Lovecraftian Games I’m Yearning For In 2025
Railgods of Hysterra features sentient and possibly sapient Lovecraftian living trains. I’m not sure if this was inspired by Blaine the Mono from Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series. Think less Thomas the Tank Engine or The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, more H.R. Giger meets Snowpiercer. I’m not into trains, but what I am into is weird games and Lovecraftian games. Games that do something I haven’t seen before always pique my interest.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a Lovecraftian train in a game. Tormentum: Dark Sorrow featured a Lovecraftian train. There’s a sentient monstrous train in The Dark Tower, as well as every train in Thomas the Tank Engine. I’m sure other games have explored this combination as well.
The intersections of body horror and machinery are by no means new territory either. It’s a theme that’s been explored in art since the advent of the Industrial Age, if not earlier. In university, I studied countless poems written about the horrors of industrialization and their effect on the English countryside alone. The idea of the train as the dragon, as a symbolic, slithering thing that obliterates all in its path, inhuman and powered by fire, is not new. The equation of dragons with eldritch beings is by no means a ‘hot take’ either. I’m pretty sure Lovecraft himself has made the comparison, and of course, kaiju exist. I’m pretty sure Godzilla and Cthulhu are in a water polo league together.
However, this is the first time I’ve seen it made the focus of a video game, and not merely an interesting looking backdrop.
2. Traveling at Night by The Weather Factory
Traveling at Night is the next mainline game in the Secret Histories universe. It’s described as a cross between the Weather Factory’s previous games and Disco Elysium. I liked Disco Elysium. I love the other Secret Histories games. I’m excited for this game based solely on its provenance and influences.
3. Do No Harm
The gameplay loop reminds me of Strange Horticulture or No Umbrellas Allowed. Lovecraftian medical sims have been done before, but it’s a good combination of genres. Both can feature body horror and allow the player to have a more up close and personal encounter of the third (and fourth…and fifth through fifty millionth…) kind than they would if they were going up against Cthulhu himself.
My one apprehension about this game is that it looks like it uses four traditional humours as treatments, rather than diagnostic samples. However, given the patients are experiencing Lovecraftian physical conditions, perhaps an inversion of the sample and the medicine works. I’ll have to play it before forming more of an opinion.
4. Aether Collector
I like retro style games. I like point-and-click games. Is this the first Lovecraftian pixel art-y retro style point-and-click game? No. Just off the top of my head, The Last Door comes to mind. But it doesn’t have to be the first. It just has to be interesting.
5. Operation Lovecraft: Fallen Doll
Yes, this game is highly NSFW. Yes, it’s unlikely I’ll be able to stream it unless there’s a special streamer mode implemented, but that mode would take away from the essential plot of the game. This is not the first game to feature sexualized Lovecraftian content, but the graphics and conceit are so over-the-top and pulpy (complimentary) that it oddly enough is the type of work that would fit in Weird Tales…or perhaps Heavy Metal?
6. Hunt the Pale Gods
I like deck building games. I like Lovecraftian horrors, although I prefer playing as them rather than fighting them.
7. The Shadow over Cyberspace
I’m a sucker for interesting aesthetic mashups. Y2K style retro graphics mixed with Lovecraftian horror? Sign me up. I’m a fan of the game aesthetically, but the dialogue in the screenshots leaves a little to be desired, which is why this game doesn’t rank higher on my list.
I’m not usually a fan of works in which cosmic horror figures are portrayed as very human and very mortal. Part of what appeals to me about cosmic horror is the idea that it’s beyond the fathoming of human comprehension and the sense of scale. Dialogue like, ‘Nyarlathotep is still deciding if they can trust you. They have been betrayed in the past, and remain suspicious of you as a result,’ lacks that scale.
It reveals what a cosmic being is feeling, making it too knowable to feel imposing or cosmic in scale
I’m not a huge fan of fiction writing that tells rather than shows, but that issue is amplified when we’re discussing Lovecraftian works
It implies that your presumably human protagonist can earn Nyarlathotep’s trust within your mere human lifetime
