in the shoes of a person who doesn’t know any better when they come across things that aren’t good. In Carrion, you are the creature that isn’t good. Take control of a fleshy creature that wants to eat and kill everyone who wants to put you in a cage and stop you.

This is a game where you control a creature that has fleshy, slimy physics to match its appearance. More than anything else, Carrion is all about action and completing levels. There isn’t a lot of story.

9. The Terrible Old Man

The Terrible Old Man

Terrible Old Man is a free point-and-click game on Steam. Short and sweet, it’s based on a story by Lovecraft called the terrible old man.

Play this game if you’ve already read this story. You can now put yourself into the shoes of the people who were in the story. Ask people about the town and what might happen next.

This short and free game does a great job of making you feel scared and scared all in less than 20 minutes.