If you follow me on Bluesky, you know that I’ve been replaying Bloodborne. I almost always have a Soulsborne game going, because I can reliably get into hyperfocus with them. Yes, I know they are stressful for many players, but they are part of my self-care practice.
There is no question that Bloodborne is my favorite among them. Mechanically, I love its emphasis on speed and aggression. Narratively, it is the very rare cosmic horror video game that manages to come across as vividly and oppressively strange. I’ve mentioned strangeness more than once in this thread, specifically kinds of interior or subjective strangeness. In cosmic horror, though, it is external. Going further, it is existential. The universe is vast and vastly unknowable. Somehow, it is simultaneously hostile and indifferent.
H.P. Lovecraft, as problematic as he is influential, created the Cthulhu mythos, in which humans fail to reckon with incomprehensibility itself. His is a long reach, as many contemporary stories affirm.
The Depths of Madness
Jacic
spoilers
I appreciate how direct this work is with regard to identifying its inspirations. The title recalls Lovecraft stories “At the Mountains of Madness” and “The Horror from the Depths.” The logo is a red-eyed cephalopod. And, yes, there is a bit of R’lyehian–a language invented by Lovecraft.
I think this is all working well as a La Petite Mort offering. Leveraging an already-established cosmology, the author can focus on the content itself. The interface feels appropriately aquatic. The prose approximates Lovecraft’s style, making effective–if perhaps a tad overcooked in a very genre-appropriate way–use of adjectives and adverbs to create dense, atmospheric sentences. Just as I appreciated Amanda Walker’s decision to use a keyword-matching system for An Admirer, I recognize how choosing a recognizable and well-liked rhetorical model almost certainly helped this author make the most of the time available to them.
What of the results, then? I found the overall effect of prose, interface, and choice to be compelling. Other reviewers have noted that the ending felt abrupt, and I can see where they are coming from. I definitely would play a longer version of The Depths of Madness if one were to emerge, unbidden, from the unthinkable depths beyond the stars.
Quite polished-looking for an LPM offering! A strong entry with a substantial amount of text, given the constraints.