Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Cthulhu Saves The World Saves The Mythos!

Immediately after graduating from college back I moved back into my parents. It made sense at the time, but in retrospect it was the dawn of a bleak era, a year long period where I had absolutely no mastery over my own fate. That it followed four years of relative freedom made it that much more sour. I was, at the time, a helpless thing, incapable of paying my own rent, relying on them for healthcare (as opposed to just not having it). After almost a decade of being told I was smart and special I was cast into a workforce that didn’t give two fucks how smart of special I was. It was around this time that I first sat down, really sat down, with the writings of H.P. Lovecraft.

Cthulhu isn’t the biggest player in Lovecraft’s mythos, which might surprise you given how much press he usually gets. Fish men and their foul overlord, many-titted demons, super smart space worms, and sentient colors all take up equal page time. But he’s one of the more interesting ones. His home doesn’t adhere to our laws of geometry and the imagery surrounding him is striking. He’s also got cultists. Lots of cultists. He’s a popular guy, even though he’s really just hanging out in one spot all of the time. And maybe readers and authors have picked up on this popularity, which is why they’ve made Cthulhu such a major feature in popular culture and interpretations of Lovecraft’s work at large.

I connected with Lovecraft, with his portrayal of Cthulhu, the nameless Swede’s madness and the general sense of smallness in a massive world utterly unconcerned with your survival or well being. It resonated with me at that time in my life and, indeed, it’s kept resonating with me as I’ve hopped from place to place, constantly reminded of how disinterested the world surrounding me is in who I am and what I’m capable of, and how vastly superior so many of the forces within that world are at simply…doing things. They’re just better than me at it, most of the time, bigger than me, and when they’re not hostile they’re usually unconcerned with me to the point where they won’t even consider stepping on me instead of over me to get something they want. This aspect is at the core of Lovecraft’s fiction.

But Cthulhu Saves the World possesses none of these qualities.

It is instead a celebration of what the Mythos has become, a star (that’s kind of a pun if you’re familiar with Cthulhu and friends in general) studded cavalcade of maddening creatures laid out against a delightfully forgivable (or impressively punishing, if that’s what you’re into) combat system that carries you through a lighthearted, textually aware story about the tropes of storytelling and the manner in which fandom influences work. It’s a spot on reconsideration of the old school RPG, one that recognizes its place in time while simultaneously dismissing the manifold flaws of games of old, instead focusing on their whimsy, the varied elements we remember fondly rather than the painful grind we spent so much of them endeavoring to avoid.

It’s the rare title that completely understands what made its source material great without actually holding on to a single scrap of it. While it looks like an RPG and uses characters from the Cthulhu world there’s nothing Lovecraftian about it, and there isn’t a lot of old school RPG action going on. Instead there’s a battle system that feels very smooth and intuitive and a story that in no way takes itself seriously and never, ever, ever waxes poetic about how we’re all just stellar meat patiently awaiting our demise from some greater force that sees us as the feeble meal on two legs that we are.

So if it abandons all the conventions of its source material, what forms (and informs) Cthulhu Saves the World? Fun, to put it simply. It’s a game about celebrating nerd-dom, esoteric knowledge and the RPGs you used to enjoy that there just isn’t enough time for now. It’s a stripped down, re-designed relatively grind-less RPG, one that’s eager to be your friend and be liked. Every aspect of it winks, from the first character you meet (a clear send-up to the perennially encounter love interest JRPGs normally throw at the main character as quickly as possible) to the last (an affable demonic dragon who turns into your airship which, in turn, catapults you into the late game, wherein the restrictions of the world map no longer have meaning).

Paired with a system designed solely to dole out interactions with these characters the aim is clear: this isn’t supposed to be a grinding, onerous return to form. It’s a fluffy reminder of what was, pausing at times to invite characters into have casual conversations with we’d normally only see at crucial junctures in a more conventional RPG. It loves the absurdity of RPGs of old, darting between wacky settings, some of them more in line with Lovecraftian ideas than others, most of them places where battles would rarely, if ever, occur in a traditional roleplaying game.

Are there more enriching things to do with your time? Of course. Cthulhu Saves the World isn’t a game changer. It could be said that Breath of Death VII was, in that it both birthed Zeboyd Games, Cthulhu’s most recent creator/collaborator, and breathed new life into the 16 bit RPG. But Cthulhu Saves the World is just good, clean, kinda guilty fun. It’s liking frosting off a butter knife. It’s tacos with too much hot sauce. It’s good, even if it can be a bit much, but it’s over fast enough that you’ll finish it wanting more. And there’s more to be found. There are more bonus quests and alternate game modes available after completing CSTW than I’ve stomach to attempt, and while I’m skeptical as to just how much they’ll change the experience of play, but their presence is something of an inspired choice in my eyes. It’s the rare developer who scales up the “bonus material” of their game and provides a front-end experience targeting casual gamers that allows them to complete an epic-feelings game in a meager eight to ten hours.

What I’m saying, I guess, is that Cthulhu Saves the World is everything the writing of H.P. Lovecraft isn’t: it’s upbeat, it has a lot of Cthulhu in it, it’s really well paced and when I finished it I felt pretty happy. Heck, I even sort of wanted to come back for more. And I definitely wanted to settle in and play Penny-Arcade’s latest episode, which seems to owe its resurgence in no small part to Zeboyd’s rise as a game developer. Cthulhu Saves the World is a pleasant inversion of everything you’d imagine it to be. Play it. It’s like five bucks, and if you’ve ever spent time with a 16 bit RPG, it’ll make your week. If you haven’t, maybe you’ll get a hint of the magic we once all swore by.