Kodoku Chronicles Combines Lovecraft and Japanese Folklore

Two things get me on board a horror concept right away: Japanese folklore and Lovecraft.

Two things get me on board a horror concept right away: Japanese folklore and Lovecraft. Both of these concepts have provided me with tons of games, stories, and movies to keep me awake all night, butis the only developer I’ve ever heard of who’s tried working with both at the same time. Using the framework of a visual novel, their game, is looking to tell a deep story involving all manner of surreal, dangerous monstrosities attacking players and their friends on the mysterious Kodoku Island.

In Lovecraft style, players will arrive on the island to meet the dangerous, unhinged locals, likely running into problems with them quite quickly. You’re encouraged to explore the island to further the story, but there are no shortage of monsters to make that quite difficult. Should you run into one, you have to fight it off with a balance of luck, skill, and strategy. You have a luck rating in combat, and only that will allow you to fight off the monster. To increase luck, you have to sacrifice hit points, hit a monster with a proper combination of spells, or have built up relationships with other characters on the island (relationships reward more hit points and luck). It will take a lot of thought to get away from some of these horrors.

Building up relationships with some of the weirdos who inhabit the island will add a lot of depth to the game, and players will be given choices on how to interact with people. Depending on the characters’ mental states and personal desires/obsessions, they’ll react in different ways to what you say. Pay attention to their wants and needs, and you might gain some luck or hit points to use against the monsters, as well as a worthwhile ally in this terrible place.

You can see more of the game’s monster designs and the characters on Kodoku Chronicles ‘ Kickstarterand Greenlightpages. Mixing pain, fear, madness, lust, and the grotesque, it looks like it will contain plenty of creepy stuff.