A rise to sanity: What does Lovecraftian mean to Call of the Sea
Call of the Sea is inspired by H. P. Lovecraft stories, but it is not a horror game.
But what does Lovecraftian mean?
In the popular imagination, when we hear about Lovecraftian, we can't help but think of investigators from the 1920s shooting their Thompson's at disgusting creatures with tentacles.
Much of this has to do with Sandy Petersen's tabletop role-playing game Call of Cthulhu (1981). In this game, players play a group of investigators who have to face creatures imagined by Lovecraft that ravage the fictional locations of New England.
The richness and freshness of the background of Call of Cthulhu made this setting popular in all types of media: comics, movies, video games, board games. It is entirely possible that many people who know the name of Cthulhu have no more knowledge of the stories of Lovecraft other than that provided by this more pulp version. That being said, if Call of Cthulhu is most people’s starting point, it is a pretty great one.
But what kind of stories did H.P. Lovecraft actually write?
The reality is that they are quite different from the game Call of Cthulhu. Most of the protagonists of Lovecraft novels are passive subjects and not active ones. The plot is explained to them by letter, or it happens to a friend of theirs, or they are involved in a very tangential way.
Precisely because this is Cosmicism or Cosmic Horror, the absolute defenselessness of the human being in the face of a horror that surpasses him.
That’s why many Lovecraftian games focus on horror.
But Call of the Sea is not a horror game.
And why is that?
We wanted to keep the essence of the classic H.P. Lovecraft stories while at the same time giving it a different approach.
Not a pulp one, like Call of Cthulhu, but not a cosmic horror either. So instead of having a passive subject that is drawn into madness by circumstances that he/she cannot control, our purpose is to tell a story of a resolute woman, involved in a mystery, and a journey of discovery and acceptance. Not only the acceptance of other realities outside our own but also focusing on how the discovery of events at a greater scale can lead us to the acceptance of who we really are. A story of mystery and adventure, but at the same time a story of self-discovery.
While most Lovecraft stories are a descent to madness, Call of the Sea is a rise to sanity.
But at the same time, we’re telling a tale that also has many things that would fit a classic Lovecraft narrative. You not only experience the discovery but the collection of facts from those who have lived a horror story. That is one of the reasons we wanted to tell Norah's story. And her search for Harry. A female protagonist witnessing a Lovecraft tale told by letters, and at the same time living another one.
Instead of focusing on the horror, we’re focusing on the surreal.
We are recreating that feeling of predestined fate that all Lovecraft stories have. Our starting point is to do something different. Something that is both faithful to the original H.P. Lovecraft material and with a completely different approach…
It's precisely this unknown Lovecraft that we want to explore in Call of the Sea.
We hope to please Lovecraft fans with the numerous subtle nods and references to his work in Call of the Sea, as well as giving a glimpse of his universe to players discovering it for the first time.
~Tatiana Delgado, Game Director