Despite not having much clout during his lifetime, H. P. Lovecraft’s posthumous legacy has been undeniably immense. His fingerprints are all over pop-culture, with his Cthulhu mythos inspiring new books, featuring on TV shows (including South Park), sneaking into movies and even forming the basis for popular board games.
Yet arguably no medium returns to this well more often than videogames. From Bloodborne to Darkest Dungeon, Amnesia, and a whole host of direct adaptations, so many of our favorite titles are indebted to this writer’s vivid imagination and intricate lore.
Most recently, there is The Sinking City: an open-world investigative game developed by Frogwares, the team who brought us the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series. Trading in one literary giant for another, Frogwares have fully immersed themselves in Lovecraft’s work, creating an experience that is painstaking faithful and filled with clever nods to the famous lore. At the same time, they’ve also come up with a brand-new narrative, one that exists within the same universe as his stories but has its own unique setting and characters.
Attending a launch event in Paris, we got a chance to speak with Sergey Oganesyan (Frogwares’ community manager) about all of the research that informed the game, its relationship to the Lovecraft canon, and how they used an innovative creation tool to bring the titular city to life.
Bloody Disgusting: The game is set against the historical backdrop of the roaring twenties, which is obviously very fertile ground from a storytelling perspective. Would you be able to talk a little about the research that went into depicting the era?
Sergey Oganesyan: When it came to the period setting, the first thing we considered was how it would impact the city itself. We turned to early twentieth century Boston as a reference point and looked at what was going on, how the community was affected by the Great War, the music scene, how people were dressing and the rich architecture.
I think that last point is one of the standout features of the game actually. Because you can see how the city has developed over time. It starts with the harbor district – which is from the 17th century and has a more colonial influence – but then, as you spread outward, you see architecture and buildings from all different eras.
BD: It used to be that horror games were very claustrophobic in nature, often confined to a single location. For example, Resident Evil is set mostly within the Spencer Mansion.
SO: Yeah.
BD: So, was it challenging to preserve elements like dread, atmosphere, and isolation, whilst also giving players the freedom to explore a vast environment?
SO: Well, we had a similar philosophy to Silent Hill and The Evil Within 2, two games that managed to make this concept work through their design and atmosphere. In our case, we had an [oppressive] location that is flooded, filled with fog and other effects, and there aren’t many people around either. With a creepy setting like that, it’s quite easy to create suspense, even if it is an open world.
BD: On that subject, this is the first time that Frogwares have tackled a project of this scale. Would you say it was an intense jump?
SO: [Laughs] We had to literally spend a year just developing tools to help us create the city.
BD: Are you talking about the ‘’City Generator’’?
SO: I am! Without that, it would have been impossible for us to manually place all the objects on the map. You know, The Sinking City is quite big. It might not be the largest game in the world, but it’s way more expansive than our Sherlock Holmes titles. And we had to think about mixing up the intersections, the buildings, and the landmarks, so that players don’t get bored. We knew that they should be seeing something interesting every few hundred meters.
BD: That brings me to my next question, how do you keep it varied and dynamic whilst using this automatic City Generator? How do you prevent the design from feeling too repetitive?
SO: You mean how do we stop it from looking like it was made by a machine?
BD: Exactly.
SO: Well, we didn’t use the tool to generate a whole city in one go. Instead, we did it district by district.
The way we did that was by first setting up a grid and then populating it with the right buildings. So, for example, if we knew that somewhere was going to be in the wealthy part of town, then we limited the architectural styles and characters that the tool could choose from, so that it would only be able to select appropriate ones (Frogwares used this to recreate the real-life Istanbul).
Then, once the small neighborhood had been generated, we’d go over it manually to check for identical assets and replace any duplications. We’d also edit in little touches like seaweed, machinery, cars, making it feel like place that was created by a human being and not by a robot.
BD: Avid readers of Lovecraft will know that he tends to keep his descriptions quite vague. All his monsters and cosmic horrors are deemed ‘’unimaginable’’ or ‘’unspeakable’’ and so there isn’t much detail on what they look like. However, videogames are obviously a different medium and you had to depict these creatures visually? How did you go about that?
SE: First, I have to make a distinction because we have monsters in the game and then we have the great ‘’Old Ones’’. Designing the former was relatively easy, as we decided to make them, look almost-
BD: Humanoid?
SE: Yes, Humanoid! But at the same time not completely humanoid. That way it creates a problem for your mind, and it doesn’t know how to react. So that’s the monsters.
Then there are the Old Ones which, as you said, are supposed to be indescribable and shapeless. That meant it was up to our interpretation to figure out what they look like. As Lovecraft experts, we studied some of the pre-existing drawings and then thought about how we could use that [material] to inform our designs, whilst also going in our own direction. We wanted them to fit into the canon, but to still have a bit of our own style.
It wasn’t as hard as you’d think. A tentacle here, a huge eye there [Laughs].
BD: You just mentioned that you wanted to stay true to the canon, and I think it’s really cool that the game outwardly acknowledges Lovecraftian lore. You’ve got Innsmouthers sewn into the narrative, and allusions to the Esoteric Order of Dagon. When you started work on the project, were there any particular references that you knew you had to include?
SE: The main source of inspiration, among other stories, was obviously The Shadow over Innsmouth. Its themes are tied very strongly to our game and the Innsmouthers themselves are a key part of the narrative. Then there’s some more minor stuff as well. It’s worth pointing out that we didn’t look at Lovecraft in isolation though. We took cues from some of his predecessors as well, like Edgar Allen Poe and Robert W. Chambers.
BD: On the flip side, did you want to make any major deviations from the source material? I’m thinking specifically about the inclusion of combat. When confronted by a monster, Lovecraftian protagonists are more likely to faint than draw a pistol.
SE: You’re right, the combat is probably the biggest deviation we made, as Lovecraft didn’t typically write protagonists who could stand their ground. Although he did occasionally, such as in The Dunwich Horror.
Anyway, because this is a video game and not a book, we needed to put additional pressure on the audience. Combat is a good way of doing that. If this was just an adventure title, like Sherlock Holmes, then you’d lack threat. You can’t really lose in that genre and there’s no sense of danger, which wouldn’t suit Lovecraft at all.
BD: So, you needed the combat to raise the stakes?
SE: Absolutely. It’s the same reason we brought in the sanity mechanic. It’s an additional point of pressure.
BD: When it comes to the investigation side of things, the game is quite hands-off. You have to figure out where to go, how to interpret objectives and what the clues mean. How do you get players to take the initiative in this way, without the risk of frustrating them?
SE: I assume you’re looking for an answer more sophisticated than ‘’playtesting’’? [Laughs] But that’s really it! The thing is, we designed our quests in a backward kind of way. Almost a reverse path.
BD: You did the endings first and then figured out the rest?
SE: Yes! Imagine you’re in a dark room and you can illuminate part of your surroundings but can’t see the full picture. That’s what it’s like designing the narrative for our game and we find it helps to piece it together backwards.
So, to return to your original question, we understand that players might sometimes be a little frustrated if they don’t know what to do or where to go. Yet at the same time, we’re sure that all the clues are there.
BD: The development updates on your YouTube Channel are really insightful and fascinating to watch. A lot of them talk about how you wanted to avoid the tropes of horror games, especially jump scares. What’s your stance on that? Do you think jump scares can ever be a valid source of fear?
SE: I don’t think we do any scripted jump scares, at least not to the extent that something like Outlast does. This is a different kind of experience. It’s more of a psychological thriller. It’s about being creepy than scary. Which means there’s no real place for jump scares.
BD: In one of those dev diaries, you mention that Frogwares like realism ‘’to a degree, but it cannot stand in the way of exploration and fun’’. Do you have any specific examples of where this mindset affected the game-design?
SE: Investigation comes to mind, because we could go really deep with that, to the point where it would feel like a simulator of all the busy work detectives have to do. Yes, you still use the archives and things like that, but we have streamlined the process a little. It’s not as detailed as it would be in real life.
Then you’ve got the boat controls as well, which might not be entirely accurate, but the way we’ve done them just feels more responsive and enjoyable.
BD: To round things off I thought we could talk a little about the Switch version of The Sinking City. Obviously, Nintendo’s console is not as powerful as the others, so what kind of compromises were made to get the game running?
SE: We’re still optimizing the Switch version, but I can tell you that there will be inevitable compromises. We’ll have to reduce the graphical power, although I don’t know what the extent of that will be yet. I think you will notice the difference if you put them together.
However, we’re trying to reduce things that you don’t really see on a portable screen. Things like the number of polygons and particle effects. When we [remove] that stuff, the average player won’t notice, but it’ll really help the game run much smoother.
BD: And will the Switch version have motion controls?
SE: Of course! We will have gyroscope aiming, touchscreen elements, and other such features.
The Sinking City is out now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.