Interactive game entertainment company and live theater show Cthulhu Parlour recently launched the Kickstarter for their newest game, Hotel Lovecraft, and saw its funding goal of $17,831 met maniacally quickly. Hotel Lovecraft is being billed as a hybrid of the roleplaying, board, and choose your own adventure game genres, played with support from audio horror theater to bring it all together. The Hotel Lovecraft Kickstarter campaign ends on August 27, 2020.
Hotel Lovecraft is heavily influenced by the works of the master of cosmic horror H.P. Lovecraft, and is designed for one to five players ages 14 and up. At the start of the game, your goal is simply to escape the hotel alive and sane. You’ll have to travel through the hotel’s six floors from top to bottom, visiting each of the rooms, and dealing with whatever macabre Lovecraftian tale is held within. If you manage to escape the hotel without losing your life, or worse, your sanity, you win. Fail to escape, and, as the reference to another famous hotel goes, you may check out at any time, but that doesn’t mean you’ll ever leave.
The Hotel Lovecraft Kickstarter was launched by Oliver McNeil, who runs the Cthulhu Parlour live immersive theater show. McNeil is also the dean of the School of Wizards and Witches, an interactive storytelling fantasy adventure theatre in East Sussex, England. Additionally, McNeil designs games, produces soundscapes, and is a writer and fantasy photographer, an impressive skill set that starts to make sense of what Hotel Lovecraft is, and how it came about.
As for most tabletop RPGs, Hotel Lovecraft is meant to be played by players at their favorite gaming table of choice for the full immersive live horror theater effect. However, Hotel Lovecraft was also designed with distance play via internet video and chat in mind. When launched, the game will come with MP3 files for the audio theater portions, and with links to those files online where you can listen to them at the appropriate times. There is even a solo play option for when you want to immerse yourself in the game’s horror soundscapes and test your own sanity against Lovecraft’s terror-inducing tales.
The Cthulhu Parlour's "Hotel Lovecraft" Kickstarter page has all the details for this mind-wrenching game and its pledge levels and rewards. Read more about Cthulhu Parlour on their Facebook page and The StoryMaster's Tales YouTube channel.
Source: Cthulhu Parlour's "Hotel Lovecraft" Kickstarter