It’s one of gaming’s oldest, richest genres and one that has continued to enjoy a mass following despite relatively little changing since its early PC heyday. Of course, we’re talking about the turn-based strategy genre, best known for churning out mega-hits including XCOM and Civilization, 2018 also seeing its fair share of entries such as The Banner Saga 3, Into The Breach, Battletech, and Phanom Doctrine. Joining them later this year is Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics from developers Auroch Digital.
To some, that name will sound familiar. Of course, plenty of you will have heard of H.P. Lovecraft and his iconic eldritch horrors. However, there will also be those aware of Achtung! Cthulhu and its tabletop/roleplaying games created by Modiphius Entertainment. These are the basis for Cthulhu Tactics, an upcoming adaptation that is a living part of this universe.
We recently caught up with Auroch Digital Producer, Nina Adams, and Production Assistant, Peter Willington, to talk Lovecraft, turn-based strategy, and how the genre is actually a perfect fit for horror.
Although it has a discernible point of origin, Cthulhu is unlike most media properties we see today, as Adams explains:
“Cthulhu is technically out of license which is why people are now using it. Lovecraft’s books are so old that they aren’t protected by copyright so anyone can do anything with them, really. It’s definitely turned into this full world of people adapting it in loads of different ways.”
Cthulhu is therefore referred to as a “mythos” and one that’s completely open for others to borrow, expand, and use in their own works. It takes only a cursory glance at many works of fantasy and science fiction to link them back to some of his original creations. It’s basically a buffet for horror writers.
If the name itself wasn’t already a dead giveaway, Achtung! adapts Lovecraft’s lore within a World War II setting, albeit one with a clear pulp influence. Part of what makes Cthulhu Tactics so ambitious is how it’s being integrated into the existing Achtung! universe. Instead of being a standalone video game, Auroch’s adaptation is, in fact, part of a living campaign known as The Forest Of Fear.
It’s all canon with this story informing the roleplaying game and vice versa though either can be enjoyed exclusively without the other. With that comes a challenge for Auroch, staying true to the fiction while making sure Modiphius and its own fans are on-side.
“There is definitely a Lovecraft fandom and there are definitely people who go black and blue on how to pronounce certain names,” Adams told us.
“But there’s a bit more creative interpretation with it – especially something so old. If you are a Star Wars fan then there’s an absolute certain way that things should look. If you did an interpretation of one of the starships and it wasn’t right, you’re going to get into trouble.
Because Lovecraft’s books and drawings were done so long ago, there’s a lot more creative freedom there. What we do have is Modiphius’s fanbase who are a strong fanbase so we are keeping them in mind – we need to keep them happy.”
One way Auroch has done this is by capturing the look of the Achtung! universe, especially the tabletop miniatures. In fact, Modiphius shared the CAD files for its Cthulhu models to make their video game counterparts look as authentic as possible. Of course, given the static nature of the miniatures, Auroch had to make some adjustments so these characters and creatures could animate properly on-screen.
Some of these characters were shown to us in a preview build demonstration, dropping players directly into the Ardenne, in an area colloquially known as the Forest of Fear.
“At this point in the story, D-Day has just kicked off,” Willington explains. “The Nazis are retreating and really need something to turn the tide in their favor – so they go digging for artifacts. In the real world, the Nazis were genuinely interested in the occult. Or at least certain, high-ranking members were.”
It’s true. During World War II, Hitler had an order known as the Black Sun: agents dispatched to Egypt, Morocco, and other places steeped in ancient history in search of relics. They were basically living out Raiders of the Lost Ark, as Adams pointed out.
The way Cthulhu Tactics is set up will be familiar to anyone who’s had a brush with the turn-based strategy genre. Much of the action is focused around battle encounters in which players are encouraged to think tactically, surveying the battlefield, positioning their heroes, and carefully considering each action.
The word “heroes” is particularly key here. Instead of customizing a team of generic grunts, Achtung! features fully crafted characters – a band of Nazi-hunting misfits, each with their own backgrounds, personalities, and combat proficiencies. Although there’s no permadeath, comrades that fall in battle will be captured by the enemy, forcing you to conduct a rescue mission before continuing the campaign.
The game’s momentum mechanic also helps emphasize its pulp influences, as Willington explains:
“In pulp, the heroes are big, strong, and are doing all these crazy things. They don’t just sit there and do nothing so we encourage players with “momentum”. We say hey if you’re doing cool things, we’ll give you points for doing those cool things and then you can spend that momentum in different and interesting ways. For example, overwatch attacks, using secondary weapons and special abilities.”
Furthermore, these characters can be customized as you progress through the campaign. Aside from new weapons, attachments, and upgrades, you will be spending points to unlock a diverse spread of powers, Achtung!’s branching skill trees allowing multiple playstyles for each hero.
While horror can be used as a backdrop for just about any video game genre, weaving it into how we actually play them is something else entirely. As such, in a strategy title where you manage multiple characters from a top-down view, there’s little scope for jump scares or terrifying chase scenes. However, when you look deeper, horror and strategy can be spliced together surprisingly well, and in a way that perfectly encapsulates Lovecraft.
“Here’s the thing,” Willington told us. “Mechanically it’s difficult to convey horror in strategy games but when you think about it, Lovecraft was all about the unknown. There are whole stories about what you don’t know that lives beneath the ground that is the biggest existential threat facing humanity.”
“I’ve read the entirety of his fiction and there’s a lot. And, you know what, they’re not actually scary. When you read them, they’re not. What’s actually terrifying about them is that you close the book then go “Oh, what if that was actually real?”. There’s this existential dread that goes through the whole thing – you feel uncomfortable the whole time.”
In Cthulhu Tactics that sense of dread – of treading into the unknown – is represented by what Auroch calls “the shroud”. Strategy fans will be familiar with the fog of war concept, though here it is being used to adapt gameplay beyond obscuring a player’s view of the battlefield. Hidden enemies will be more powerful and there’s also the chance that, when engulfed, one of your party members will succumb to madness. The shroud does much more than display what your characters can see – it’s a visual representation of good versus evil.
Cthulhu Tactics also creates horror and a feeling of unpredictability through the emergent scenarios players inevitably find themselves in.
“Things that are scary for a player are when you don’t have perfect information,” Willington clarifies. “Things like when your character get stressed out when player pieces are no longer in your control. So you can set up this big strategy with four characters that is working out like clockwork and then one of them absolutely loses it. Well suddenly that strategy is way less effective and that’s quite worrying as a strategy player: the unknown, the things that are out of your control.”
Of course, these kinds of situations aren’t exclusive to Achtung! and if there’s one thing we’ve learned in the past several months it’s that 2018 is packed with top-tier strategy games of all shapes and sizes. Then there are the aforementioned giants such as XCOM and Civ, whose players continue to rack up countless hours of playtime long after their initial release.
Auroch is definitely aware of this.
“You aren’t ever going to beat Firaxis,” Willington puts it rather bluntly, and there’s nothing wrong with having that perspective. Simply trying to copy XCOM or reskin it to suit the team’s Lovecraft setting wouldn’t work, especially with only ten to twelve people working on
Tactics. Of course, there is some inescapable overlapping though Auroch continues to experiment with the format as we’ve seen with the shroud and momentum mechanics as well as having a story-driven, character-focused experience. Cthulhu fans will be able to see how well the upcoming strategy game comes together when it launches on PC October 4 and on PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch at a later date.