Experience a bite-sized slice of Lovecraftian horror in this updated version of our cult freeware point and click adaptation of HP Lovecraft's classic short story.
Mostly Positive
14 Steam reviews
| LANGUAGE | AUDIO | SUBTITLES | INTERFACE |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | — | Y | Y |
Excellent short adventure game adapting an HP Lovecraft story. It has a great, gloomy atmosphere and some unsettling close ups, as this studio has us used to. The DLC extras are really worth!
The Terrible Old Man is a free point and click horror adventure game developed by Cloak and Dagger Games who based it on the short story “The Terrible Old Man” by H.P. Lovecraft. The developers had previously created titles like Sumatra: Fate of Yandi and Football Game, which while I have absolutely no clue what those were about. However after buying the Collector’s Edition DLC at some point, I was able to find more information about the title. The title had started development in early 2015 for a monthly game jam for The Adventure Game Studio website, and Shaun Aitcheson had decided to develop an adaptation of the short story after re-reading old Lovecraft tales. After having finished Sumatra: Fate of Yandi, they decided to re-work this title with a bit more extra additions before releasing it for free on Steam. As for me, I’m not even sure how I ran across this game; I probably just saw it included in some Lovecraft curator thing and gave it a shot. How is “The Terrible Old Man”, is it solid?
The plot is mostly a verbatim adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Terrible Old Man” and as such, you could just as easily read the short story and go from there. In fact, I’d encourage it as it’ll be way more interesting then a re-telling I could give here. If you don’t feel like reading the short story, I’ll put in a Wikipedia link for the article related to the short story and it’ll basically be the same thing. How do I feel about the short story personally? I think it’s solid, though it left me wanting to know MORE about who or what the old man actually was, or what his powers were. Regardless, not much to say except plot good. In fact, there isn’t really too much I can say about the game gameplay wise either, as it’s a literal point and click game where you talk to people, and the matter of fact is that it’s so small that there isn’t really much to say about it except give it a thumbs up. The most I’ll say is this: don’t forget to exhaust all the dialogue with the bartender, though I’ll include a guide down below.
The most sound design there is for the game is the soundtrack, composed by John Inch, which mostly consists of ambient droning sounds and three extra tracks (included in the special edition) that has two more droning tracks and a track that includes droning, but with more creepiness to it (aka the song: “Anxiety Descending”, the perfect descriptor). This game is about atmosphere, with not much more in the way of actual songs or varied instrumentals. It’s here for the horror and it stays for the horror; and that much is obvious if you’ve seen the hand drawn artwork, programmed and animated to include animations such as eyebrow furrows and head movements which provide this creepy sort of movement to an already unsettling looking art style. While the truth is the game isn’t really “scary” scary, it does have a bit of a shivering and distorted look that the developers intended to capture and they did an excellent job in that regard. John Inch had also drawn the backgrounds for the game, which while only consists of two areas (the bar and outside the old man’s house), they still looked artistically fantastic and the cutscenes (the one or two they have) look well animated. The final shot I think is what I think really struck me the most, having all of those dead bodies land on shore. While some may think the art is “ugly”, it feels so uncanny that it fits Lovecraft’s imagery pretty well.
The Terrible Old Man was a rather short game to delve into, one whose sole purpose isn’t to expand upon the story in any way as much as have you play it in short form. As someone whose a bit of a Lovecraft fanboy (minus the racism), I enjoyed the very short time that I had with it personally, having played it once before for a friend before streaming it for another as a way to introduce a free Halloween game to play, which is what I’ll be trying to do for the rest of the month: play a bunch of free horror games (some paid as well) and throw out some potentially interesting suggestions. My feelings on this game content wise may be small, and it might not be scary; but it’s an interesting take both into short form Lovecraft that isn’t shined upon much (due to a near obsession with Innsmouth and fish boning) as well as for the developers themselves with a nice horror atmosphere and a short run time (though I wish there was more content to add personally). Cloak and Dagger Games would stop making games for a couple of years in order to develop their next title: The Excavation at Hob’s Barror, a sort of folk horror adventure that I’ve had interest in for a bit. While I will sit down and play it one day, I hope that they take another shot at Lovecraft in some way, shape or form.
Links:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1885968981
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terrible_Old_Man
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1147040/The_Terrible_Old_Man__Collectors_Edition/ (Support the devs please)
https://archive.org/details/the-terrible-old-man-collectors-edition (For those who can’t pay, though please support the developers anyways)
https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/tom.aspx (The original short story)
https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/cloakanddaggergames
https://cadgames.weebly.com/
https://x.com/cloakanddaggerg?lang=en
https://www.backloggd.com/u/gamemast15r/review/1996740/ (Backlogg'd review for promo)
I don't see what was so bad about the old man. He seemed very nice to me!
Was pretty excited to play this, as I read the actual story recently and it didn't disappoint. The art of the game captures the atmosphere perfectly as you'd (or at least how I did) imagine. The puzzles in general are pretty easy and the focus is just on the story. Would love a longer game in this Lovecraftian style honestly, or maybe other short stories such as The Music of Erich Zann.
Não dura nem meia hora, ma né, é de graça então não tem porque você não jogar.
Jogo curto. Só vale a pena porque é de graça e bem fácil de platinar. E é isso. Não se assuste! é inspirada em um conto de H. P. Lovecraft.
Du Lovecraft sous un style graphique original et réussi. Dommage que cela soit aussi court.
Merci à Ghylard pour le patch fr !
This was a fun adaptation, The Terrible Old Man is a good, somewhat neglected, tale.
short and awful
不好玩
Corto, pero bueno y entretenido.
O jogo é bom, porém, poderia ser mais difícil de ser zerado, e não vale o preço pago por ele
FOR REAL, we should have more games like this. I really loved it, and I was expecting to play more and more and to continue with the story, until I see some dead body at the shore... Frankenstein' style... Loved it tho
It´s not really a "game" but the artstyle is quite nice, it covers Lovecraft, and it´s for free. ( or you buy the collectors edition for 99 cents)
