The haunting works of H. P. Lovecraft have served as the inspiration for many a game project over the years – in fact, we’ve talked about a number of them in the past ourselves, be it the short but sweet point and click adventure All The Way Down, or the sadly unsuccessful Kickstarter attempt with Senscape’s Charles Dexter Ward adaptation. And now we have something a tad bit more light-hearted in the works with The Miskatonic, a side-scrolling comedy/horror visual novel (yes, that’s quite the mouthful), the Kickstarter campaign of which has just recently concluded with a decent amount of success, garnering quite a bit more money than its initial goal. It aims to blend JRPG-esque dialogue cutscenes with terrifying yet charming 2D art, wacky, Lovecraft-inspired characters (and an even wackier female protagonist), some side-scrolling gameplay and a touch of puzzle-solving, all resulting in… well, what you see on the Kickstarter page.
The Miskatonic is, at the moment, aiming for a PC release on Steam, as well as a DRM-free version available directly from the dev team. Mac and Linux versions will follow soon after. And while the Kickstarter project may have ended, you may still head over to the page to download a pre-alpha demo and get a feel of what you may expect from the – now-funded – game. Careful, though – retaining your sanity is not guaranteed.
