Review of Gibbous – A Cthulhu Adventure. Towards Cthulhu / Overclockers.ua

The ancient mighty Cthulhu has become a regular in computer games. But while someone competes in gloomy style and pathos, the small studio Stuck In Attic decided to look at the problems of ancient cults and deadly deities from a new angle, giving us an ironic and funny journey into the world of Lovecraftian mythology.

Gibbous – A Cthulhu Adventure offers players a glimpse into the town of Darkham, which has embraced the best of dark trends, from a gloomy rainy night atmosphere to conspiratorial cultists who seek ancient secrets and master otherworldly powers. The charismatic detective Ketype lives in this cozy place, cosplaying a noir detective in a hat with lengthy monologues about the meaning of life.

A detective is hired to find the Necronomicon, suddenly hidden away in the local library. Because where is the ancient dangerous book, if not in the pretty town of Darkham? But Ketype is not alone in his search for a dangerous grimoire, so he quickly gets into trouble. And the second hero will save him – a local student moonlighting as a librarian.

The set of key characters is not limited to these two faces. As companions, the student has a purposeful cat Kita, who suddenly acquires human speech and the possibility of a verbal outpouring of her intellectual magnificence. And this is the most innocent prank of the local Necronomicon. In the movies, reading ancient spells has more unfortunate consequences.

All these characters find themselves in strange circumstances, but they go towards the same goal and help each other, which leads them to a strange conspiracy and another confrontation between the forces of good and evil. The heroes will have to visit the casemates and the strangest areas with bug-eyed unfriendly inhabitants, visit Transylvania with a mandatory visit to a gloomy castle on a mountain, and even worm their way into the ranks of creepy cultists. This is an excellent hodgepodge of familiar cliches and myths that are easily intertwined within the same story.

Everything is presented in a light, relaxed manner with a fair amount of irony over familiar plot moves. Exploiting stereotyped images, the game itself makes fun of them and wraps what is happening in an absurd plot with references to popular culture and Easter eggs, not forgetting sometimes to break the fourth wall. At the same time, humor does not slide into a senseless heap of absurdity, and what is happening often gives off a warm lamp atmosphere of Terry Pratchett’s works.

In terms of game mechanics, Gibbous – A Cthulhu Adventure is a classic cartoon quest. We travel around the painted background, poke objects, communicate with other characters and solve some puzzles.

The drawing is not bad, it fits perfectly into the overall mood of the game. But small objects are not selected in any way, so you constantly have to call the mode of highlighting interactive points. In other quests, this is a hint, here it is a necessity.

Most of the interactive objects are not needed. But all items are accompanied by comments, sometimes very funny. Goals and objectives are not very confusing. Characters often give explicit clues. If a drunken fisherman remembers coffee, then he should be given excellent coffee to drink. By the way, the situation itself refers to a familiar informant fisherman from Innsmouth.

A cat can interact with some objects, for example, to get something from a height. If you need to climb into the attic, then you can’t do without a tailed assistant either. And if she could not break through the hatch to the attic, rummage around in the inventory to assemble a helmet from improvised means.

Dialogues delight with well-chosen voices. It is the play of the actors that enlivens the static drawn images. At the same time, there is sometimes too much chatter. In a number of situations, the game intentionally forces the same character to reach out until, after several conversations, he suddenly pulls out an important item.

It happens that the story needs to reveal some plot nuances, and this is served strictly through the communication of two poorly animated figures against the background of one room. It seems to be an important moment, but a few minutes of the same type of communication are tiring.

The charisma of the heroes saves, because each character is a bright character, even if he is assigned a purely secondary role. You will definitely remember a girl with a frightening look, demanding a fish toy, or a slicked-down hipster lumberjack from a Romanian bar.

It is impossible not to mention the Transylvanian ruler Vlad, who sits in his castle. You will even have to fight him in a rap battle, and this is one of the highlights in the game.

At this point, it is worth mentioning one important problem of the localized version – translation. In general, it is not bad, but when it comes to puns and slang, it fails. And the mentioned rap battle remains without translation at all. At another point, a minor character reads a simple quatrain with a hint on how to activate the mechanism. The translation is confusing, but if you listen carefully to the words, where everything boils down to left, right and other indications, then the solution is immediately found.

The picture can be judged by the screenshots. The hand-drawn style looks nice, but the details are lacking. But you can not even mention the system requirements, Gibbous will go on any system.

Within its genre, Gibbous – A Cthulhu Adventure is a successful budget game with an interesting funny story that has a lot of irony and banter about dark myths. This is a classic quest, but without complex puzzles and without trying to modernize the game a little due to more interactivity. A game for connoisseurs of the genre. If you like the Deponia series and classic games, be sure to check out Gibbous – A Cthulhu Adventure.