Unlike the unfathomable eldritch horror it namedrops in its subtitle, Gibbous: A Cthulhu Adventure is light, funny and (mostly) delightful. It also differentiates itself from the Great Old Ones by refusing to overstay its welcome.
Like another famously tentacle-centric point-and-click, Romanian developer Stuck in Attic’s Kickstarted Lovecraftian comedy game entrusts players with a roster of three distinct characters. Buzz Kerwan is a Transylvanian-American librarian, whose life is upended after a brush with murderous cultists. Don R. Ketype is the hard-boiled detective archetype (get it?) who accidentally leads those hooded zealots right to Buzz. And, Kitteh is Buzz’s pet cat who gains the power of speech after a cultist-caused explosion uncovers a dark secret hidden within the library: the Necronomicon.
Kitteh isn’t happy about her predicament, and Buzz sets out to help turn her back into a regular, speechless cat, searching for clues around his apartment and the surrounding town of Darkham. Ketype, meanwhile, awakens in a cell at cultist HQ, and must attempt to escape. Buzz and Ketype each have special skills to assist in their pointing-and-clicking. Buzz can, essentially, use Kitteh as an item, combining her with objects in his inventory or clicking a black cat icon to ask her to assist with a task. Ketype gains the ability to see flashes of the past early in the game, allowing him to dig up information on people or objects in the environment.
Like a tadpole slowly maturing into a Kraken, Gibbous’ story gradually balloons until it’s a globetrotting quest with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. And, for the most part, that works. Each of Gibbous’ seven chapters are mostly confined to a single location. Early on, you’ll explore Darkham before venturing to neighbouring Fishmouth and then beyond, and each setting has its own cast of characters and distinct feeling of place.
I was drawn in by the game’s ‘90s cartoon aesthetic, which updates the old school point-and-click look in a way that’s similar to what Double Fine accomplished with the remastered versions of Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle. It’s great! However, Gibbous suffers in comparison to those Tim Schafer-penned classics when the gorgeous, hand-painted character models open their mouths. Ketype is the most consistently successful of the main cast (working within an established genre trope certainly helps), but Buzz’s personality — is this guy smart? is this guy really clueless? is this guy somehow both smart and really clueless? — remained hard to pin down throughout the game’s 12-hour runtime.
The dialogue is sometimes similarly awkward. Multiple moments made me laugh out loud, but many of the jokes don’t fully land or are poorly worded. Generally, the script feels like it could have used a punch-up. But, the mood — established by that fantastic art and some excellent violin music — more than makes up for any failings of the script. Additionally, the puzzles manage to walk the fine line between brain teaser and bullshit surprisingly well. Much of the gameplay follows the old point-and-click formula — talk to everyone, collect items, combine items, and, if all else fails, click on everything — but the puzzle logic is impressively sound. The big set-piece puzzles — which could have easily sent players hunting for a walkthrough — require some critical thinking, but rarely moon logic. Gibbous manages to avoid being too easy and too frustrating. It’s challenging at times, but mostly succeeds at keeping the player within a state of flow.
Unfortunately, Gibbous doesn’t accept the challenge of reckoning with the troubling aspects of H.P. Lovecraft’s legacy. The famous Rhode Islander’s racism influenced the themes that color his work. Fear of the other, fear of the horrifying results of combining man and monster — these are ideas that grow out of Lovecraft’s hatred of people of color (check out the “Race” section of his Wikipedia entry if you want receipts, but be warned: the dude wrote some vile stuff).
Most Lovecraftian games seek to ignore this aspect of Lovecraft’s work, keeping the imagery and themes, but omitting the author’s views. But, Gibbous seems to acknowledge Lovecraft’s racism, to some extent. Kitteh (a black cat, like the Lovecraft family’s black cat with a notoriously racist name) being front and center in marketing materials seemed like an indicator that the game would attempt to say something about that aspect of its inspiration’s legacy. But, no. Gibbous never rises to that particular challenge. It isn’t unique in that regard, but I want to see games, as a whole, do better.
That said, Gibbous skirting that particular conversation helps ensure that it’s a fun, breezy ride from beginning to end. Last year, Unavowed pointed the way forward for an old school genre, introducing a BioWare-like party system and unique puzzles that were specific to certain team compositions. One critic remarked that Wadjet Eye’s game raised “the bar so much I expect most others will just pretend Wadjet Eye didn’t do it.” Gibbous doesn’t do any of that. It doesn’t have any radical ideas (or much to say about the radical idea of its inspiration). But, fans of old LucasArts adventure games will find a lot to love (and laugh at) in Stuck in Attic’s debut.
Gibbous: A Lovecraft Adventure review code for PC provided by the publisher.
Gibbous: A Lovecraft Adventure is out now on PC.