Here’s something you don’t see every day. The Miskatonic is a side-scrolling, horror comedy visual novel. It follows young witch Charlotte LeStrange as she attends the odd Miskatonic university while hatching plans to summon Shub-Niggurath. Yep, this is a game inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft. It also has plenty of nods to horror games.
The game’s hub world is the university, which will rot with darkness and bear new artefacts throughout your adventure. It’s here that you’ll also be able to talk to fellow students and professors in JRPG-style dialog cutscenes. They’re a bizarre bunch, some of them covered in gore, others with six arms, another with gums and teeth for a head. It’s a mix of monsters, mutants, and generally strange people.
In fact, if you want to give it a look, there’s a campus tour demo that can be downloaded for Windows (download link).
Outside of all that, The Miskatonic has missions for you to complete. These have old-school inventory puzzles and riddles to solve inspired by PS2 horror adventures. And you’ll also need to blow holes into monsters with LeStrange’s enormous shotgun.
That’s the gist of the game. But there’s plenty more to find out about it on its website. Reading about all of the bizarre characters certainly comes recommended. The Miskatonic should be hitting Kickstarter to raise funds for further development soon.
