Lovecraft’s Untold Stories

Genre: 2-Stick Shooter / Roguelike

Players: 1

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Review:

Lovecraft’s Untold Stories is a 2-Stick Shooter with Roguelike elements released on multiple platforms including Nintendo Switch in 2019. As the game’s title indicates, this game’s story takes place within the world of Lovecraft’s horrific world of insanity-causing cosmic beings such as Cthulhu, with players taking the role of one of various characters investigating a small town taken over by a cult of worshippers of those entities.

One thing this game does well is its presentation, doing an excellent job of pulling players into its dark universe on the edge of human sanity. The game’s pixel art visuals are perhaps just abstract enough to give players an indication of the horrors the game conveys while still leaving a bit open to the imagination, while the moody, atmospheric soundtrack perfectly accentuates the game’s sinister mood. The writing here is also mostly excellent, giving players detailed accounts and descriptions of the game’s events and horrific imagery, however I did notice a few minor typos in the text – nothing that outright kills the mood, but I felt it worth mentioning nonetheless.

For the gameplay, I will say that the Roguelike genre fits Lovecraft’s mythology like a glove. The idea that death is always potentially a few steps away, and that the halls and rooms of the places you’re walking through are being reshaped either by your own mind or reality itself perfectly fit Lovecraft’s mind-bending mythos. The game also makes good use of not only health but sanity as a risk/reward element, as players are often tempted with strange objects and items to investigate, but may risk losing some degree of sanity if they choose to do so. Lose enough sanity, and your character will end their own life in despair. While perhaps not as creative as what we saw in Eternal Darkness years ago, it is nevertheless an effective way to make sanity a prominent element of this game.

Unfortunately, one thing absolutely does not work in this game, and that is the Two-Stick Shooter elements. Your character is so ill-equipped to fight the cultists and otherworldly monsters of the game that any time the game switches to action, it immediately descends into frustration and tedium. Your range is pathetic, your firearm requires constant reloading, your movement speed is slow, and enemies with projectiles seem to rarely miss. Depending on your difficulty level, healing items may be in ready supply, but it’s no fun to have to constantly babysit them, especially when you have multiple types of healing to worry about – health, sanity, bleeding, poison, and more must all be managed, and in the heat of a battle where it’s already a chore to dodge, this becomes a huge multitasking headache. And despite the feeling like you’re constantly unable to avoid enemy attacks, it’s not like the enemy AI is particularly clever. Quite the contrary – most enemies just try to rush you, or stand in place and fire projectiles at you.

The game’s problems are exacerbated by an awkward control scheme that makes even navigating menus unnecessarily confusing. Oddly, while the game’s menus seem designed with a touchscreen in mind, this game does not support touchscreen controls, leaving players to struggle with the setup the game forces on the player.

I can’t help but feel that Lovecraft’s Untold Stories would have been a much better game had it not been a 2-Stick Shooter, or even an action game at all. An RPG, a Graphic Adventure, a Survival Horror… if you combined any of these genres with the game’s Roguelike elements and moody presentation… and fixed the game’s confusing menu system… I feel like this game would be a real winner. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case, and the 2-Stick Shooter elements are so bad that they drag down the rest of the game. As a result, it may still be worth a look for fans of Lovecraft’s works, but everyone else is better turning away from this one to maintain their sanity.

tl;dr – Lovecraft’s Untold Stories is a Roguelike and 2-Stick Shooter based on Lovecraft’s horrific insanity-inducing creations. The presentation and Roguelike elements here are fantastic, but the 2-Stick Shooter gameplay and menu navigation are so bad that they drag down the rest of the game. The result is something only the biggest Cthulhu fans will love.

Grade: C

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