Theatre of the Macabre & Lovecraftian – it’s #CthulhuThursday
For Cthulhu Thursday this week I have a couple of images to show..
The first is poster art from the original Theatre du Grand-Guignol and it’s very macabre! (Source here and more pics!)
Not a million miles from this vibe is the new RPG game based on The King in Yellow – backed it on Kickstarter, it’s been funded and I’m looking forward to it! (You can pre-order it too)
The next image is more mythos and very creepy too! It’s from Reddit and is an Innsmouth priest (source here)
(Cthulhu Thursday is a dose of Mythos to brighten darken your week. More on the idea can be found here and a list of posts thus far, here. Also some upcoming Cthulhu news, sign up to the Auroch Digital’s newsletter. Enjoy!)
Ogre Steam page Launches! #PlayOgre
The team at Auroch Digital have been hard at work for some time now adapting Steve Jackson’s classic Ogre to PC/Steam. We’re really exciting to say the Steam page is now live – wishlist it now!
The coverage for it has statred… 🙂
I’m super excited. My first encounter with Ogre was around 1983? My aunt got me 3rd edition (one on right in image below!) as a present and I loved the game from there. So this project has been amazing to be part of and I’m so proud of the team here and the work they’ve done and SJGames have been brilliant to work with!
So excited – release is 5th October!
Summer Ends, Winter is Coming. It’s #CthulhuThursday
Took a bit of a break last week as had a lot on! All will be revealed soon… Anyhow time to share some links you ‘y’all…
First off, do check out the interview with weird fiction writer John Langham. He has a story in Autumn Cthulhu from 2016 too!
This image caught my eye (saw it on Reddit, it’s ace!) – Blue Plate Special by Jeff Lee Johnson
SyFy Wire has an article about Lovecraftian movies. It’s an interesting list, it’s different from films that are mythos heavy (something I’ve touched on before) more ones about … more about the films that have the concepts and atmosphere of Lovecraft’s work I was very pleased to see the list has ‘In the Mouth of Madness’ in which is a brilliant film:
Finally for this week – and it’s a note for all month – Modiphius have declared this ‘Month of Madness’ for the brilliant set WW2 set RPG, Achtung! Cthulhu… well worth checking out!
(Cthulhu Thursday is a dose of Mythos to brighten darken your week. More on the idea can be found here and a list of posts thus far, here. Also some upcoming Cthulhu news, sign up to the Auroch Digital’s newsletter. Enjoy!)
Travel to Carcosa for Cthulhu Thursday! #CthulhuThursday
So what’s on the menu for today’s Cthulhu Thursday?
First off, we backed this amazing looking game on Kickstarter… Carcosa! So excited to play it. (For the uninitiated, Carcosa is the mythical city created by Ambrose Bierce in a short story, then taken up by Robert Chambers for the King in Yellow and Lovecraft too, recently popularized as a location in season 1 of True Detective.)
Next up, has a good article about Lovecraft up too:
A century ago, a gaunt, sickly young man of 26 years sat down to write what would become the first piece of an oeuvre which would far outlive him. The short story was called The Tomb, and as opening gambits for literary immortality go, it perhaps doesn’t have the hallmarks of an instant classic.
The image they use for the article is also very cool!
Plus we’ve added an update to our Vote Cthulhu game (see Vice article on it)
Have you seen the Cthulhu Wars Onslaught 3 Kickstarter yet? Looks really amazing!
(Cthulhu Thursday is a dose of Mythos to brighten darken your week. More on the idea can be found here and a list of posts thus far, here. Also some upcoming Cthulhu news, sign up to the Auroch Digital’s newsletter. Enjoy!)
Hello again, fellow mythos fans. A few links and things to share for the second installment of Cthulhu Thursday in 2017. First I want to suggest you check out the new comedy ‘Quiet & Bold‘ about a maverick pair of paranormal investigators. It has a bunch of people who are behind the amazing H.P.Podcraft in it, so impeccable pedigree… (also on Soundcloud)
You might also want to check out these disturbing images from a mythos-inspired sculpture:
Amazing and disturbing. See here and here for more.
Some great images on the Achtung! Cthulhu main page too! (More on this later…)
Finally there is a good Reddit space on Weird fiction, worth subscribing too alongside /r/Cthulhu and /r/Lovecraft. See you next week!
(Cthulhu Thursday is a dose of Mythos to brighten darken your week. More on the idea can be found here and a list of posts thus far, here. Also some upcoming Cthulhu news, sign up to the Auroch Digital’s newsletter. Enjoy!)
Game Dev Quick Links – July 2017 (I’m reading lots of game dev stuff so you don’t have too!)
Each month I put together a few links that get added to the Bristol Games Hub newsletter. As an active games developer, I do read a fair amount around game dev, bizdev and the art and culture of games development. We also get posted links in the hub discussion space and sometimes people send me links. I thought that going forward I’d also try to share the link here on my blog with a few more notes re the context as to why I think they are important.
Here goes…
Looking a SteamSpy data to try and predict success on Steam – This was a great experiment, to see if that data on SteamSpy could be used to predict if a game was going to be a success. Sadly it didn’t yield much, but worth a read.
Video games & the social contract (video):
The guy who does this is more about boardgames than digital games. However his experience trying to play an online PvP title shows some lessons for all devs trying to create a space people want to play in. Worth a watch.
Superhero games show how the industry has changed – Once such titles were huge sellers even if the game was not that great. We have now had some amazing hero titles (Batman’s Arkham series spring to mind) yet the changes in the business models the industry uses, the proliferation of social and mobile has mirrored wider changes in the industry.
E3 2017 press conferences were a contrast between heart and cash – File this in the ongoing series of art vs income. The creative tension here is something I think that does create great games, as well as sink amazing, but less popular ideas. (Which is something crowdfunding then picked up and ran with! As in it might not be valuable enough for a AAA budget, but there are enough fans to back less popular ideas/genres.)
Games as biography – I’d like to write some more that follows on from this. I think it’s amazing that games are reflecting not just our fantasies, but our dreams, losses, experiences, hopes and fears too. That was lies art. (I picked up Cibele from reading this, it’s in my Steam queue now…)
Is high-end VR over? I hope not. VR has not turned into what some had predicted, but it’s a powerful medium and has lots and lots of uses, so I expect it to grow nonetheless.
Cthulhu Thursday Returns! #CthulhuThursday
I’m been out of action for a good few months (looooonnnngggg story!) and I’d never really interested this blog to be about my personal life, so just wanted to say thanks to those who’ve supported us (you know who you are!)
What better way to return to blogging (which I’ve missed!) than by reviving Cthulhu Thursday. I read/watch/listen/play a lot of mythos content and so this used to be the time I shared it. I plan to return to to posting these for a while, because, well I want too. Feel free to tweet me ideas for things to cover to @tomasrawlings with hashtag #CthulhuThursday. Thanks and here we go down the rabbit Shoggoth hole…
First of we need to talk about Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows comic epic ‘Providence‘. Here’s an image from it – Azathoth as depicted in Providence.
The Lovecraft eZine has a write-up on the first 4 issues. I’ve read to collected parts 1 and 2 (so I think 8 issues?) and am waiting for part 3. It’s … well I don’t know what it is yet. It’s affecting shall we say. I plan to write up my thoughts on it once all of it has been read. There is also his Neconomicon too, which is disturbing. So I plan to wrap my thoughts on all of these sometime soon.
Another link to share is that of Hunting the Yellow Sign, an interesting look at the visuals behind Yellow Sign, from The King in Yellow;
“…inside lay a clasp of black onyx, on which was inlaid a curious symbol or letter in gold. It was neither Arabic nor Chinese, nor, as I found afterwards, did it belong to any human script.”
— Robert W. Chambers, The Yellow Sign, Chapter 2
Finally for this post do please watch the amazing parody of Lovecraft’s From Beyond, as it’s brilliant! See you next week!
(Cthulhu Thursday is a dose of Mythos to brighten darken your week. More on the idea can be found here and a list of posts thus far, here. Also some upcoming Cthulhu news, sign up to the Auroch Digital’s newsletter. Enjoy!)
