#although. even just reading the call of cthulhu is too much sometimes. its just so fucking racist
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Principles You Can Use From Rowling’s Philosophy of Writing
by Ruthanne Reid
If you’re like me, you loved the Harry Potter series. Maybe you watched the movies or even visited the theme park, and you wondered about JK Rowling’s writing process and the strategy she uses to write her best-selling books.
If you’re like me, though, you’ve also been deeply hurt by things Rowling herself has said. On Twitter, on her website, in interviews, and more, Rowling has promoted harmful views of trans people, and you might be one of her many readers who find it painful, or even impossible, to return to the Harry Potter books you once loved.I understand. Before I dive into the wisdom we can draw from Rowling’s writing process in order to write our first draft (or others), allow me to share a principle with you.
Death of the Author: Or, How to Love the Book, Not the Author
In 1967, a French literary critic named Roland Barthes wrote an essay called La mort de l’auteur, or Death of the Author, in which he states that any piece of writing should be separated from the author that wrote it. In other words, he believed in judging the written work completely on its own merits, without involving personal beliefs or actions of the author in question.
Sometimes, this is possible to do.
Sometimes, it isn’t, and we readers have to apply discernment to what we read and the lens in which we view things.I have two examples for you.
HP Lovecraft
First, HP Lovecraft, whose incredible work literally created today’s modern horror genre. Do you enjoy any kind of tale with Elder Ones, or chaos gods, or even just good old Cthulhu? (I know I do!) His work was so creative, so new, that you’d be hard-pressed to find any horror story that doesn’t show at least some of his influence.Unfortunately, Lovecraft was also an extremely xenophobic racist.
Now, I enjoy a good chaos god, and I’ve made the decision to separate his xenophobia from his writing. That means, of course, that I must view critically anything he wrote that implies white English people are somehow the pinnacle of humanity.It means I purposely do not allow his racism to infect my way of thinking. By doing so, I am practicing la mort de l’auteur.
JRR Tolkien
Here’s a second example: JRR Tolkien, whose work defined modern fantasy. Do you enjoy anything with elves and dwarves or made-up languages? We owe Tolkien for that. He redefined and polished the fantasy genre so well that everything from movies to MMORPGs still use his templates.
Unfortunately, he also described his orcs as “squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types.”
Yowza.
Now, was Tolkien a racist? Not exactly. In fact, according to the standards of the time, he was absolutely liberal and anti-racist. So then what do we do with this bizarro and racially horrifying description?
We see it and choose to discard it. Generations of artists and authors have done exactly that, turning orcs into anything but“least lovely Mongol-types,” and aiding this genre.Again, it’s important to see the problem so you can avoid letting it influence your work. We enjoy the good parts while consciously discarding the bad, rather than being influenced by it.
So What About JK Rowling?
She’s not dead. In fact, she’s still saying harmful things, even as we speak.
Instead of listening to her readers, who (at least initially) approached her in love, trying to help her understand, she doubled down, rejected their experience and their words, and in the process, caused an unbelievable amount of pain.
Here’s the thing about la mort de l’auteur: it is entirely up to you whether to apply it to what you read, or to simply discard the whole thing and find less troublesome authors.
Both roads are valid.
In no way do I condone her attacks on the trans community, or her persistent sharing of misinformation. I choose to apply la mort de l’auteur for the simple reason that I benefited from the good things she’s written, and I wanted to share them with you.
However, if you aren’t comfortable doing that, you are absolutely welcome to walk away. In fact, I’d suggest these writing articles instead: Neil Gaiman’s rules of writing, or how to create your own rules of writing.
Okay. Awkward stuff done. Ready to dive into the process stuff instead? Let’s go!
9 Rules From JK Rowling’s Writing Process
Over the course of her writing career, Rowling shared a lot of solid writing wisdom, and in my opinion, eight writing rules stand out—along with a ninth we can apply from her choices since.
Whether or not you’re writing your first book like Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) or last book in a series (like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows), I think these rules speak to Ms. Joanne Rowling’s philosophy on writing.They are great writing tips for you to reflect on in your spare moments and then apply to your writing process, for short stories, novels, bestsellers, or even the first time you’ve ever attempted a book.
Rule One: Protect your writing time
“Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have “essential” and “long overdue” meetings on those days. The funny thing is that, although writing has been my actual job for several years now, I still seem to have to fight for time in which to do it.”
This is especially hard for those of us with family. Our loved ones come first, and while that is important, our loved ones also need to understand that we need time to write. Setting reasonable boundaries is a crucial step for a writer—even if they’re as simple as, “Mommy needs fifteen minutes of quiet time, okay?”
If you have trouble setting boundaries with loved ones, try setting a reasonable boundary for one week. See how it goes. If it’s too much time or too little, tweak it. Establish a routine that signals to others that it’s your writing time, but also lets them know that outside of your writing space, you’re there for them.
Not only will this teach the importance of flexibility and discipline to others, but also that your writing is valuable. It’s your work, and your dream! Needing quiet time to write doesn’t mean that you don’t love your family. Your writing deserves your time, too. Open communication about this can help everyone understand and respect that.
Rule Two: Treat your writing like a job
“You’ve got to work. It’s about structure. It’s about discipline.”
It’s easy to forget that writing is a job. We don’t always feel like doing our job. We certainly don’t always feel inspired. To be writers, we must train ourselves to sit down and write even when we don’t feel like it. Those moments are the ones that really matter, even more than the shining, flying, muse-kissed moments.Writing when we don’t feel like it is what turn amateurs into professionals and rough drafts into polished manuscripts.
“The muse works for you. You don’t write at her beck and call—you train her to show up when you’re writing. “
Rule Three: Believe you ARE a writer
“I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.”
Yes, writing is possible with another job.
Yes, writing is possible with other responsibilities.
Are you a writer? (I know your inner critic snarled no, but I also know a tiny candle-flicker of unquenchable hope in you whispered yes with so much longing you could cry.)
You ARE a writer. That means you write.
A runner runs.
A painter paints.
A cook cooks.
You are a writer. You write. Accept this, fight to believe it, and be amazed at how far that takes you.
Rule Four: Write what you know
“Write what you know: your own interests, feelings, beliefs, friends, family and even pets will be your raw materials when you start writing.”
This doesn’t mean you need to experience aliens in order to write about them. It means that all good stories have universal application. A great example is this Google Doodle. (Trust me. I’m going somewhere with this.) Take two minutes and thirty-six seconds to watch this:
Halloween 2017 Google Doodle: Jinx’s Night Out
It’s adorable, right? Without a single word, this video told an effective story. You felt for the little ghost, both when it was sad and when it was happy, right?
News flash: you’re not a ghost. That was universal application.
It doesn’t matter what culture you’re from or what language you speak; all human beings know what it is to be lonely, to feel left out, to be frustrated, determined, and to finally be with friends.
That story works because the creators used their interests, feelings, beliefs, friends, family and even pets to tell this story. (I’m fond of the kitty, myself.)
I’m greatly oversimplifying, but here’s the gist: you already know how to tell a moving story because you live one. If you’ve ever had emotions, ever responded to anything, then you already know what universal application looks like. Listen to the people around you, and apply empathy.
You don’t have to be a ghost to write a good ghost story.
Rule Five: Read
“I always advise children who ask me for tips on being a writer to read as much as they possibly can. Jane Austen gave a young friend the same advice, so I’m in good company there.”
Read. Read. Read some more!
The more you read, the bigger your arsenal of words will be. The more you read, the better your grasp of metaphor, poetry, beauty, passion, and empathy will be. The more you read, the greater you will be as a writer (and probably human being).
It’s like learning more dance moves or impressively difficult notes on an instrument. The more you learn, the better you’ll be.
So read in your genre. Read outside your genre. Get in the habit of finding time to pick up a book instead of your phone (unless it’s to open up another book.)
You DO have the time to read.
Even if that’s just ten minutes a day. Any time counts.
And the more stories you read, the more likely you’ll start to implicitly develop the skills you need to become a great writer.
Rule Six: Persevere
“Perseverance is absolutely essential, not just to produce all those words, but to survive rejection and criticism.”
This is one of those unpleasant truths about publishing: you’re gonna get rejected. A lot.
I wish there were a way around this. Harry Potter was turned down again and again because that’s just the way it goes sometimes. And it isn’t only publishers: when you get published, and your work is out there, you’ll get bad reviews, too.
Mostly, they’ll just be people who don’t understand what you’re doing. Intellectually, you’ll know that. Your heart, on the other hand, is going to break into a thousand pieces.
But here’s the secret: you can’t stop writing because of push-back.
You MUST NOT stop writing because of push-back.
Keep going. Don’t stop. When you get rejected, pick up your pen and keep going (and use the way you feel to put more universal application into your work). And when you’re feeling really discouraged? Remember that when someone doesn’t like your book, they might also just not be your ideal reader. That person just wasn’t your target audience.If your book isn’t to someone’s taste, that’s all right. It will be to someone else’s.Keep writing your book, because your ideal readers need it.
Rule Seven: Bring your whole self to the page
“What you write becomes who you are … So make sure you love what you write!”
Writing is a little like a Mobius strip, in a way:
Your beliefs and experiences and feelings all help craft your writing. However, your writing clarifies, corrects, and often reveals your beliefs, experiences, and feelings. As you write, you’ll discover things about yourself. You’ll clarify things, too, because it’s only as you come to write them that you realize they needed clarification in the first place.
Now, understand: this means that if you haven’t given yourself a good look to find your biases (we all have them), you will bring those to the page, too. It’s important to see who you are as you bring your whole self to the page. Writing is a brave, bold venture, and life-altering discovery is part of the journey.
Rule Eight: Accept that failure is part of the process
“Failure is inevitable—make it a strength. You have to resign yourself to the fact that you waste a lot of trees before you write anything you really like, and that’s just the way it is. It’s like learning an instrument, you’ve got to be prepared for hitting wrong notes occasionally, or quite a lot. I wrote an awful lot before I wrote anything I was really happy with.”
Failure is normal. Also, it is okay.
You’re going to write a lot of crap. You’re going to push past those things and write more crap. It may take you twelve years. It may take you a million words. If it does, then you’re on the right path—the same one your favorite authors walk.
Accept that it will take time, and that sometimes, your pencil won’t be your friend. If you accept it, then when it happens, you won’t throw in the towel and set the house on fire. Instead, you’ll be able to go, “Well, dang; that sucked, didn’t it? Knew it would happen. Time to write some more.”
Rule Nine: Respect Your Reader
Sadly, this rule doesn’t come from writing advice she’s given, but in a way, it’s the final conclusion of the previous eight.
This involves bringing your whole self to the page. This involves empathy and universal application. This involves perseverance, never quitting, and willingness to tackle your writing troubles. If your readers value what you created, they will listen to what you say. Your words have the power to uplift or hurt others.
None of us can ever really know where someone else is coming from, and it’s essential that both our stories and our interactions reflect respect.
Respect yourself enough to be a better person. Respect your readers enough to hear what they have to say.
This sounds scary, I know, but I promise you, it’s worth it.
#how to write#writing advice#writing#tw jk rowling#jkr#jk rowling#tw long post#long post#long text post#top writing advice#rules for writing
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Stephen King: 16 Best Scary Stories to Read
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Here are 16 of the very best horror stories from Stephen King!
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Stephen King is a master of the short story, able to dish out horror tales to make your skin crawl, astounding sci-fi, and even literary reflections aimed at more "sophisticated" readers. He's done it all, with no sign of stopping.
Although I've had the tough task of picking 16 of my favorite King horror tales for this list, you should absolutely pick up ALL of his collections and give them a read through. You'll always find something to give you the chills.
Make a note: this is a list of short stories, not novellas. And on top of that, stories that are genuinely scary. I didn't forget "The Mist" or "N." or "Secret Window, Secret Garden" or any of those other goodies. Those deserve their own article, don't they?
So below: a list of stories and what collections you can find them in. "N." would have been my inclusion from Just After Sunset, but again, that's really a novella. "The Cat from Hell" ain't bad, either. But really, none of the stories from that collection made the cut for me. You can yell at me in the comments.
Enjoy!
Night Shift (1978)
Graveyard Shift
Night Shift, King's first short story collection, is really the crux of this article, as it features several of his best scary tales to date. They have a B-movie sensibility right at home in the late '60s and early '70s, and were influenced by campy cult films and plenty of EC comics. Hell, many of the stories have even become cult films themselves.
"Graveyard Shift," the second story in the book, is a great example of what King can do with seemingly ordinary situations turned bad...really, really bad. In one of his most campy stories to date, a group of men are tasked with cleaning up the abandoned basement of a textile mill that's been infested by rats for years. As they descend into the depths of the mill, the horrors they find are...well, you'll just have to find out, won't you?
Read more: Stephen King's 10 Best Horror Novels
I Am the Doorway
If you're a Constant Reader, you're probably used to King's use of body horror. This is one of his early ones and features a bit of science fiction as well. An astronaut returns from a mission to Venus after coming into contact with a strange alien mutagen. Upon his return, he discovers that eyeballs are growing out of his hands! This one is just too much fun to miss...
The Mangler
You've probably heard of this one: a series of very weird (and unfortunate) events causes an industrial laundry press to become possessed by a demon. No, I don't know where the hell this guy comes up with all this stuff. King has a way of turning ordinary blue-collar life into grisly death. This one was turned into a movie directed by Tobe Hooper a few years back, and it stars Robert Englund. Yes, it's as bad as you think.
Trucks
You've probably heard of this one, too. Because King tried to direct a movie based on this story. Motor vehicles have inexplicably come to life and decide to murder all humans who disobey them. The doomed characters in this story suffer a very tragic end that's almost poetic. By the way, the movie King directed is called Maximum Overdrive, and it's the only time anyone was crazy enough to let this guy behind a camera.
Sometimes They Come Back
Okay, you're probably wondering why I totally skipped "Children of the Corn." The answer is simple: that story has become so twisted in its movie form that a) you already know how the story goes, b) what you've seen in those god awful movies has tainted any good perspective on said story. That said, yes, read it or whatever.
read more: It Chapter Two Easter Eggs and Reference Guide
BUT, you do get this treat instead: "Sometimes They Come Back" is one of my favorite King stories to date. A teacher is haunted by three psychotic greasers from his childhood. After those around him begin to die, he realizes that he has to fight pure evil with pure evil. Truly creepy.
You can buy Night Shift right here!
Skeleton Crew (1985)
Here There Be Tygers
King loves tormenting little kids in his stories, and believe it or not, "Here There Be Tygers" is one of the lighter examples. And it has nothing to do with the Ray Bradbury story of the same name. In King's story, a little boy really needs to go to the bathroom but is too frightened to do so when he encounters a tiger in the school lavatory. Because of course there's a tiger waiting in a bathroom. King has said that this was one of his earliest stories, written when he was in high school.
The Monkey
This a weird one. A diabolical cymbal-banging monkey toy torments several characters through the years. How does a toy cause such dread in its owner? Well, every time it bangs its little cymbals, someone or something dies. Simple enough.
Read more: 12 Best Stephen King Movies
The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands
In a sort of "campfire story" format that's quite fitting for King, a mysterious club in Manhattan gathers to tell tales of the strange and grotesque. A companion to a novella called "The Breathing Method" from Different Seasons, tonight's tale is about a man with a peculiar phobia: he's terrified of touching anyone and avoids all physical contact like it's the plague. The conclusion to this one is quite fun. Maybe not a traditional scary story, but the story circle format really lends it that Halloween feel. I'd love to see an anthology series based on this format - Are You Afraid of the Dark? for King fans.
Gramma
You might know this one. It was later adapted by Harlan Ellison for Twilight Zone '85 and was recently turned into a movie starring Chandler Riggs (Carl from The Walking Dead). A little boy is left alone with his gramma, a bed-ridden old woman who frightens him deeply. As you'd expect, he indeed has a lot to be frightened about. Interestingly enough, horror buffs will notice that this story is part of the Cthulhu Mythos, the shared fictional universe created by H.P. Lovecraft, one of King's idols.
You can buy Skeleton Crew right here!
Nightmares & Dreamscapes (1993)
Home Delivery
I like this one because it's a Stephen King zombie story. Part George A. Romero outbreak epic and part intimate story about reuniting with those you've lost, "Home Delivery" is a good read and even gives us a reason behind the apocalypse that's too fun to miss. King's other "zombie" tale, a book called Cell, is also worth a read.
Sorry, Right Number
No, I guess this one is technically a teleplay, which was produced as an episode of Tales from the Darkside, but it's short enough to read as a short story. Sue me. This is the first King story I ever read—in a school textbook, no less!!—and it remains one of my favorites. A woman receives a very strange call from a distressed woman, who can't quite deliver her message. The message and the outcome of this story are really heartbreaking.
You can buy Nightmares & Dreamscapes right here!
Everything's Eventual (2002)
Autopsy Room Four
Perhaps the most fun story King has ever written, this isn't the kind of King horror you're used to. Yet, it's still exceptionally terrifying. The situation is as real as they come (in a King story, anyway) and the outcome is actually pretty funny. A good story for those looking for lighter fare on Halloween.
The Man in the Black Suit
King's most literary horror story to date tells the tale of a boy's encounter with the Devil, who appears to him as a man dressed in a black suit that smells like burnt matches. The story isn't so much horror as it is a rumination on mortality. The monster in this story isn't out to get you. Instead, it wants to let you know it's there and it's waiting.
Read more: A Guide to Stephen King's Dark Tower Universe
The Road Virus Heads North
A killer painting is the subject of this story. Yes, this list has proved that if you put the adjective "killer" in front of pretty much any object, you get a Stephen King monster. Still, this one's plenty of fun, if you like a little camp with your horror.
1408
Rounding Everything's Eventual is "1408," another one of King's "writer in peril" stories that he loves writing so much. This one stars Mike Enslin, a guy who writes about haunted places he's visited. He arrives to the Hotel Dolphin in New York City after he hears about the infamous room 1408. Although he doesn't believe that any of the places he's written about are truly haunted, room 1408 does a lot to change his mind.
You can buy Everything's Eventual right here!
Bazaar of Bad Dreams (2015)
The Dune
King really is having fun with "The Dune," a more classical horror story with a twist ending that will give you chills. A man tells his lawyer a story about his secret obsession with a dune on an unnamed island off the Florida coast that can predict people's deaths. Every time he makes the trip to the island, the man sees a new person's name written in the sand, and within a month, that person is found dead. It's a haunting little story that might remind you of Poe, as the shocking truth behind the man's tale is revealed with a sinister smile.
You can buy Bazaar of Bad Dreams right here!
Alright, Constant Readers, what are your favorite Stephen King horror stories? What are you reading leading up to Halloween? Tell us in the comments!
John Saavedra is an associate editor at Den of Geek. Read more of his work here. Follow him on Twitter @johnsjr9.
A version of this article originally ran on Oct. 30, 2015.
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Sep 9, 2019
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The Sinking City Review – Maddening Exploration
The post The Sinking City Review – Maddening Exploration appeared first on Fextralife.
Frogwares has released the lovecraftian detective title The Sinking City, combining open-world exploration, combat and a universe of horrors. It’s up to your sleuthing to piece together the mystery of the submerged Oakmont, and in this Review we delve into the gameplay, investigative features of the game, as well as how it feels to explore a story that doesn’t hand-hold.
The Sinking City Review – Maddening Exploration
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Genre: narrative-driven, lovecraftian horror, detective, action-adventure
Published by: Bigben Interactive
Developed by: Frogwares
Release date: June 27th
Platforms: PC (review platform)/PS4/Xbox One/Switch (coming soon)
Price at time of review: $33.99
Website: https://ift.tt/2nTJZhv
Story & Setting
In the city of Oakmont Massachusetts set in the in 1920’s, something very strange and sinister is going on. A rather secluded area where the locals don’t look too fondly upon strangers. Through isolation, a growing lack of trust of the outside world, and a darkness is devouring the city from the inside. Oakmont is now prone to floods that just appeared seemingly out of the nowhere, causing devastation and death.
It’s through the eyes of a private detective that players will experience Oakmont. Rather than spoon feeding players with plot, it is up to you to discover the mysteries that lie in wait, which is a bit of a change of pace in the gaming industry. Through your own skills as a detective, you will unravel the story, and your choices will play a role in what is ultimately unveiled. Witnessing the supernatural will only cause distress, which can gnaw at your own sanity, adding further complexity to the gameplay.
It’s down to you as a private detective to choose which cases to take on, your main case being the primary plot, and side cases that help shape the going-ons in Oakmont. There are cutscenes, visions you will encounter, notes to read, and the townspeople’s accounts that all weave this tale together. I liked the fact there were a number of ways to learn about the plot through various methods and felt this was done well. The choices you make from your deductions will also shape the story which adds a really interactive element to the way it’s told.
Gameplay
There are two types of difficulty settings: one adds challenge to your investigation, and one to test your combat. If you want to try your investigative prowess you can choose the hardest setting of Master Sleuth to receive no hints, and it won’t tell you when you have collected all key evidence from a crime scene. Having choices in both combat and investigation is great because you could replay on a harder setting if you wish to live your Sherlock Holmes dream.
As detective stories go, this one is pretty hands on, and as you develop your main case you will pick up a number of clues which you will need to match together to make deductions in your Mind Palace. You can find clues by investigating the scene of the crime, examining evidence, and using reconstruction to put together the scene. Reconstruction is a handy tool which lets you use your almost sixth sense to re-imagine the scene and then put the events that take place in order. If you’ve played Call of Cthulhu, this feature has it’s similarities, but it’s down to you in The Sinking City to put these events in sequence.
Clues are abound in The Sinking City, which means putting on your detective hat and picking up on important hints that are provided in each case. Depending on the type of clue, it might lead you to a location which you will need to find on your map. Others will need you to use public records in a police station or the local newspaper, to find a person or further information. You can pin certain clues to your map to help you keep track of which areas to investigate, as well as give you a pinpoint to follow. This is very handy in sorting out your next move and helping you navigate the city. As this an investigative title, putting together the details is crucial to moving onward with the story, which will require carefully reading what you discover.
Getting from point A to B will really depend on whether the road has been submerged in water or not. If it is, you can hop on a speedboat to travel down the flooded paths. Taking the boat is also very useful in discovering abandoned houses which can be explored to loot items, but these are often overrun by monsters. This choice in travel makes exploring more involved, as finding a path to a certain location may be blocked off by floods. You can also use Waypoints, disguised as telephone booths, to quickly travel to points you have already discovered. This was a nice touch as the map is rather big, being separated into a number of districts, and also made me feel like I could teleport using a phone booth which always is a bonus in my book.
If you’re not used to a game that doesn’t hold your hand quite so much, there is a chance you may feel a little lost at times. Even playing on Newcomer setting which gave hints to cases, the game is designed for you to decide what to explore next. After getting through what appears to be the beginning of the main story, you’re left with quite an open-ended choice to explore the city. The game doesn’t clearly explain whether you need to complete side cases to help gather more details, or if you need to explore different areas to trigger the main plot’s continuation. Frogwares have been very apparent from the get-go that this is a story where you take control of the narrative. Having a choice to find out more about the citizens of Oakmont and what has happened to the city is at your own discretion. You can decide to enter the Infected Areas to combat the monsters that dwell there or help those in Oakmont.
Combat
Combat at times can be quite challenging, although you have a choice of weapons to use which includes melee. Finding materials to craft bullets, foot traps or hand grenades can sometimes be scarce which means conserving the items you have is a must. There is no way to block attacks so most of the time it will be up to your ability to move quickly to get a good shot.
The Sinking City does well to induce panic when a spawn of monsters suddenly appear, and you have moments to decide if it’s fight or flight. As there are Infected Areas and houses that are full of nasty beasts, being prepared is your best bet for survival in these situations. There is no tutorial that introduces the different monsters or how to kill them, but the loading screens do give tips which do reveal each type has it’s weak point. You quickly learn that in order to defeat these monsters, you will need to aim for their weak spot which isn’t always easy, as some are very mobile and will pounce on you. Sometimes it’s just best to run away when overwhelmed, as these enemies tend in spawn in groups and can be accompanied by a behemoth looking thing which deals a ton of damage.
As much as I appreciate the number of ways to fight the monsters, what was slightly off-putting was the lack the defense structures gave. Sometimes monsters will appear a floor below, but yet still cause damage when you’re on the second floor. Monsters from Infected Areas would also peek through the barriers, and it made these areas looked glitched out. While some monsters can morph through floors, some of them looked riddled with bugs, getting stuck in places they clearly shouldn’t have been.
While dying doesn’t mean game over, you will be ported to the closest Waypoint to the spot you met your demise. This means if you are quite far from the last Waypoint, you may have to trek back to your original place which can be rather annoying, so dying definitely has its drawbacks. You can also save manually which will let you save your current progress as well as load autosaves if things didn’t turn out the way you planned.
Sanity
In true lovecraftian fashion, a Sanity meter will be something to keep an eye on. As you fight supernatural beings, you will slowly be driven mad. Using your Mind’s Eye to help pick up on mysterious markings will also affect how fast you lose your marbles, but there is a way to deal with the stress of seeing these nightmarish visions. Medication is one such method that will induce a calm state and help you regain your sanity. It was interesting to see how the people of Oakmont react to you attacking in close proximity to them, because they call you crazy, and you’re not sure whether you’re actually seeing horrors or if it’s all in your mind. If you let your sanity levels slip you will start seeing shadowy visions that are just as scary as the monsters themselves.
Skills
As you kill enemies or complete cases you gain experience which can be turned into Knowledge Points. These can be invested in a few different skill trees that can help increase damage done by your revolver, help to decrease your sanity bar when witnessing the supernatural or even increase the amount of materials you can loot. Having a choice in skills definitely increases the number of ways to play and can even create an extra layer of challenge if you decide not to use knowledge points.
Audio & Visuals
Frogwares does well with what they have, a small studio has developed a title with great investigative mechanics, but the graphics are little dated. Characters are quite emotionless in appearance, with varying amounts of detail. The voice acting does what it needs to do, but nothing is extraordinary. You do meet a number of strange looking citizens that have been “blessed” with noticeable traits, but I won’t spoil the story of why they look that way. The monsters are frighting, grotesque and are speedy in movement, so you won’t want to be in one spot for too long when you encounter them. If you don’t see them first you will definitely hear them, they are unnerving and definitely increases the fear factor.
The town is laid out well with it’s 1920’s charm, exploring feels immersive, but a little repetitive in some places. Frogwares makes you feel quite small in such a big town, filled with plenty to discover. However, this is slightly marred by the NPCs that seem to walk into walls and get stuck on inclined ground, so the game is lacking a bit of polish in this area.
Replayability
There are a few options for each combat difficulty, and investigation difficulty, which means you can challenge yourself in these aspects in another playthrough. The open-world structure means you can choose to discover as much or as little as you would like. If you want to gain experience by diving into Infected Areas and defeating the different type of enemies the game has to offer this is up to you. As the loot you find around the town is random this will determine what materials you will pick up and what you can ultimately craft.
Final Thoughts
The Sinking City is a fun game to explore, and while there is a bit of learning curve to use the number of clues you pick up and piece things together, it makes you feel like an actual detective. This isn’t your simple narrative-driven game where all the pieces of the puzzles are handed to you and placed together to form the bigger picture. It is really up to you to deduce what you read and decide where you want to go next for smaller cases. Taking time to understand how the numerous mechanics work, as well as carefully looking through the written clues is key. I enjoyed the variation in gameplay as well, which even introduces diving where you can get that much closer to what is lurking in the murky water.
That being said, there were many things that felt rushed. The bugged out monsters, the lifeless faces and a few glitches here and there just made the game feel a little frustrating at times. The size of the game is quite ambitious but maybe there were too many elements to focus on that made it is a bit of an uneven experience. While not perfectly executed, the game is enjoyable to play and really hones in on the craziness that has swept the city of Oakmont. The amount of content is pretty decent, with varying combat and investigation difficulties to choose from, you definitely get your money’s worth as the title gives a lot do.
If you’ve been looking for a game that takes on the detective role from Call of Cthulhu, added with the combat elements of Vampyr, and a more extensive open-world feel, this would be The Sinking City. And, if you’re a fan of lovecraft titles you will definitely enjoy the story, and even the survival mechanics. The Sinking City handles horror, action and leaves you wanting to find out more as you discover the unsettling tales that plague this maddening world.
The Sinking City releases June 27th on Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC.
If you enjoyed this horror filled detective game then you should read about more sleuthing tales in our Call of Cthulhu review. For a gritty bloodlust title with action combat be sure to read about Vampyr. For a more noir approach to investigation be sure to read our Night Call Preview – A Gritty Noir Murder Mystery.
The post The Sinking City Review – Maddening Exploration appeared first on Fextralife.
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Sensor Sweep: Tower of the Elephant, Leigh Brackett, Kenneth Morris, D&D Survey
Writers (Tellers of Weird Tales): Harold S. Farnese didn’t write any stories, poems, or articles for Weird Tales, nor was he a cover artist or illustrator. His eight letters published in “The Eyrie,” the letters column of Weird Tales, failed to land him in the top twenty contributors in that category. You might say that he was a pretty minor figure in the history of the magazine and its contributors. Except for that part where he was so central to a certain understanding of what we call the Cthulhu Mythos. Beyond that, Farnese may have been the first person to adapt a work by H.P. Lovecraft to a form other than verse or prose.
Fiction (John C. Wright): Conan is young here. The internal chronology of the stories is subject to some guesswork. But it is fair to say that this is the second or third tale in Conan’s career, taking place after Frost Giant’s Daughter (1934). We see him for the first time in what will be his signature costume: “naked except for a loin-cloth and his high-strapped sandals.”
I found, as I often do, that not only is Robert E. Howard a better writer than I was able, as a callow youth, to see he was. He also easily surpasses the modern writers attempting to climb his particular dark mountain. From the high peak, brooding, he glares down at inferior writers mocking him, and, coldly, he laughs.
Particularly when Howard is compared with the modern trash that pretends to be fantasy while deconstructing and destroying everything for which the genre stands, he is right to laugh.
Let us list the ways.
Fiction (DMR Books): After covering Barbarian Book Club’s Pre-Tolkien challenge the other day, I figured there’s no reason not to join in. Dunsany and Merritt have been pretty well covered so far, so I wanted to review something lesser known. Nictzin Dyalhis or Clifford Ball would have been perfect, but it would feel too self-serving if I reviewed one of those. So instead I selected “The Regent of the North” by Kenneth Morris, which I first read, appropriately enough, in the anthology Tales Before Tolkien. It’s the best story in the book besides Merritt’s “Woman of the Wood.” Interestingly, editor Douglas A. Anderson doesn’t believe Tolkien ever read either story, but he included them anyway.
Fiction (Rough Edges): SCARRED FACES is the second novella by Stephen D. Frances featuring Hank Janson (which is also the by-line, of course). In this early tale, Hank is still a traveling cosmetics salesman who just happens to wind up in the middle of violent crimes. This time it’s an acid attack on a beautiful young woman that leaves her dead. Shortly after that, two thugs kidnap Hank and try to take him for a ride because they think he may have seen too much. Of course he escapes, and from there it’s not long until he’s mixed up in a dangerous racket that involves several more beautiful young women, at least one of whom wants Hank dead.
Fiction (Ringer Files): I read this book while the temperatures outside were pushing the 110 degree mark. The acceptance of global warming, or at least, climate change has most of us wondering what happens to a planet that heats up. This book, written in 1963, takes a look at the flip-side of that theory and sees the world under another ice-age.
I picked this up a couple years ago along with several other science fiction novels by Silverberg. I’ve come late to the game in appreciating Robert Silverberg’s science fiction novels. I don’t know how I didn’t read his books when I was in my teens and enjoying Asimov and Clarke and others.
Fiction (Black Gate): Although Leigh Brackett (1915–1978) wrote planetary adventures during the Golden Age of Science Fiction and was married to Edmond Hamilton, one of the Golden Age’s most praised masters, she seems to, well, bracket the era rather than belong to it. Her stories set on fantastical versions of Mars and Venus are indebted to Edgar Rice Burroughs, while her dark emotional intensity looked forward to New Wave SF of the ‘60s. In his introduction to Martian Quest: The Early Brackett, Michael Moorcock wrote that “It’s readily arguable that without her you would not have gotten anything like the same New Wave … echoes of Leigh can be heard in Delany, Zelazny and that whole school of writers who expanded sf’s limits and left us with some visionary
extravaganzas.”
Fiction (Lawrence Person): Here’s a book I picked up more for the state and the publisher than the author. Dark Harvest was a very active small press from the early 1980s into the early 1990s. They published primarily horror and science fiction, and did very well with it, but managed to kill themselves off by branching out in mystery.
Conventions (Western Fictioneers): If there was ever a time when I was especially proud to a member of Western Fictioneers, it was the weekend of our convention in Oklahoma City. Old friends did some catching up, and new friends were made. I lost count of the states represented. (Idaho, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Colorado, California, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, New Mexico, etc.) The discussions were intimate and open, and the session topics were deeply informative, thanks to our many knowledgeable presenters.
Fiction (Paperback Warrior): It’s hard to guess why William Crawford adopted the pseudonym of W.C. Rawford for his 1974 stand-alone western, “Ranger Kirk.” The copyright page says it’s by William Crawford and the book is dedicated to “Robert Gene Crawford, my brother.” Moreover, the pen name of W.C. Rawford isn’t really throwing pseudonym sleuths off the scent. Who was he fooling?
Fiction (Walker’s Retreat): The RPG Pundit put out a video about the survey that Wizards of the Coast recently put out about Dungeons & Dragons. He wasn’t the only one suspecting this. I did too, and seeing that the survey’s cooked to push this meme disease is sufficient confirmation for me to decide to cut WOTC off entirely (and with it, all versions of D&D after Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition).
Gaming (Niche Gamer): Square Enix has shared the first gameplay for the recently announced Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition.
Featured above, the first gameplay of the game was shown off during this year’s Tokyo Game Show.
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition is launching for both PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch sometime next year.
Comic Books (Injustice Gamer): I know there’s the GenCon bit everybody has seen and written about. I just didn’t expect the con to deal itself a deathblow this fast, and that’s all I’ll write here for now.
DC co-publishers Dan Didio and Jim Lee recently did an interview on ICV2 regarding DC’s sales year to year and the industry. Bounding into comics provided a little commentary via numbers, but didn’t go into analysis, instead asking for opinions in the comments section. Didio seems to think the biggest problem is over-saturation of the comics market, while Lee is pointing to declining traffic at Barnes and Noble and waning interest in The Walking Dead.
Gaming (Table Top Gaming News): I know some of my friends are down at AWA downtown. I’m currently safely at home, grooving to some Sims 4 while I wait for this evening’s D&D session. Gotta go take care of that Strahd murder house, y’all! But I know what you are here for are the reviews I know you so desperately desire. So let’s get to it.
Today we have: Super Mario Bros. Party Card Game, Snow Time, D100 Dungeon, Tower of Madness, The Deck of Many Animated Spells, Kariba, Deities Domination, Seal Team Flix, Nanty Narking, Brass, Yellow & Yangtze, Menara, and Quests of Valeria.
Sensor Sweep: Tower of the Elephant, Leigh Brackett, Kenneth Morris, D&D Survey published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames
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“The Derrick”: Part I - Returning To My RPG Roots
I’ve chosen to create a short game scenario set in a universe I’ve been building for literally decades. “The Derrick” has been a very long time in coming.
THE DERRICK - The title card for a possible upcoming interactive horror mystery game.
Now as with almost every story I ever tell you, I have to back up a bit to explain where some things have their origins, specifically the concept behind "The Derrick” as well as the fictional setting of Adams, Oklahoma (in which my upcoing short story “The Tome” is also set).
Like a lot of kids who grew up in the 1970s and the 1980s, I was an avid player of Dungeons & Dragons, and I spent a lot of time kicking down doors, slaying monsters, and trying to hit on succubi (since I couldn’t land a girlfriend in real life in those days). It was a marvelous first introduction to the world of role-playing games.
One day while perusing my favorite game store in Tulsa, Oklahoma I accidentally came across something which nearly cost me my sanity -- which was highly appropriate given that the game in question was the RPG Call of Cthulhu based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft. I was already a gigantic fan of Lovecraft’s literary work, and had devoured nearly everything he’d ever written, but the possibilities of actually playing in his horrifying universe was something that immediately “called” to me. I remember being so excited about it that I didn’t even wait to get home to break open the box, and I sat in the parking lot reading the instructions in my non-air-conditioned car on a punishingly hot Oklahoma summer day.
ROLL FOR SANITY LOSS - Discovering Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu boxed set introduced me to the sanity-losing joy of one of the best RPG systems ever devised. Several year’s later, Call of Cthulhu developer Sandy Petersen wrote the introduction to my book “Swords & Circuitry: A Designer’s Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games.”
By the time I finished reading through the full rule set (thankfully in cooler circumstances), I realized that I’d finally found the game system for me. D&D was hellaciously fun, but sometimes the gameplay felt repetitive. With my group, we mostly spent our time murdering monsters to get their stuff so we could get better equipment to kill bigger monsters to get even better stuff...rinse and repeat ad infinitum. Call of Cthulhu, however, was a game that was about exploring mysteries, solving puzzles, and doing your dead level best NOT to end up in a gun battle with eldritch Outer Gods (which never, ever, ever went well for players who tried to pay CoC like it was just D&D in 20s drag.) I loved that players were constantly battling to stay sane, and that everyone was HIGHLY mortal. Characters never leveled up to being unkillable demi-gods. You were always at risk, always challenged, and you had to use your head while simultaneously terrified about what was lurking around every corner. If you did your job properly as Keeper -- essentially a role equivalent to a Dungeon Master in D&D -- you scared the crap out of your friends as they worked to save the world from cultists, and conspiracies, and monsters who often concealed their actions behind phenomena which ordinary people might dismiss. It helped if you were someone with a strong sense of paranoia about the world.
While CoC was a great game, it was not a title that had a strong following in Oklahoma at the time. It didn’t have the strong word of mouth, and a lot players simply didn’t see the appeal of a horror game set in the 1920s. (It also didn’t help that the Cthulhu pantheon were, for a short time, a badly handled part of the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. They were later retconned into a number of other monsters, with mindflares being the most clearly obvious remnant of Cthulhu’s original imprint on the D&D universe.) For a long time it was simply something I had to love without a regular group, but that didn’t keep me from working diligently on developing my own scenarios to run at OKON, the largest science fiction convention in Oklahoma at the time.
Like most Keepers, my first scenarios were focused on events in the typical settings of Innsmouth or Dunwich or Arkham. There was, after all, a seemingly bottomless wealth of source material upon which to draw from Lovecraft and his Kalem Club contemporaries. What I didn’t love about using his established canon, however, was that it was too easy to have certain details of each town too easily recognized by reasonably well-read players. They knew who Pickman was and what Whaley was up to in the woods. They understood what was happening when people began to display that “fishy” look in Innsmouth. Often they’d have the mysteries solved before we got very deep into my adventures which meant that I had to change my approach. In order to get players off the scent, I had to take them where they’d never been, and introduce them to characters they’d never met. Ardently I set about the creation of an entirely new Massachusetts town named Tallchester, determined to create it in as great a detail as I could manage. Although I wouldn’t have recognized it as that at the time, I was developing my first real experience as a game designer and as a world builder.
A MOLDERING, ANCIENT TOME - My notes on the Tallchester setting have not fared well over the decades, but it somehow makes the content feel moodily appropriate.
DOWNTOWN TALLCHESTER - One of several maps that I drew up as part of the Tallchester campaign setting.
As you can see, my folder for Tallchester is now a crumbling, moldy mess that would be well suited for discovery in the basement of Miskatonic University. In it I have extensive maps, character bios, and a multi-page print out from a BASIC program I’d written to randomly generate NPCs for the entire town. I had reams of handouts to give to players about events mentioned in the local newspaper, some of which were relevant to scenarios I was running, and others of which were “seeds” for adventures still to be written.
YOU LOOKIN’ FER A HANDOUT? - No Call of Cthulhu scenario is complete without a fistful of handouts, and “The Curse of Tallchester” was no exception.
I could easily have spent forever building up that fictional town, but I found that players at conventions really enjoyed it when I relocated my adventures to more familiar settings. Tulsa and its environs had been a major city during the oil boom, placing it right smack dab in the middle of Lovecraft’s 1920s. The richest oil magnate in the world at the time, J.P. Getty, lived in the Mayo Hotel. Movie stars made a point of being seen in the oil capitol, and major aeronautics companies were furiously building there. The north side of Tulsa was for a time the most prosperous black community in America, so much so that it was called “Black Wall Street” (and tragically it would also become the site of the worst race riot in America’s history). In a lot of ways it was an absolutely perfect Lovecraftian city, and all I had to do was put in the work on a source book.
Starting around 1987, I began spending a lot of time in the newspaper archives of the Tulsa Tribune, looking for any sufficiently weird headlines which might serve as the start for an Oklahoma-based Call of Cthulhu campaign. I did not come away disappointed. Between the strong streak of yellow journalism of the day and the strangeness of a world still grappling with spiritualism and science, the Tribune ended up being a gold mine of ideas. There was plenty of stuff to work with, and it was dovetailing with another project of mine to explore the ghost stories of my family and of the neighboring town of Sand Springs -- a town which originally had been named Adams before the land was bought and redeveloped by benevolent city founder, Charles Page.
FRONT PAGE OF THE TULSA TRIBUNE, 2/6/20 - Even Tulsa’s real newspaper was covering some eldritch-level creepiness back in 1920.
Around the time that I was beginning to draw these elements into a cohesive whole, the unthinkable happened. I got a full-time, salaried job in the computer game industry doing EXACTLY what I’d been doing for fun on Tallchester and for Tulsa. I relocated to the west coast where my life became a full time dive into other worlds and other projects. As I lived and breathed new settings with very little spare time, the Tulsa Call of Cthulhu sourcebook was placed on hold and would stay there for a number of years. It wouldn’t be until a visit to the Sand Springs Cultural and Historical Museum and a discussion about the town’s folklore that I’d begin to see an opportunity to fuse both projects into a fictional setting (see my previous blog post about “A Ghost Town of My Own”). My new world would be a dark, mirror image of both Tulsa and Sand Springs and would serve as the heart of a written-for-Chaosium campaign that I wanted to name Crude Awakenings. Not only could it serve as a game framework, it would also serve well as a fictional “verse” for short stories, films, comic books and a number of other potential properties that today we’d call transmedia. Tentatively I began toying with ideas for short stories all set in this universe, with the first tale to be called The Tome set in the city’s gothic and terrifying library.
For another long spell the ideas sat until last November when I began to dust off my notes. I considered the possibilities of simply taking The Tome and turning it into a game, but after reflection, I realized that it wasn’t well suited to being a game. I needed something that would lend itself well to the format, and which wouldn’t need to be completely restructured in order to be made interactive. And so I returned to my notes on Crude Awakenings and the first scenario that I’d described for the campaign. “The Derrick” began with an oil derrick, a mysterious death, and a romp that could lead on to a globetrotting adventure of mystery, exploration, and horror.
And that’s where we begin, back where we started, standing over a dead man in the oil fields south of the eldritch city of Adams, Oklahoma.
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Stephen King: 16 Best Scary Stories to Read
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Here are 16 of the very best horror stories from Stephen King!
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Feature John Saavedra
Stephen King
Apr 5, 2019
Horror
Stephen King is a master of the short story, able to dish out horror tales to make your skin crawl, astounding sci-fi, and even literary reflections aimed at more "sophisticated" readers. He's done it all, with no sign of stopping.
Although I've had the tough task of picking 16 of my favorite King horror tales for this list, you should absolutely pick up ALL of his collections and give them a read through. You'll always find something to give you the chills.
Make a note: this is a list of short stories, not novellas. And on top of that, stories that are genuinely scary. I didn't forget "The Mist" or "N." or "Secret Window, Secret Garden" or any of those other goodies. Those deserve their own article, don't they?
So below: a list of stories and what collections you can find them in. "N." would have been my inclusion from Just After Sunset, but again, that's really a novella. "The Cat from Hell" ain't bad, either. But really, none of the stories from that collection made the cut for me. You can yell at me in the comments.
Enjoy!
Night Shift (1978)
Graveyard Shift
Night Shift, King's first short story collection, is really the crux of this article, as it features several of his best scary tales to date. They have a B-movie sensibility right at home in the late '60s and early '70s, and were influenced by campy cult films and plenty of EC comics. Hell, many of the stories have even become cult films themselves.
"Graveyard Shift," the second story in the book, is a great example of what King can do with seemingly ordinary situations turned bad...really, really bad. In one of his most campy stories to date, a group of men are tasked with cleaning up the abandoned basement of a textile mill that's been infested by rats for years. As they descend into the depths of the mill, the horrors they find are...well, you'll just have to find out, won't you?
Further Reading: Stephen King's 10 Best Horror Novels
I Am the Doorway
If you're a Constant Reader, you're probably used to King's use of body horror. This is one of his early ones and features a bit of science fiction as well. An astronaut returns from a mission to Venus after coming into contact with a strange alien mutagen. Upon his return, he discovers that eyeballs are growing out of his hands! This one is just too much fun to miss...
The Mangler
You've probably heard of this one: a series of very weird (and unfortunate) events causes an industrial laundry press to become possessed by a demon. No, I don't know where the hell this guy comes up with all this stuff. King has a way of turning ordinary blue-collar life into grisly death. This one was turned into a movie directed by Tobe Hooper a few years back, and it stars Robert Englund. Yes, it's as bad as you think.
Trucks
You've probably heard of this one, too. Because King tried to direct a movie based on this story. Motor vehicles have inexplicably come to life and decide to murder all humans who disobey them. The doomed characters in this story suffer a very tragic end that's almost poetic. By the way, the movie King directed is called Maximum Overdrive, and it's the only time anyone was crazy enough to let this guy behind a camera.
Sometimes They Come Back
Okay, you're probably wondering why I totally skipped "Children of the Corn." The answer is simple: that story has become so twisted in its movie form that a) you already know how the story goes, b) what you've seen in those god awful movies has tainted any good perspective on said story. That said, yes, read it or whatever.
BUT, you do get this treat instead: "Sometimes They Come Back" is one of my favorite King stories to date. A teacher is haunted by three psychotic greasers from his childhood. After those around him begin to die, he realizes that he has to fight pure evil with pure evil. Truly creepy.
You can buy Night Shift right here!
Skeleton Crew (1985)
Here There Be Tygers
King loves tormenting little kids in his stories, and believe it or not, "Here There Be Tygers" is one of the lighter examples. And it has nothing to do with the Ray Bradbury story of the same name. In King's story, a little boy really needs to go to the bathroom but is too frightened to do so when he encounters a tiger in the school lavatory. Because of course there's a tiger waiting in a bathroom. King has said that this was one of his earliest stories, written when he was in high school.
The Monkey
This a weird one. A diabolical cymbal-banging monkey toy torments several characters through the years. How does a toy cause such dread in its owner? Well, every time it bangs its little cymbals, someone or something dies. Simple enough.
Further Reading: 12 Best Stephen King Movies
The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands
In a sort of "campfire story" format that's quite fitting for King, a mysterious club in Manhattan gathers to tell tales of the strange and grotesque. A companion to a novella called "The Breathing Method" from Different Seasons, tonight's tale is about a man with a peculiar phobia: he's terrified of touching anyone and avoids all physical contact like it's the plague. The conclusion to this one is quite fun. Maybe not a traditional scary story, but the story circle format really lends it that Halloween feel. I'd love to see an anthology series based on this format - Are You Afraid of the Dark? for King fans.
Gramma
You might know this one. It was later adapted by Harlan Ellison for Twilight Zone '85 and was recently turned into a movie starring Chandler Riggs (Carl from The Walking Dead). A little boy is left alone with his gramma, a bed-ridden old woman who frightens him deeply. As you'd expect, he indeed has a lot to be frightened about. Interestingly enough, horror buffs will notice that this story is part of the Cthulhu Mythos, the shared fictional universe created by H.P. Lovecraft, one of King's idols.
You can buy Skeleton Crew right here!
Nightmares & Dreamscapes (1993)
Home Delivery
I like this one because it's a Stephen King zombie story. Part George A. Romero outbreak epic and part intimate story about reuniting with those you've lost, "Home Delivery" is a good read and even gives us a reason behind the apocalypse that's too fun to miss. King's other "zombie" tale, a book called Cell, is also worth a read.
Sorry, Right Number
No, I guess this one is technically a teleplay, which was produced as an episode of Tales from the Darkside, but it's short enough to read as a short story. Sue me. This is the first King story I ever read—in a school textbook, no less!!—and it remains one of my favorites. A woman receives a very strange call from a distressed woman, who can't quite deliver her message. The message and the outcome of this story are really heartbreaking.
You can buy Nightmares & Dreamscapes right here!
Everything's Eventual (2002)
Autopsy Room Four
Perhaps the most fun story King has ever written, this isn't the kind of King horror you're used to. Yet, it's still exceptionally terrifying. The situation is as real as they come (in a King story, anyway) and the outcome is actually pretty funny. A good story for those looking for lighter fare on Halloween.
The Man in the Black Suit
King's most literary horror story to date tells the tale of a boy's encounter with the Devil, who appears to him as a man dressed in a black suit that smells like burnt matches. The story isn't so much horror as it is a rumination on mortality. The monster in this story isn't out to get you. Instead, it wants to let you know it's there and it's waiting.
Further Reading: A Guide to Stephen King's Dark Tower Universe
The Road Virus Heads North
A killer painting is the subject of this story. Yes, this list has proved that if you put the adjective "killer" in front of pretty much any object, you get a Stephen King monster. Still, this one's plenty of fun, if you like a little camp with your horror.
1408
Rounding Everything's Eventual is "1408," another one of King's "writer in peril" stories that he loves writing so much. This one stars Mike Enslin, a guy who writes about haunted places he's visited. He arrives to the Hotel Dolphin in New York City after he hears about the infamous room 1408. Although he doesn't believe that any of the places he's written about are truly haunted, room 1408 does a lot to change his mind.
You can buy Everything's Eventual right here!
Bazaar of Bad Dreams (2015)
The Dune
King really is having fun with "The Dune," a more classical horror story with a twist ending that will give you chills. A man tells his lawyer a story about his secret obsession with a dune on an unnamed island off the Florida coast that can predict people's deaths. Every time he makes the trip to the island, the man sees a new person's name written in the sand, and within a month, that person is found dead. It's a haunting little story that might remind you of Poe, as the shocking truth behind the man's tale is revealed with a sinister smile.
You can buy Bazaar of Bad Dreams right here!
Alright, Constant Readers, what are your favorite Stephen King horror stories? What are you reading leading up to Halloween? Tell us in the comments!
John Saavedra is an associate editor at Den of Geek. Read more of his work here. Follow him on Twitter @johnsjr9.
A version of this article originally ran on Oct. 30, 2015.
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Sensor Sweep: Battle Tech, Manly Wade Wellman, Savage Heroes, Space Force
Science Fiction (Tor.com): Anyone who has played Traveller (or even just played with online character generation sites like this one) might have noticed that a surprising number of the characters one can generate are skilled with blades. This may see as an odd choice for a game like Traveller that is set in the 57th century CE, or indeed for any game in which swords and starships co-exist. Why do game authors make these choices? Just as games mix swords and starships, so do SFF novels. The trope goes way back, to the planetary romance novels of the Golden Age. Here are five examples.
Fiction Review (Legends of Men): Savage Heroes is a sword & sorcery anthology that’s pretty rare in the U.S. That’s because it’s a U.K. publication. The first S&S anthology I reviewed was Swords Against Darkness. It’s a great anthology that came highly recommended by an expert scholar in the field. Savage Heroes is better though. It captures very well the combination of historical adventure, lost world fiction, and cosmic horror that makes Sword and Sorcery unique.
Fiction (Wasteland & Sky): Hard-boiled noir is an interesting subgenre. It’s mostly remembered in the mainstream, if at all, for cheesy parodies that family sitcoms and cartoon used to do back in the 1990s. What it is remembered for is as a genre about hapless detectives in black and white 1930s settings having to find a killer among a cast of twelve or so shifty character archetypes. Plenty of fun is poked, but they hardly take the genre seriously.
Science Fiction (Scifi Scribe): We’ve all seen the memes, right? The minute the world started talking about the mere idea of a United States Space Force, we were all instantly greeted by “LOL, Space National Guard/Space Force Reserves!” All joking aside, the irreverent interservice banter and, shall we say, “robust,” back-and-forth on social media reflects the very real, and very important, national-level discussions about creating a new military service branch.
Cinema (Jon Mollison): The birth of Dungeons and Dragons is a strange and fascinating story of how creatives can draw forth order from the froth of chaos. I went into this film expecting a lot of defensive snark about how Gary Gygax was a Johnny-come-lately who yoinked the idea of RPGs out from under Dave Arneson’s nose. A fraudulent Edison to Arneson’s Tesla, if you will. And there are hints of that within this film, but only hints.
Art (Mutual Art): Theron Kabrich quietly gazes at Roger Dean’s watercolor, The Gates of Delirium. He has been Dean’s friend and representative at the San Francisco Art Exchange for thirty years, selling his paintings, drawings, and prints to an international audience of collectors. Millions of copies of the image have been made. If Tolkien’s timeless classic inspired Dean’s enduring fascination with pathways at the beginning of his career, it is Robert McFarlane’s writing about wandering journeys along the ancient tracks twisting through the British landscape that have his attention in the present.
Art (DMR Books): Stephen Fabian, as I’ve pointed out before, is a living legend in the fantasy art community. His output from the 1970s to the 2000s—both in quality and quantity—can only be called astounding. I covered some of that in my three-part series on his Robert E. Howard-related art. However, a friend of mine recently brought Fabian’s artwork for In Lovecraft’s Shadow to my attention. That book, in some respects, may be Stephen’s greatest sustained work. In Lovecraft’s Shadow was a collection of August Derleth’s Lovecraftian fiction published in 1998 through a joint venture by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box and Mycroft & Moran.
Review (Tea at Trianon): I remember as a twenty-two-year-old being excited when I saw a new book called the The Mists of Avalon by an author called Marion Zimmer Bradley. Mists was presented as the retelling of the Arthurian legend from the point of view of the women of Camelot, which I thought was a thrilling idea. However, I found the book heavy on paganism and morbid, explicit sex scenes, but light on romance, heroism, chivalry, mystery, faith and all the qualities I had come to love in the Camelot stories. This brings us to Moira Greyland’s recent book, The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon.
Fiction (Adventures Fantastic): I’m going to look at three of his stories that feature the same character, Sergeant Jaeger. First is “Fearful Rock”. Originally published in the February 1939 issue of Weird Tales, the central character of this novella is Lt. Lanark. He and Jaeger are leading a cavalry patrol in Missouri during the Civil War, looking for Quantrill. What they find is a young woman being sacrificed by her step-father to the Nameless One in an abandoned house under the shadow of a formation known as Fearful Rock.
Fiction (DMR Books): Tanith Lee was a force to be reckoned with in the ’70s, ’80s and on into the ’90s. She exploded onto the SFF scene with her debut novel for DAW Books, The Birthgrave. That book was labeled at the time as being “sword-and-sorcery”. I would probably call it heroic fantasy, but it remains a minor classic regardless of specific sub-category. During her forty-plus-year career, Tanith published ninety novels and a myriad of short stories. Her prolificity was on display right away. She quickly followed up The Birthgrave with more notable books like The Storm Lord and Volkhavaar, along with short stories like “Odds Against the Gods” published in Swords Against Darkness II.
Science Fiction (Men of the West): The book. Not the movie. If you can even call Verhoeven’s bastardization “Starship Troopers” at all. Robert A. Heinlein is an increasingly controversial figure in recent years, moreso than he was in his lifetime. This, of course, is due to his dubious content in his later career. But he was nothing if not influential on the genre, and his early works, such as his juvenile novels (of which this was the last), remain worth a read. We may go into Heinlein’s other works later, but the focus is not so much on the man as on the book.
D&D (Jeffro’s Space Gaming Blog): I think Gygax is pretty clear about how initiative works in the DMG. (His surprise rules do make a bit of static, though.) Here’s my take on it: 1) DM decides what the monsters will do. Check reaction and/or morale if need be. 2) Players declare their actions. If they want to win at rpgs, they will advise a high t caller who will then speak for group.
Cthulhu Mythos (Marzaat): “Bells of Horror”, Henry Kuttner, 1939. This is a fairly good bit of Lovecraftian fiction from Kuttner. He uses a typical Lovecraft structure. Our narrator opens by mentioning a weird event then gives the back story of what led up to it and concludes with a not all surprising event. (Sometimes Lovecraft managed to surprise with his last lines, sometimes not.)
Authors (Goodman Games): While all of Wellman’s oeuvre is worth reading, it is his Silver John stories that most impacted the world of fantasy role-playing. Wellman is one of the names on Gygax’s Appendix N roster of influential authors. Although no specific title is listed alongside his name, it’s been suggested that the character of Silver John influenced the bard class in D&D—a wandering troubadour who uses song, magic, and knowledge to defeat supernatural menaces. Stripped of the pseudo-medieval trappings of D&D, the bard and Silver John become almost indistinguishable from one another.
Pulp Art (Dark Worlds Quarterly): It shouldn’t be any surprise that the artists that illustrated Short Stories would appear in Weird Tales and vice versa, though to a lesser degree. Fred Humiston is a good example. For many years, he illustrated half of each issue of Short Stories along with Edgar Wittmack.
Cinema (Film School Rejects): Most movie fans associate Martin Campbell with the Bond franchise and other blockbusters. However, before he became one of Hollywood’s A-list directors, he helmed Cast a Deadly Spell, a genre-bending TV movie that originally aired on HBO back in 1991. It isn’t the most known movie in his oeuvre, but it’s easily one of his most entertaining and rewatchable efforts.
Tolkien (Monsters and Manuals): I have no idea what Tolkien had in mind for the geography of Rhun and the peoples within it. But it seems to me that, while one shouldn’t think of Middle Earth as being too closely paralleled with the real world, there is a case to be made that its character is roughly akin to the Eurasian steppe this side of the Urals – more specifically the Pontic Steppe north of the Black Sea (with the Sea of Rhun here being a bit like the Black Sea).
Gaming ( Walker’s Retreat): The other day I posted a new BattleTech lore video. I mentioned that the channel posting that video did more to promote BattleTech than anything that the current owners of the property–Catalyst Game Labs–have done. All of the other lore channels and battle report channels contribute to this effort, and it helps that Harebrained’s adaptation is very close (but not identical, which it should have been) to the tabletop game, but there’s sweet fuck-all for marketing from the company itself.
Sensor Sweep: Battle Tech, Manly Wade Wellman, Savage Heroes, Space Force published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/
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The Sinking City Review – Maddening Exploration
The post The Sinking City Review – Maddening Exploration appeared first on Fextralife.
Frogwares has released the lovecraftian detective title The Sinking City, combining open-world exploration, combat and a universe of horrors. It’s up to your sleuthing to piece together the mystery of the submerged Oakmont, and in this Review we delve into the gameplay, investigative features of the game, as well as how it feels to explore a story that doesn’t hand-hold.
The Sinking City Review – Maddening Exploration
youtube
Genre: narrative-driven, lovecraftian horror, detective, action-adventure
Published by: Bigben Interactive
Developed by: Frogwares
Release date: June 27th
Platforms: PC (review platform)/PS4/Xbox One/Switch (coming soon)
Price at time of review: $33.99
Website: https://ift.tt/2nTJZhv
Story & Setting
In the city of Oakmont Massachusetts set in the in 1920’s, something very strange and sinister is going on. A rather secluded area where the locals don’t look too fondly upon strangers. Through isolation, a growing lack of trust of the outside world, and a darkness is devouring the city from the inside. Oakmont is now prone to floods that just appeared seemingly out of the nowhere, causing devastation and death.
It’s through the eyes of a private detective that players will experience Oakmont. Rather than spoon feeding players with plot, it is up to you to discover the mysteries that lie in wait, which is a bit of a change of pace in the gaming industry. Through your own skills as a detective, you will unravel the story, and your choices will play a role in what is ultimately unveiled. Witnessing the supernatural will only cause distress, which can gnaw at your own sanity, adding further complexity to the gameplay.
It’s down to you as a private detective to choose which cases to take on, your main case being the primary plot, and side cases that help shape the going-ons in Oakmont. There are cutscenes, visions you will encounter, notes to read, and the townspeople’s accounts that all weave this tale together. I liked the fact there were a number of ways to learn about the plot through various methods and felt this was done well. The choices you make from your deductions will also shape the story which adds a really interactive element to the way it’s told.
Gameplay
There are two types of difficulty settings: one adds challenge to your investigation, and one to test your combat. If you want to try your investigative prowess you can choose the hardest setting of Master Sleuth to receive no hints, and it won’t tell you when you have collected all key evidence from a crime scene. Having choices in both combat and investigation is great because you could replay on a harder setting if you wish to live your Sherlock Holmes dream.
As detective stories go, this one is pretty hands on, and as you develop your main case you will pick up a number of clues which you will need to match together to make deductions in your Mind Palace. You can find clues by investigating the scene of the crime, examining evidence, and using reconstruction to put together the scene. Reconstruction is a handy tool which lets you use your almost sixth sense to re-imagine the scene and then put the events that take place in order. If you’ve played Call of Cthulhu, this feature has it’s similarities, but it’s down to you in The Sinking City to put these events in sequence.
Clues are abound in The Sinking City, which means putting on your detective hat and picking up on important hints that are provided in each case. Depending on the type of clue, it might lead you to a location which you will need to find on your map. Others will need you to use public records in a police station or the local newspaper, to find a person or further information. You can pin certain clues to your map to help you keep track of which areas to investigate, as well as give you a pinpoint to follow. This is very handy in sorting out your next move and helping you navigate the city. As this an investigative title, putting together the details is crucial to moving onward with the story, which will require carefully reading what you discover.
Getting from point A to B will really depend on whether the road has been submerged in water or not. If it is, you can hop on a speedboat to travel down the flooded paths. Taking the boat is also very useful in discovering abandoned houses which can be explored to loot items, but these are often overrun by monsters. This choice in travel makes exploring more involved, as finding a path to a certain location may be blocked off by floods. You can also use Waypoints, disguised as telephone booths, to quickly travel to points you have already discovered. This was a nice touch as the map is rather big, being separated into a number of districts, and also made me feel like I could teleport using a phone booth which always is a bonus in my book.
If you’re not used to a game that doesn’t hold your hand quite so much, there is a chance you may feel a little lost at times. Even playing on Newcomer setting which gave hints to cases, the game is designed for you to decide what to explore next. After getting through what appears to be the beginning of the main story, you’re left with quite an open-ended choice to explore the city. The game doesn’t clearly explain whether you need to complete side cases to help gather more details, or if you need to explore different areas to trigger the main plot’s continuation. Frogwares have been very apparent from the get-go that this is a story where you take control of the narrative. Having a choice to find out more about the citizens of Oakmont and what has happened to the city is at your own discretion. You can decide to enter the Infected Areas to combat the monsters that dwell there or help those in Oakmont.
Combat
Combat at times can be quite challenging, although you have a choice of weapons to use which includes melee. Finding materials to craft bullets, foot traps or hand grenades can sometimes be scarce which means conserving the items you have is a must. There is no way to block attacks so most of the time it will be up to your ability to move quickly to get a good shot.
The Sinking City does well to induce panic when a spawn of monsters suddenly appear, and you have moments to decide if it’s fight or flight. As there are Infected Areas and houses that are full of nasty beasts, being prepared is your best bet for survival in these situations. There is no tutorial that introduces the different monsters or how to kill them, but the loading screens do give tips which do reveal each type has it’s weak point. You quickly learn that in order to defeat these monsters, you will need to aim for their weak spot which isn’t always easy, as some are very mobile and will pounce on you. Sometimes it’s just best to run away when overwhelmed, as these enemies tend in spawn in groups and can be accompanied by a behemoth looking thing which deals a ton of damage.
As much as I appreciate the number of ways to fight the monsters, what was slightly off-putting was the lack the defense structures gave. Sometimes monsters will appear a floor below, but yet still cause damage when you’re on the second floor. Monsters from Infected Areas would also peek through the barriers, and it made these areas looked glitched out. While some monsters can morph through floors, some of them looked riddled with bugs, getting stuck in places they clearly shouldn’t have been.
While dying doesn’t mean game over, you will be ported to the closest Waypoint to the spot you met your demise. This means if you are quite far from the last Waypoint, you may have to trek back to your original place which can be rather annoying, so dying definitely has its drawbacks. You can also save manually which will let you save your current progress as well as load autosaves if things didn’t turn out the way you planned.
Sanity
In true lovecraftian fashion, a Sanity meter will be something to keep an eye on. As you fight supernatural beings, you will slowly be driven mad. Using your Mind’s Eye to help pick up on mysterious markings will also affect how fast you lose your marbles, but there is a way to deal with the stress of seeing these nightmarish visions. Medication is one such method that will induce a calm state and help you regain your sanity. It was interesting to see how the people of Oakmont react to you attacking in close proximity to them, because they call you crazy, and you’re not sure whether you’re actually seeing horrors or if it’s all in your mind. If you let your sanity levels slip you will start seeing shadowy visions that are just as scary as the monsters themselves.
Skills
As you kill enemies or complete cases you gain experience which can be turned into Knowledge Points. These can be invested in a few different skill trees that can help increase damage done by your revolver, help to decrease your sanity bar when witnessing the supernatural or even increase the amount of materials you can loot. Having a choice in skills definitely increases the number of ways to play and can even create an extra layer of challenge if you decide not to use knowledge points.
Audio & Visuals
Frogwares does well with what they have, a small studio has developed a title with great investigative mechanics, but the graphics are little dated. Characters are quite emotionless in appearance, with varying amounts of detail. The voice acting does what it needs to do, but nothing is extraordinary. You do meet a number of strange looking citizens that have been “blessed” with noticeable traits, but I won’t spoil the story of why they look that way. The monsters are frighting, grotesque and are speedy in movement, so you won’t want to be in one spot for too long when you encounter them. If you don’t see them first you will definitely hear them, they are unnerving and definitely increases the fear factor.
The town is laid out well with it’s 1920’s charm, exploring feels immersive, but a little repetitive in some places. Frogwares makes you feel quite small in such a big town, filled with plenty to discover. However, this is slightly marred by the NPCs that seem to walk into walls and get stuck on inclined ground, so the game is lacking a bit of polish in this area.
Replayability
There are a few options for each combat difficulty, and investigation difficulty, which means you can challenge yourself in these aspects in another playthrough. The open-world structure means you can choose to discover as much or as little as you would like. If you want to gain experience by diving into Infected Areas and defeating the different type of enemies the game has to offer this is up to you. As the loot you find around the town is random this will determine what materials you will pick up and what you can ultimately craft.
Final Thoughts
The Sinking City is a fun game to explore, and while there is a bit of learning curve to use the number of clues you pick up and piece things together, it makes you feel like an actual detective. This isn’t your simple narrative-driven game where all the pieces of the puzzles are handed to you and placed together to form the bigger picture. It is really up to you to deduce what you read and decide where you want to go next for smaller cases. Taking time to understand how the numerous mechanics work, as well as carefully looking through the written clues is key. I enjoyed the variation in gameplay as well, which even introduces diving where you can get that much closer to what is lurking in the murky water.
That being said, there were many things that felt rushed. The bugged out monsters, the lifeless faces and a few glitches here and there just made the game feel a little frustrating at times. The size of the game is quite ambitious but maybe there were too many elements to focus on that made it is a bit of an uneven experience. While not perfectly executed, the game is enjoyable to play and really hones in on the craziness that has swept the city of Oakmont. The amount of content is pretty decent, with varying combat and investigation difficulties to choose from, you definitely get your money’s worth as the title gives a lot do.
If you’ve been looking for a game that takes on the detective role from Call of Cthulhu, added with the combat elements of Vampyr, and a more extensive open-world feel, this would be The Sinking City. And, if you’re a fan of lovecraft titles you will definitely enjoy the story, and even the survival mechanics. The Sinking City handles horror, action and leaves you wanting to find out more as you discover the unsettling tales that plague this maddening world.
The Sinking City releases June 27th on Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC.
If you enjoyed this horror filled detective game then you should read about more sleuthing tales in our Call of Cthulhu review. For a gritty bloodlust title with action combat be sure to read about Vampyr. For a more noir approach to investigation be sure to read our Night Call Preview – A Gritty Noir Murder Mystery.
The post The Sinking City Review – Maddening Exploration appeared first on Fextralife.
The Sinking City Review – Maddening Exploration published first on https://juanaframi.tumblr.com/
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Text
The Sinking City Review – Maddening Exploration
The post The Sinking City Review – Maddening Exploration appeared first on Fextralife.
Frogwares has released the lovecraftian detective title The Sinking City, combining open-world exploration, combat and a universe of horrors. It’s up to your sleuthing to piece together the mystery of the submerged Oakmont, and in this Review we delve into the gameplay, investigative features of the game, as well as how it feels to explore a story that doesn’t hand-hold.
The Sinking City Review – Maddening Exploration
youtube
Genre: narrative-driven, lovecraftian horror, detective, action-adventure
Published by: Bigben Interactive
Developed by: Frogwares
Release date: June 27th
Platforms: PC (review platform)/PS4/Xbox One/Switch (coming soon)
Price at time of review: $33.99
Website: https://ift.tt/2nTJZhv
Story & Setting
In the city of Oakmont Massachusetts set in the in 1920’s, something very strange and sinister is going on. A rather secluded area where the locals don’t look too fondly upon strangers. Through isolation, a growing lack of trust of the outside world, and a darkness is devouring the city from the inside. Oakmont is now prone to floods that just appeared seemingly out of the nowhere, causing devastation and death.
It’s through the eyes of a private detective that players will experience Oakmont. Rather than spoon feeding players with plot, it is up to you to discover the mysteries that lie in wait, which is a bit of a change of pace in the gaming industry. Through your own skills as a detective, you will unravel the story, and your choices will play a role in what is ultimately unveiled. Witnessing the supernatural will only cause distress, which can gnaw at your own sanity, adding further complexity to the gameplay.
It’s down to you as a private detective to choose which cases to take on, your main case being the primary plot, and side cases that help shape the going-ons in Oakmont. There are cutscenes, visions you will encounter, notes to read, and the townspeople’s accounts that all weave this tale together. I liked the fact there were a number of ways to learn about the plot through various methods and felt this was done well. The choices you make from your deductions will also shape the story which adds a really interactive element to the way it’s told.
Gameplay
There are two types of difficulty settings: one adds challenge to your investigation, and one to test your combat. If you want to try your investigative prowess you can choose the hardest setting of Master Sleuth to receive no hints, and it won’t tell you when you have collected all key evidence from a crime scene. Having choices in both combat and investigation is great because you could replay on a harder setting if you wish to live your Sherlock Holmes dream.
As detective stories go, this one is pretty hands on, and as you develop your main case you will pick up a number of clues which you will need to match together to make deductions in your Mind Palace. You can find clues by investigating the scene of the crime, examining evidence, and using reconstruction to put together the scene. Reconstruction is a handy tool which lets you use your almost sixth sense to re-imagine the scene and then put the events that take place in order. If you’ve played Call of Cthulhu, this feature has it’s similarities, but it’s down to you in The Sinking City to put these events in sequence.
Clues are abound in The Sinking City, which means putting on your detective hat and picking up on important hints that are provided in each case. Depending on the type of clue, it might lead you to a location which you will need to find on your map. Others will need you to use public records in a police station or the local newspaper, to find a person or further information. You can pin certain clues to your map to help you keep track of which areas to investigate, as well as give you a pinpoint to follow. This is very handy in sorting out your next move and helping you navigate the city. As this an investigative title, putting together the details is crucial to moving onward with the story, which will require carefully reading what you discover.
Getting from point A to B will really depend on whether the road has been submerged in water or not. If it is, you can hop on a speedboat to travel down the flooded paths. Taking the boat is also very useful in discovering abandoned houses which can be explored to loot items, but these are often overrun by monsters. This choice in travel makes exploring more involved, as finding a path to a certain location may be blocked off by floods. You can also use Waypoints, disguised as telephone booths, to quickly travel to points you have already discovered. This was a nice touch as the map is rather big, being separated into a number of districts, and also made me feel like I could teleport using a phone booth which always is a bonus in my book.
If you’re not used to a game that doesn’t hold your hand quite so much, there is a chance you may feel a little lost at times. Even playing on Newcomer setting which gave hints to cases, the game is designed for you to decide what to explore next. After getting through what appears to be the beginning of the main story, you’re left with quite an open-ended choice to explore the city. The game doesn’t clearly explain whether you need to complete side cases to help gather more details, or if you need to explore different areas to trigger the main plot’s continuation. Frogwares have been very apparent from the get-go that this is a story where you take control of the narrative. Having a choice to find out more about the citizens of Oakmont and what has happened to the city is at your own discretion. You can decide to enter the Infected Areas to combat the monsters that dwell there or help those in Oakmont.
Combat
Combat at times can be quite challenging, although you have a choice of weapons to use which includes melee. Finding materials to craft bullets, foot traps or hand grenades can sometimes be scarce which means conserving the items you have is a must. There is no way to block attacks so most of the time it will be up to your ability to move quickly to get a good shot.
The Sinking City does well to induce panic when a spawn of monsters suddenly appear, and you have moments to decide if it’s fight or flight. As there are Infected Areas and houses that are full of nasty beasts, being prepared is your best bet for survival in these situations. There is no tutorial that introduces the different monsters or how to kill them, but the loading screens do give tips which do reveal each type has it’s weak point. You quickly learn that in order to defeat these monsters, you will need to aim for their weak spot which isn’t always easy, as some are very mobile and will pounce on you. Sometimes it’s just best to run away when overwhelmed, as these enemies tend in spawn in groups and can be accompanied by a behemoth looking thing which deals a ton of damage.
As much as I appreciate the number of ways to fight the monsters, what was slightly off-putting was the lack the defense structures gave. Sometimes monsters will appear a floor below, but yet still cause damage when you’re on the second floor. Monsters from Infected Areas would also peek through the barriers, and it made these areas looked glitched out. While some monsters can morph through floors, some of them looked riddled with bugs, getting stuck in places they clearly shouldn’t have been.
While dying doesn’t mean game over, you will be ported to the closest Waypoint to the spot you met your demise. This means if you are quite far from the last Waypoint, you may have to trek back to your original place which can be rather annoying, so dying definitely has its drawbacks. You can also save manually which will let you save your current progress as well as load autosaves if things didn’t turn out the way you planned.
Sanity
In true lovecraftian fashion, a Sanity meter will be something to keep an eye on. As you fight supernatural beings, you will slowly be driven mad. Using your Mind’s Eye to help pick up on mysterious markings will also affect how fast you lose your marbles, but there is a way to deal with the stress of seeing these nightmarish visions. Medication is one such method that will induce a calm state and help you regain your sanity. It was interesting to see how the people of Oakmont react to you attacking in close proximity to them, because they call you crazy, and you’re not sure whether you’re actually seeing horrors or if it’s all in your mind. If you let your sanity levels slip you will start seeing shadowy visions that are just as scary as the monsters themselves.
Skills
As you kill enemies or complete cases you gain experience which can be turned into Knowledge Points. These can be invested in a few different skill trees that can help increase damage done by your revolver, help to decrease your sanity bar when witnessing the supernatural or even increase the amount of materials you can loot. Having a choice in skills definitely increases the number of ways to play and can even create an extra layer of challenge if you decide not to use knowledge points.
Audio & Visuals
Frogwares does well with what they have, a small studio has developed a title with great investigative mechanics, but the graphics are little dated. Characters are quite emotionless in appearance, with varying amounts of detail. The voice acting does what it needs to do, but nothing is extraordinary. You do meet a number of strange looking citizens that have been “blessed” with noticeable traits, but I won’t spoil the story of why they look that way. The monsters are frighting, grotesque and are speedy in movement, so you won’t want to be in one spot for too long when you encounter them. If you don’t see them first you will definitely hear them, they are unnerving and definitely increases the fear factor.
The town is laid out well with it’s 1920’s charm, exploring feels immersive, but a little repetitive in some places. Frogwares makes you feel quite small in such a big town, filled with plenty to discover. However, this is slightly marred by the NPCs that seem to walk into walls and get stuck on inclined ground, so the game is lacking a bit of polish in this area.
Replayability
There are a few options for each combat difficulty, and investigation difficulty, which means you can challenge yourself in these aspects in another playthrough. The open-world structure means you can choose to discover as much or as little as you would like. If you want to gain experience by diving into Infected Areas and defeating the different type of enemies the game has to offer this is up to you. As the loot you find around the town is random this will determine what materials you will pick up and what you can ultimately craft.
Final Thoughts
The Sinking City is a fun game to explore, and while there is a bit of learning curve to use the number of clues you pick up and piece things together, it makes you feel like an actual detective. This isn’t your simple narrative-driven game where all the pieces of the puzzles are handed to you and placed together to form the bigger picture. It is really up to you to deduce what you read and decide where you want to go next for smaller cases. Taking time to understand how the numerous mechanics work, as well as carefully looking through the written clues is key. I enjoyed the variation in gameplay as well, which even introduces diving where you can get that much closer to what is lurking in the murky water.
That being said, there were many things that felt rushed. The bugged out monsters, the lifeless faces and a few glitches here and there just made the game feel a little frustrating at times. The size of the game is quite ambitious but maybe there were too many elements to focus on that made it is a bit of an uneven experience. While not perfectly executed, the game is enjoyable to play and really hones in on the craziness that has swept the city of Oakmont. The amount of content is pretty decent, with varying combat and investigation difficulties to choose from, you definitely get your money’s worth as the title gives a lot do.
If you’ve been looking for a game that takes on the detective role from Call of Cthulhu, added with the combat elements of Vampyr, and a more extensive open-world feel, this would be The Sinking City. And, if you’re a fan of lovecraft titles you will definitely enjoy the story, and even the survival mechanics. The Sinking City handles horror, action and leaves you wanting to find out more as you discover the unsettling tales that plague this maddening world.
The Sinking City releases June 27th on Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC.
If you enjoyed this horror filled detective game then you should read about more sleuthing tales in our Call of Cthulhu review. For a gritty bloodlust title with action combat be sure to read about Vampyr. For a more noir approach to investigation be sure to read our Night Call Preview – A Gritty Noir Murder Mystery.
The post The Sinking City Review – Maddening Exploration appeared first on Fextralife.
The Sinking City Review – Maddening Exploration published first on https://juanaframi.tumblr.com/
0 notes
Text
The Sinking City Review – Maddening Exploration
The post The Sinking City Review – Maddening Exploration appeared first on Fextralife.
Frogwares has released the lovecraftian detective title The Sinking City, combining open-world exploration, combat and a universe of horrors. It’s up to your sleuthing to piece together the mystery of the submerged Oakmont, and in this Review we delve into the gameplay, investigative features of the game, as well as how it feels to explore a story that doesn’t hand-hold.
The Sinking City Review – Maddening Exploration
youtube
Genre: narrative-driven, lovecraftian horror, detective, action-adventure
Published by: Bigben Interactive
Developed by: Frogwares
Release date: June 27th
Platforms: PC (review platform)/PS4/Xbox One/Switch (coming soon)
Price at time of review: $33.99
Website: https://ift.tt/2nTJZhv
Story & Setting
In the city of Oakmont Massachusetts set in the in 1920’s, something very strange and sinister is going on. A rather secluded area where the locals don’t look too fondly upon strangers. Through isolation, a growing lack of trust of the outside world, and a darkness is devouring the city from the inside. Oakmont is now prone to floods that just appeared seemingly out of the nowhere, causing devastation and death.
It’s through the eyes of a private detective that players will experience Oakmont. Rather than spoon feeding players with plot, it is up to you to discover the mysteries that lie in wait, which is a bit of a change of pace in the gaming industry. Through your own skills as a detective, you will unravel the story, and your choices will play a role in what is ultimately unveiled. Witnessing the supernatural will only cause distress, which can gnaw at your own sanity, adding further complexity to the gameplay.
It’s down to you as a private detective to choose which cases to take on, your main case being the primary plot, and side cases that help shape the going-ons in Oakmont. There are cutscenes, visions you will encounter, notes to read, and the townspeople’s accounts that all weave this tale together. I liked the fact there were a number of ways to learn about the plot through various methods and felt this was done well. The choices you make from your deductions will also shape the story which adds a really interactive element to the way it’s told.
Gameplay
There are two types of difficulty settings: one adds challenge to your investigation, and one to test your combat. If you want to try your investigative prowess you can choose the hardest setting of Master Sleuth to receive no hints, and it won’t tell you when you have collected all key evidence from a crime scene. Having choices in both combat and investigation is great because you could replay on a harder setting if you wish to live your Sherlock Holmes dream.
As detective stories go, this one is pretty hands on, and as you develop your main case you will pick up a number of clues which you will need to match together to make deductions in your Mind Palace. You can find clues by investigating the scene of the crime, examining evidence, and using reconstruction to put together the scene. Reconstruction is a handy tool which lets you use your almost sixth sense to re-imagine the scene and then put the events that take place in order. If you’ve played Call of Cthulhu, this feature has it’s similarities, but it’s down to you in The Sinking City to put these events in sequence.
Clues are abound in The Sinking City, which means putting on your detective hat and picking up on important hints that are provided in each case. Depending on the type of clue, it might lead you to a location which you will need to find on your map. Others will need you to use public records in a police station or the local newspaper, to find a person or further information. You can pin certain clues to your map to help you keep track of which areas to investigate, as well as give you a pinpoint to follow. This is very handy in sorting out your next move and helping you navigate the city. As this an investigative title, putting together the details is crucial to moving onward with the story, which will require carefully reading what you discover.
Getting from point A to B will really depend on whether the road has been submerged in water or not. If it is, you can hop on a speedboat to travel down the flooded paths. Taking the boat is also very useful in discovering abandoned houses which can be explored to loot items, but these are often overrun by monsters. This choice in travel makes exploring more involved, as finding a path to a certain location may be blocked off by floods. You can also use Waypoints, disguised as telephone booths, to quickly travel to points you have already discovered. This was a nice touch as the map is rather big, being separated into a number of districts, and also made me feel like I could teleport using a phone booth which always is a bonus in my book.
If you’re not used to a game that doesn’t hold your hand quite so much, there is a chance you may feel a little lost at times. Even playing on Newcomer setting which gave hints to cases, the game is designed for you to decide what to explore next. After getting through what appears to be the beginning of the main story, you’re left with quite an open-ended choice to explore the city. The game doesn’t clearly explain whether you need to complete side cases to help gather more details, or if you need to explore different areas to trigger the main plot’s continuation. Frogwares have been very apparent from the get-go that this is a story where you take control of the narrative. Having a choice to find out more about the citizens of Oakmont and what has happened to the city is at your own discretion. You can decide to enter the Infected Areas to combat the monsters that dwell there or help those in Oakmont.
Combat
Combat at times can be quite challenging, although you have a choice of weapons to use which includes melee. Finding materials to craft bullets, foot traps or hand grenades can sometimes be scarce which means conserving the items you have is a must. There is no way to block attacks so most of the time it will be up to your ability to move quickly to get a good shot.
The Sinking City does well to induce panic when a spawn of monsters suddenly appear, and you have moments to decide if it’s fight or flight. As there are Infected Areas and houses that are full of nasty beasts, being prepared is your best bet for survival in these situations. There is no tutorial that introduces the different monsters or how to kill them, but the loading screens do give tips which do reveal each type has it’s weak point. You quickly learn that in order to defeat these monsters, you will need to aim for their weak spot which isn’t always easy, as some are very mobile and will pounce on you. Sometimes it’s just best to run away when overwhelmed, as these enemies tend in spawn in groups and can be accompanied by a behemoth looking thing which deals a ton of damage.
As much as I appreciate the number of ways to fight the monsters, what was slightly off-putting was the lack the defense structures gave. Sometimes monsters will appear a floor below, but yet still cause damage when you’re on the second floor. Monsters from Infected Areas would also peek through the barriers, and it made these areas looked glitched out. While some monsters can morph through floors, some of them looked riddled with bugs, getting stuck in places they clearly shouldn’t have been.
While dying doesn’t mean game over, you will be ported to the closest Waypoint to the spot you met your demise. This means if you are quite far from the last Waypoint, you may have to trek back to your original place which can be rather annoying, so dying definitely has its drawbacks. You can also save manually which will let you save your current progress as well as load autosaves if things didn’t turn out the way you planned.
Sanity
In true lovecraftian fashion, a Sanity meter will be something to keep an eye on. As you fight supernatural beings, you will slowly be driven mad. Using your Mind’s Eye to help pick up on mysterious markings will also affect how fast you lose your marbles, but there is a way to deal with the stress of seeing these nightmarish visions. Medication is one such method that will induce a calm state and help you regain your sanity. It was interesting to see how the people of Oakmont react to you attacking in close proximity to them, because they call you crazy, and you’re not sure whether you’re actually seeing horrors or if it’s all in your mind. If you let your sanity levels slip you will start seeing shadowy visions that are just as scary as the monsters themselves.
Skills
As you kill enemies or complete cases you gain experience which can be turned into Knowledge Points. These can be invested in a few different skill trees that can help increase damage done by your revolver, help to decrease your sanity bar when witnessing the supernatural or even increase the amount of materials you can loot. Having a choice in skills definitely increases the number of ways to play and can even create an extra layer of challenge if you decide not to use knowledge points.
Audio & Visuals
Frogwares does well with what they have, a small studio has developed a title with great investigative mechanics, but the graphics are little dated. Characters are quite emotionless in appearance, with varying amounts of detail. The voice acting does what it needs to do, but nothing is extraordinary. You do meet a number of strange looking citizens that have been “blessed” with noticeable traits, but I won’t spoil the story of why they look that way. The monsters are frighting, grotesque and are speedy in movement, so you won’t want to be in one spot for too long when you encounter them. If you don’t see them first you will definitely hear them, they are unnerving and definitely increases the fear factor.
The town is laid out well with it’s 1920’s charm, exploring feels immersive, but a little repetitive in some places. Frogwares makes you feel quite small in such a big town, filled with plenty to discover. However, this is slightly marred by the NPCs that seem to walk into walls and get stuck on inclined ground, so the game is lacking a bit of polish in this area.
Replayability
There are a few options for each combat difficulty, and investigation difficulty, which means you can challenge yourself in these aspects in another playthrough. The open-world structure means you can choose to discover as much or as little as you would like. If you want to gain experience by diving into Infected Areas and defeating the different type of enemies the game has to offer this is up to you. As the loot you find around the town is random this will determine what materials you will pick up and what you can ultimately craft.
Final Thoughts
The Sinking City is a fun game to explore, and while there is a bit of learning curve to use the number of clues you pick up and piece things together, it makes you feel like an actual detective. This isn’t your simple narrative-driven game where all the pieces of the puzzles are handed to you and placed together to form the bigger picture. It is really up to you to deduce what you read and decide where you want to go next for smaller cases. Taking time to understand how the numerous mechanics work, as well as carefully looking through the written clues is key. I enjoyed the variation in gameplay as well, which even introduces diving where you can get that much closer to what is lurking in the murky water.
That being said, there were many things that felt rushed. The bugged out monsters, the lifeless faces and a few glitches here and there just made the game feel a little frustrating at times. The size of the game is quite ambitious but maybe there were too many elements to focus on that made it is a bit of an uneven experience. While not perfectly executed, the game is enjoyable to play and really hones in on the craziness that has swept the city of Oakmont. The amount of content is pretty decent, with varying combat and investigation difficulties to choose from, you definitely get your money’s worth as the title gives a lot do.
If you’ve been looking for a game that takes on the detective role from Call of Cthulhu, added with the combat elements of Vampyr, and a more extensive open-world feel, this would be The Sinking City. And, if you’re a fan of lovecraft titles you will definitely enjoy the story, and even the survival mechanics. The Sinking City handles horror, action and leaves you wanting to find out more as you discover the unsettling tales that plague this maddening world.
The Sinking City releases June 27th on Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC.
If you enjoyed this horror filled detective game then you should read about more sleuthing tales in our Call of Cthulhu review. For a gritty bloodlust title with action combat be sure to read about Vampyr. For a more noir approach to investigation be sure to read our Night Call Preview – A Gritty Noir Murder Mystery.
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