An immersive experience with immaculate visuals (99% of times) and perfect atmospheric music
I am still new to gaming so my rating and my opinion of this game might be conflated, but as a fan of HP Lovecraft's stories, I loved playing this. Despite being a fan of his stories, I hadn't read Dagon before. I think reading this in a Interactive Visual Novel format elevated the experience to some degree, but not having awfully lot of things to click at had made it less fun gradually. Especially for like 50% to 70% mark of the story. Graphics at some points were not as good due to some minor lighting issues, but for the most part, I am just angry at myself for not having a VR to play this. This would have been even more of an immersive experience otherwise. The sound effect and the music really does wonder, especially some of the sound effects used around the end of the story.
Would recommend, especially to someone who is a fan of HP Lovecraft's Works
I am still new to gaming so my rating and my opinion of this game might be conflated, but as a fan of HP Lovecraft's stories, I loved playing this. Despite being a fan of his stories, I hadn't read Dagon before. I think reading this in a Interactive Visual Novel format elevated the experience to some degree, but not having awfully lot of things to click at had made it less fun gradually. Especially for like 50% to 70% mark of the story. Graphics at some points were not as good due to some minor lighting issues, but for the most part, I am just angry at myself for not having a VR to play this. This would have been even more of an immersive experience otherwise. The sound effect and the music really does wonder, especially some of the sound effects used around the end of the story.
Would recommend, especially to someone who is a fan of HP Lovecraft's Works
This review contains spoilers
Dagon: by H.P. Lovecraft
Spoilers! 7/10. This game really shocked me. It was the first game I have tried on steam Vr (I downloaded it a while ago, but never played). The game is free so no matter what you don’t lose anything to try. The game is only around 30 minutes and is based off of an H.P. Lovecraft book by the same name. The game definitely did its research, as the game is chalk full of references, lore, and info about Lovecraft. You find out about his works, what some things represent, and you can even find info about old stories that some of his works are based on. The game's name “Dagon” was a god of fertility and crops in the Middle East. The name is often mistaken as “fish god”, due to the word dag meaning fish in Hebrew, and that’s what this game is about.
As the game starts you learn about the character, and how he has a serious drug and alcohol addiction. you find yourself in a boat, and you and 5 other people are taken captive by another boat. You escape with a boat and some rations + water, and sail out to sea. You can’t find anything for days. One night you wake up and all the water is gone. You see strange underwater creatures never seen before the eyes of anyone. The ground is muddy and you will sink if you try to go anywhere. You stay there for a couple days, slowly driven mad by the smell of fish, until the ground dries up and hardens by the sun. You decide to start traveling in one direction and come across a mountain far in the horizon. As you inch closer the mountain appears much bigger than anticipated. You sleep and in the night when the sun is not present and neither is the heat, you climb up. At the top you spot an assumedly bottomless pit, where no sunlight has yet reached. You decide to climb down and come across a small pond and a monolith that stretches hugely. The monolith has many strange carvings, and as you inspect them, you hear a noise and a ripple in the pond. A giant humanoid fish taller than the mountain appears, and doesn’t seem to notice you, paying its respects to the carvings. Out of sheer terror you run all the way back to the boat and try to forget what just happened. You struggle to fall asleep, but end up passing out of pure exhaustion. You wake up in an office on the ship being questioned by someone, but no one seems to believe nor pay attention to anything you're saying. You end up heading home, and are plagued with nightmares of that strange, mysterious place, never knowing if it was real, or all a delusion. The game ends with him writing a note before ending his life, as he has become a drug addict trying to forget, but only making it worse. Then, the door opens and a strange scaly hand appears. The door opens to show a fish-like creature, supposedly a follower of Dagon. He slowly walks forward, as your only choice is to jump out the window, and as the glass breaks, the credits roll.
Horror-wise it wasn’t that scary but more insanely cool. The game would be pretty bad on a normal flat screen. But in vr everything feels so life-like, and the giant creature feels unstoppable on a massive scale. Overall this game was pretty good, and an enjoyable half hour experience. Very cool
Uma experiência incrível e fiel sobre um dos mais famosos contos do Lovecraft. O jogo é imersivo, onde você utiliza apenas o mouse para clicar, mas que a ambientação casada à sonoplastia e à dublagem te deixam preso à experiência. Fico muito feliz em poder jogá-lo, visto que normalmente não conseguem adaptar as obras de Lovecraft com resultados positivos como elas merecem ter. Mas, aqui, isso foi alcançado. Estou ansioso para que mais contos sejam transformados em jogos diretos e de respeito para com a obra imortal de H.P. Lovecraft.
ooooh man i wanted to see the fish man up close...
in all seriousness, i feel like some of the interactive novel bits could have been swapped in favor of something more akin to a walking simulator or just cut. some sections just felt dragged out, and replacing those with some type of interactivity would have helped to keep the player interested (or me personally, at least). this and the camera constraints for each scene made the environments feel underutilized.
i can't really comment on the audio, i had a weird issue with the narration sounding weirdly balanced and compressed when using headphones. i'm not completely sure what caused the funkiness, when playing with my laptop speakers instead it sounded fine. I did enjoy the narration, it's at the level of a good audio book. the music adds nice ambience, but is otherwise forgetful.
overall, it's a good introduction to lovecraft's works, but know it's more of a kinetic visual novel more than anything.
in all seriousness, i feel like some of the interactive novel bits could have been swapped in favor of something more akin to a walking simulator or just cut. some sections just felt dragged out, and replacing those with some type of interactivity would have helped to keep the player interested (or me personally, at least). this and the camera constraints for each scene made the environments feel underutilized.
i can't really comment on the audio, i had a weird issue with the narration sounding weirdly balanced and compressed when using headphones. i'm not completely sure what caused the funkiness, when playing with my laptop speakers instead it sounded fine. I did enjoy the narration, it's at the level of a good audio book. the music adds nice ambience, but is otherwise forgetful.
overall, it's a good introduction to lovecraft's works, but know it's more of a kinetic visual novel more than anything.
A decent overview of the main themes of H.P. Lovecraft, but nothing interesting or impressive. It simply falls flat.
+ Narrator voice is soothing and very fitting, reminds me of some of the older Lovecraft audiobooks.
- Lackluster environments - not only are the scenes (because they are just that) small and devoid of small detail, but they are also utterly boring, and do not leave anything to interpretation or imagination.
- The entire story is so short, you'd be forgiven to assume it was a demo version of something much larger.
+ Narrator voice is soothing and very fitting, reminds me of some of the older Lovecraft audiobooks.
- Lackluster environments - not only are the scenes (because they are just that) small and devoid of small detail, but they are also utterly boring, and do not leave anything to interpretation or imagination.
- The entire story is so short, you'd be forgiven to assume it was a demo version of something much larger.
Not a typical game per se, but rather Dagon was a visual retelling of Lovecraft's classic short story of the same name. There’s no denying that Lovecraft has had a monumental impact on media today—you can find inspiration from his work literally everywhere— so allowing people to experience his stories in different forms is a respectable undertaking.
For a free product this adaptation was excellent, complete with quality voice acting. All that was required was to point and click through the story, so it was low effort while still being entertaining. I was also somewhat educational with facts about the author himself, as well as his other works.
For a free product this adaptation was excellent, complete with quality voice acting. All that was required was to point and click through the story, so it was low effort while still being entertaining. I was also somewhat educational with facts about the author himself, as well as his other works.