Another week, another Lovecraft game. Chronicle of Innsmouth: Mountains of Madness (Psychodev, March 2021) was successfully crowdfunded just before Christmas 2018, and is now complete and published for all on Steam. It follows Lovecraftian games such as the recent The Shore and Call of the Sea. Both hard acts to follow, each in their own way. Chronicle doesn’t try to rival either title in slickness and instead purposely evokes the style and mechanics of the classic old-school Lucasarts point-and-click games. The art style is accordingly pleasingly home-spun. All plus-points, in my book.

Loosely based on “Shadow over Innsmouth” and “At the Mountains of Madness”, and apparently “written by a Lovecraft expert” in Italy. We’re promised “many Easter eggs that only the geekiest of Lovecraft geeks will get”. More plus-points.

It’s more than a bit detective-y and has some Lucasarts-style puzzles, though. The player lands in the well-worn gumshoes of Lone Carter, trying not to totter into madness while investigating a series of murders to the beat of an original soundtrack. Sounds fun, as long as fiendish puzzles don’t bring the narrative to a grinding halt, which is always the problem with such games.

Apparently it runs about six hours, or two evenings, for experienced gamers. Maybe three evenings for occasional gamers, or for those not used to detective-puzzlers.

* “a solid point-and-click adventure game … deserves investigation” — TechRaptor.

* “The game is completely voice-acted and that is done excellently … [the art] is looking quite stellar, especially the cut scenes … [game mechanics are] a very smooth experience … a fascinating narrative and characters to go along with it” — Gaming Outsider.

* “… a love letter to Lovecraft [but] the narrative feels cohesive despite shoehorning such disparate [Lovecraft themes and references] … the voice-acting ranges from ‘quite good’ on one end to ‘serviceable if a bit corny’ … it gives a sense of agency beyond discovering otherworldly secrets and being driven mad … strongly suggest giving this one a try” — Indie Gamer Review.

I now have a full version of the caricature of Lovecraft’s New York friend and correspondent Ernest La Touche Hancock (1857-1926). It was only available previously as a tiny thumbnail, back in 2013.

The name on the donkey appears to be “Pegasus” (the immortal winged horse of myth), and the lettering on the tiny toon tableau in the bottom-right corner cannot be read. The figure in the Union Flag waistcoat is “John Bull”, the archetypal beef-fed 18th century British squire. Hancock wears a small ‘mortar board’ hat, which once symbolised a teacher. The only thing that can be fathomed today is “John Bull” — like Lovecraft, Hancock was an ardent Anglophile.

Hancock was familiar with many cartoonists of the 1890-1925 period and his long survey article “The American Comic and Caricature Art” (the American The Bookman, Nov 1902), he praised the young Herriman of Krazy Kat fame: “Art combined with poetry is the characteristic of George Herriman. Were his drawings not so well known one would think he had mistaken his vocation.” It’s thus not impossible that Hancock, knowing of Lovecraft’s liking for cats, might have mentioned the poetick Kat in a letter.

A new short interview with the Lovecraft illustrator Santiago Caruso, in a journal under Creative Commons Attribution. Which means it might be translated for your small press journal or similar.

Ian Miller, cover artist for the British Panther paperback Lovecraft editions, has a new original on sale, “Ghast, dissected” along with a variety of similar pen sketches including Poe illustrations.

Two of the Panther Lovecraft book covers can also be had as large fine-art prints.

The “Haunter” art had to be recreated and is not quite the same as the lost original…

There are also several collectable books…

New on Archive.org, “Cthulhu from Lovecraft’s sketch” in .STL 3D model form, by Perry Engel. Under Creative Commons Non-Commercial. My render…

Also a “Lovecraft bust” by Philipp Franck. Again as a 3D-printable .STL file. The eyes lack detail, but you might do something with it if you can get it into ZBrush.

Archive.org has newly uploaded a million such Thingiverse items. Mostly .STL, mostly under some form of Creative Commons. At present the thingiverse.com site is unreachable.

Poe’s cottage in the Bronx, on a windswept night. Poe’s dates and moves are very complex, but said to have been his home from 1844 to 1849.

Lovecraft knew it well, though it was a bit ‘tricked up and touristy’ — having been physically moved and re-landscaped by the 1920s. He came to prefer another Poe place as feeling more authentic to the day-visitor, and also relished Poe’s Richmond when he visited. However, he did write of the cottage… “In that shrine of America’s greatest literary artist, a brooding atmosphere lingers, and unseen wings seem to brush the cheek of the worshipper” — H.P. Lovecraft.