By Adam Smith on May 3rd, 2012 at 8:00 pm.
Having already existed on magical futurephones, Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land is a bit of an old one but that’s par for the course when you’re dealing with Lovecraftian horror. The turn-based tactics should actually be a better fit for the PC, as the intimate nature of the squad-based trenchtacle combat often made unit and target selection somewhat problematic on a small phone touchscreen. Imagine poking the wrong bit and actually calling Cthulhu by mistake. He’s in a totally different timezone to you and now you’ve woken him up and he’s got a face like thunder. The game is available now through the Intel AppUp store, priced at $4.99/€4.09/£3.50. I’ll investigate in due course. Launch trailer below.
The warbly radio reminds me of this, which is in many ways like listening to a ghost.
03/05/2012 at 20:14 Anthile says:
Ftaghn yeah!
Edit: Apparently you need a credit card. Too bad.
03/05/2012 at 20:28 Fumarole says:
This looks R’lyeh good.
03/05/2012 at 20:34 thomashanauer says:
Oh R’lyeh?
03/05/2012 at 20:49 Pamplemousse says:
I can’t imagine playing it on a phone, I’m sure it would just make my Eihort.
03/05/2012 at 20:50 The Doge says:
I dunwhich platform I should get it on
03/05/2012 at 21:08 westyfield says:
Arkham’t believe we’re doing puns again.
03/05/2012 at 21:11 Dog Pants says:
Ia thought it was pretty good on the iPad, but it isn’t very Leng. Still, I Mi-Go buy it again on PC.
03/05/2012 at 23:08 tikey says:
I shoggoth to try it before buying it.
03/05/2012 at 23:38 Claidheamh says:
I would just like to know if Adam puked a little Innsmouth when/if he played it.
04/05/2012 at 02:39 exsanvbx says:
Magic magic! Fingertips Fire! My hands can burn!
http://liteurl.ru/bm3
This doesn’t have the level of moe I require from Lovecraft derivative works.
03/05/2012 at 20:16 HaVoK308 says:
Intel AppUp was an odd choice for distribution. I wasn’t even aware it existed until this article. Any chance this is coming to STEAM?
03/05/2012 at 20:27 Deadly Habit says:
it was the same thing that came to mind for me (especially since you have to download the intel appup client to buy this) i tweeted the dev and got the following response:
@deadlyhabit Intel helped with the development costs to PC and paid for translations into other languages. AppUp is a free download.
so it seems like a no
03/05/2012 at 23:47 HaVoK308 says:
That’s too bad. I understand their reasoning, but it may turn out to hurt them in the long run. Personally, I have no desire to put yet another client on my PC and register yet again. Lately, if it’s not a DRM Free EXE. or on STEAM I pass.
Some developers just don’t get the point. Claiming AppUp is a free download means nothing to me. It is still another service I have to put on my PC and probably another registration. That is an inconvenience. At least for me. And most gamers do not like to be inconvenienced. Unfortunately this anti-consumer behavior seems to be the norm nowadays.
04/05/2012 at 00:22 JFS says:
I tell you, it’s hard to get good service nowadays.
04/05/2012 at 00:25 Deadly Habit says:
I’ve been going back and forth with them on twitter trying to find out if the intel appup client is still required to run the game after you buy it, or if i could just immediately uninstall it.
They don’t know and haven’t tried.
I always find it funny when companies seem to go out of the way for me not to give them my money.
03/05/2012 at 20:18 Sarissofoi says:
To Ctuhulu?>
With bullets?!
03/05/2012 at 21:35 S Jay says:
Exactly my thoughts.
03/05/2012 at 21:19 Freud says:
Did you see him hit that tentacled thing for 39 damage? That was awesome.
03/05/2012 at 21:37 B1A4 says:
So, it’s like Gorky 17 but with Kutulu.
03/05/2012 at 22:12 bakaohki says:
Incubation: Battle Isle Phase Four.
04/05/2012 at 08:14 xcopy says:
Exactly my thoughts!
Ah, the memories.
03/05/2012 at 23:43 ShineyBlueShoes says:
Shame, cause it looks nice and I wouldn’t mind giving them money but I really don’t like lack of options in my “platform” anymore since I’m already committed to three (not counting Origin since that just exists for BF3) and that’s plenty enough.
03/05/2012 at 23:58 malkav11 says:
I don’t feel like tactical RPG is the right genre for Cthulhu Mythos fare.
04/05/2012 at 00:27 Deadly Habit says:
This is based on the pen and paper CoC game by Chaosium, while the combat in that almost results in death for the investigators or insanity when encountering any of the creatures from the mythos, it does make sense in the context of turning a pen and paper rule system to a tactical combat game.
04/05/2012 at 01:59 malkav11 says:
You seem to be missing my point. Sure, the rules are adapted from Call of Cthulhu. But Call of Cthulhu is an investigative horror game where direct encounters with the Mythos will almost certainly either kill, maim, or drive you insane. It could make for brilliant gaming. It could even make for a brilliant turn-based RPG. But a game consisting primarily of combat? No.
04/05/2012 at 02:50 Deadly Habit says:
I think it would be a pain to adapt though the old Chaosium CoC point and click games got somewhat close. It’s kind of a pain to adapt a CoC session in game form just because so much of it is generated by the players choices and actions and how the keeper chooses to react to them. A video game would kind of limit those possibilities.
04/05/2012 at 10:52 frightlever says:
Pretty much hi-jacking a setting (public domain mostly, right? This isn’t licensed in any way is it?) to short-cut making your own background fluff. Perhaps modern Lovecraftian horror, like Charles Stross writes on occasion, is more inclined to pitched battles with eldritch horrors. The original stories certainly were not.
04/05/2012 at 00:04 michaelfeb16 says:
No good.
This doesn’t have the level of moe I require from Lovecraft derivative works.
04/05/2012 at 01:26 Apolloin says:
So, this is the Mythos in which most things are immune to bullets and melt your face off just by looking at you and they decided to do an RTS game?
Really, the mind just boggles…
04/05/2012 at 07:33 Lars Westergren says:
Got it yesterday, played it for a few hours.
Summary:
AppUp – predicably annoying.
CoC – pretty awesome so far.
AppUp: Clicked Download button three times being redirected before download started. 37mb download…hm. Installation smooth. You can use Google/Facebook/etc accounts to authenticate so you have one less password to remember, at the cost of possibly reducing your security of the authenticating account. Or you can create a separate account. After buying CoC and attempting to pay for it, I got “Your card location does not match your login location, this title may not be available in your region. Restart application to fix”. Restarted, got to type in my credit card number again. Got the same popup AGAIN. Restarted, went to the page for CoC – saw that suddenly there was a download button there, could download and install without entering credit card info again. Nothing have shown up in my bank history so far. If I accidentally got it for free, will try to contact them because I don’t want to rip off the developers. If money is deducted twice, I will be upset…
There are a few productivity apps on the store, perhaps those are better than the games, but the majority of the games available seem to be standard smartphone stuff – price of a chewing gum, depth of a puddle, originality of a teenager anxious to fit in. CoC seems to be one of the few exceptions.
CoC: Very reminiscent of the Pen and Paper RPG with regards to hitpoints, skills and so on. Combat very Fallout 1, and so is the omnious music (think Necropolis). Have reached mission 4 and the first supernatural threats (reanimated soldiers) have appeared. Combat just got *significantly* tougher, unlikely that all investigators will survive this mission, and this was just Normal difficulty. UI is servicable but not great. Often relies on clicking and holding on something to perform an action rather than double clicking, which doesn’t feel intuitive on a PC.
Seems to be somewhat plot driven, one of the characters went through a dream sequence (though admittedly that was more combat, but in a nightmare-scape). I really like it, if you are into turnbased strategy please consider it.
04/05/2012 at 15:45 iucounu says:
Waking Mars is also a lot of fun, as are the fairly similar but always diverting Kairosoft games, like Game Dev Story (which would be lovely as a little browser game on the Chrome app store or something.)
04/05/2012 at 11:44 RegisteredUser says:
So does anyone know why they also have to take turns “acting”? I.e. shoot..wait wait wait for it..REACTION!
Is this something we need to blame the iOS origins for or can they just not make something that feels a bit more..”together”?
Shame, because I really wouldn’t mind taking a peek, but this seems to put incredibly many hurdles in my way..
04/05/2012 at 15:44 iucounu says:
I’ve played through this a couple of times on iPad and I recommend it to UFO fans. It’s not remotely scary – it’s more kitsch than eerie – but it’s a lot of fun to cautiously creep from foxhole to foxhole across WW1 battlefields sniping at zombies and Nazis and shoggoths. (It’s quite difficult in places, too, though I’d say basically what it does, like any good Cthulhu game, is ruthlessly punish recklessness and overconfidence.)
It’s rough around the edges, but fun and cheap as chips.