Dagon: by H. P. Lovecraft is basically a retelling of the short story of the same name by the same author. The words are exactly the same, so in a way it's just like reading the story, but with visuals and a bit of interaction. It's not a walking sim, you cannot move your character, but you can look around the Lovecraftian landscapes and find some interesting Lovecraft trivia by finding hidden Elder Signs.
Because it is based on a short story, it should come to no surprise that the game is short as well, it took me around half an hour to finish. But it's free, so don't worry about it. If the developers would make more of these visual, Lovecraft-retelling short games, I would definitely play them.
4.5* rounded up because I had so much more fun than I expected from a free game.
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Every scene has so many amazing details I was as interested in taking it all in as I was in progressing the story. The ambient sounds, music and narrator's voice made the immersion into the story almost complete.
It's not without issues: on my screen the tinypointer pixel was almost invisible at times, and thank creators for subtitles, because there were few screens where the narration disappeared in the background music, but none of that ruined my fun.
Even though we're railroaded through the story, the trivia hunt keeps the player engaged. I first got my hands on Lovecraft's stories in middle school, and the team still managed to find some trivia that would be new to me.
And it's all for free!
This isn't a game but an interactive story. The interaction is so minimal as to be pointless though. It's a waste as the graphics look great. It's fully 3D rendered but you can't move around the world, only click on an icon to move on to the next "slide". It's basically a 3D interactive slide show that tells a Lovecraft story - and it's not a very good story either.
The most valuable "game" you can have in your library.
A tribute to one of the most important horror writers of our time. Great voice acting, great presentation and a lot of valuable secrets and history lessons waiting to be found in your journey as the story unfolds to easily connect the dots of his impressive work.
I really loved this game! I played it soon after finishing the actual shortstory (which is public domain btw) and found it to be a great companion to digesting what I had just read. Its basically just an audiobook of the actual shortstory with 3d visuals to help you visualize the events better, but its also sprinkled with fun facts and context for a lot of 'Dagon' and H.P. Lovecraft. Even if you read the story beforehand, its novel just to experience it again in this format. The voice acting, audio, and visuals are all great. But there is a reason you should read the short story first...
The thing about reading horror stories like Lovecraft is that you will often do a lot of the heavy lifting for the story by imagining what is being described. Lovecraft is very descriptive but how you interpret and think about the description is different for everybody. For the most part I love the visuals in this game, but I was slightly disappointed by the actual climax of the story and how it was depicted. It just didn't match how I visualized it and it made the encounter less scary than it could have been. Is this a bad thing? not really. This game is free, and tells the story so well that I don't really care if it doesn't match my imagination. honestly, I don't think anything that can be made will ever match what your own imagination creates.
That's why you should read 'Dagon' before you play this game. Make your own interpretation, then come back and take in another person's persepective. Enjoy the visual diorama and learn a bit about the creation of the story and the history of love craft. Honestly, if they make a version for every major lovecraft story I think that would be really great. I'll definitely check out the DLC
