Fish sound fish sound, punch punch jump.... ELDRITCH

Eldritch

The Basics: Lovecraftian 1st Person Rogue-like

Previous Time Spent: 45 minutes

Expectation of learning Curve: low

Why I bought this: Super-cheap steam sale, reviews, lovecraftian elements

First Impressions: Everything looks super blocky, giving it a minecraft feel, movement is quick and feels pretty floaty, and everything is fairly deadly (including the player, I managed to kill myself at one point by throwing a rock at something and having that rock bounce back into me). Monsters are a bit corny and predictable in their behavior, but the fragility of the main character makes any encounter with them a little terrifying. Lastly, this is a very vertical game, and it expects you to be thinking in 3 dimensions, looking for ways to get down, etc.

My 3 hours: Like many roguelikes, this game presents a world that changes slightly each time you die, not allowing for memorization. Eldritch is centered around some kind of mystic library, in which our protagonist enters different worlds through books. The end goal of each book is to travel down several levels and find/grab the soul of a mythos god. This entails exploring a minecrafty map full of Lovecraftian themed monsters, think cultists, fishmen, old ones, and giant penguins. As you go deeper in each world, things get noticeably stranger, with the air being replaced by some kind of breathable fluid, and monsters getting far more terrifying.

In these worlds, the player is aided by a mix of mundane equipment and magic powers which feel very close to the powers in Dishonored. The mundane equipment runs the gamut from the humble rock, dagger and revolver to the more exciting grappling gun, dynamite, or lockpick set. The magic abilities are great, and are bestowed to the player through statues of the great Cthulhu himself. In Eldritch, a player can only have 1 magic power at a time, and there is no way of knowing what you'll acquire from a new statue, so there's an interesting choice to be made any time you run into a statue in the cyclopean depths. I ran into the following powers in my playthroughs: teleportation, super-jumping, shoggoth summoning, and monster charming.

Over the three hours that I played, I only managed to consistently finish one of the three settings open to me, and capture the soul of Dagon. I spent a decent amount of time in a Mountains of Madness themed setting, and an ancient Egyptian/Nyarathotep themed map. Both of which were weird and challenging, although I'll admit to having enjoyed my seemingly endless delve into the penguin and shoggoth filled ice-caverns of death the most. 

My Highlight:  Gaining the ability to teleport, and finding myself actually caring about my character's survival. Finishing the Dagon area with this character before diving into the Mountains of Madness, and eventually dying in my retreat from a Shoggoth in some kind of icy trap.

My Verdict:  Eldritch is a game with simple core systems, a decent amount of challenge, and enough variety to eat up a number of afternoons. I'd recommend it if you don't mind slightly loose movement.

Next post will be on October 9th, where I'll be reviewing Endless Space, a 4x game. produced by the same folks that made the celebrated Endless Legend.