The Story Of Our Creation

by C.

Worshippers Of Cthulhu is a strategic city-building game where you lead your own Cthulhu cult. We’ve been working on it for quite a while, and it has made some great achievements, such as, for example, gaining 100k wishlists in an approximately short period of time. The game is planned to be released on October 21th, and now, since there’s only a little more than a month left till The Big Day, we wanted to share our story.

Creating a game based on horror literature was a fun challenge for us as a small team of indie devs, and so that is what we’re going to talk about today.

1. The beginning of The Great

Everyone starts somewhere, that’s true. We did too: we started with a hole. Yes, a simple drawing of a hole, which our designer, Janina, liked so much she thought it was a new game concept. Although that was something quite unexpected, we still decided to roll with it, cause, you know, we’re always welcoming to crazy and unusual ideas. So, we started to dig in.

We now needed to figure out what exactly we wanted to do with that hole. We wanted to make it interesting, that’s for sure, but how exactly do you achieve such a goal? By making something live in the hole, obviously. We got to brainstorming ideas on what should be inside of it, and, after some time, Cthulhu just came to our minds. Like a vision of some sort, honestly. No wonder they say he visits you in your sleep.

And it all went smooth like butter right after that. We did a little concept art, showing Cthulhu’s tentacles peeking out of the well-known hole and an old city near them, and showed our creation to about 10 publishers. No one said the idea was bad or wasn’t worth a shot, so we got very encouraged and got to work immediately.

The greatest challenges only awaited us, but first, we needed to do the most important thing: research.

2. Research complications

Diving into research for Worshippers of Cthulhu felt like cracking open a cursed Necronomicon — we were amazed and excited. Not all of us were fans of Cthulhu Mythos before we started working on the project: but all of us got there eventually, falling in love with those stories and legends.

Everything we’ve read, we were constantly thinking “how can we portray this in our game in the best way possible?”, and we suspect this curiosity is what kept us going. We were truly thrilled to develop our project, despite the fact there were some complications, obviously.

The first problem was a copyrighting one. Creating a game based on a famous piece of literature means being very careful with what to convey into our universe and what to leave behind — not every name or title from the Mythos can be legally used. That means you have to get rather creative: mixing the already existing concepts with new ones, created by your own spectacular minds. So, that was exactly what we did. And that was the time the second issue got uncovered.

Turns out, making something new in an already existing and a very developed universe is actually kind of a difficult task. We needed everything to seem logical, to fit in, while not being a full-blown copy of the original source material. That’s why, in order to make things right, we enhanced our research, and started reading things not directly connected to Cthulhu or Lovecraft in general. We’ve read some folklore, different cults’ histories and so much more, constantly making notes and thinking about what to add to the game. And, looking at where we are today, the hard work is definitely paying off.

3. Mechanics

Creating mechanics for the game based on Cthulhu Mythos turned out to be not as easy as it might seem at first glance. Yeah, there are a lot of games that share this same idea, but we needed to make an original one. We needed to find the perfect balance between the atmosphere of cosmic horror and an exciting gameplay, so that players would not only feel the dark influence of the Ancients, but also enjoy the game.

Here’s what we’ve got with the basic mechanics:

Rituals
Rituals in the game are like magic shows, only much scarier. We wanted to have many of them, and all of them needed to not be repetitive, so we definitely had to get creative. Doing research on different parts of human history and mythology, we gathered some ideas, just enough for the goal we wanted to achieve. We found a perfect balance between Lovecraft fantasies and our own creations: we not only added Cthulhu and other Gods, but created our own envoys and demons.

– Roleplay elements
To make the game more personalized, we have added role-playing elements. We wanted to make it noticeable that the game is based on literature before everything else – and those felt like the best option there. It’s always thrilling to see what consequences for your actions there are, to have an impact on your own world, so it was only right to add these events our audience liked so much.

Sometimes you have to choose between the benefits for the city and moral principles, which makes the game more interactive. Do you want to become a cruel cult leader or, conversely, a merciful one — the choice is yours.

– Monster fighting
The game about leading a Cthulhu clan obviously couldn’t be created without some monsters in it. That’s why our battle mechanic is not the most basic one: though at first you had to fight using ships, later we changed it to monsters you have to summon yourself. Our main goal here was to pay respect to our source material, having a perfect atmosphere for Lovecraftian-like creatures. We knew every fight should have felt impactful: you’re not fighting with just a regular army, you’re fighting with some evil bloodthirsty creatures you sacrificed your own people for. At the same time, it was important to make the mechanics in a way they fit perfectly into the strategic genre of the game: monsters are strong, but they cannot be summoned thoughtlessly, for you need to manage resources and time competently.

– Faith points
Every city-building strategic game needs some kind of rules to regulate its economics. When we first started making ours, we didn’t even dare to think about regular money — we knew we needed something different, something more suitable for Cthulhu lore. So, after a short period of time, we decided that faith points were the best option. It felt only right: that way we could remind our players about the importance of being cautious and thoughtful when you build your city. Every little citizen matters; and if you can’t satisfy their needs, you have troubles with using them for your wicked plans. Being inspired by the Mythos vibes, we wanted to show that faith is not just a resource, but the basis of survival in a world where even architecture is saturated with darkness and mystery.

4. Cthulhu undertones

The main challenge is to keep the balance between atmosphere and fascination. We wanted the world of Cthulhu to feel dark and mysterious, but not overwhelm the player. Therefore, we made sure that the elements of horror and difficulty gradually intensified as the game progressed. This way we were able to attract both Lovecraft fans and those who just want to have fun in a dark-themed game.

Furthermore,, for people who are familiar with Lovecraft, we added lots of references to his original books, including the whole dark deep mystical vibe of his cosmic horrors. On the other hand, we made sure to make the game interesting for people who have never read the books as well by adding all the mechanics and choices we’ve mentioned before. We truly hope that even if the player does not know who Cthulhu is, they will still be able to enjoy creating their own gloomy city and running a cult.

5. Conclusion

Well, the way things go, now you know all of our greatest secrets. We surely enjoyed making the game and telling you our story — and we hope this article will inspire you to make your own legendary projects. Maybe even a Cthulhu one, too. Who knows.

We’re constantly sharing something there — it won’t be boring, we promise.

And don’t forget — Worshippers Of Ctulhu is coming out on October 21st this year.
On this ominous day, the stars will rise in the right position, and the gates to the world of the Ancients will open.

Gaze into the abyss, for he is watching you too.