The Call of Innsmouth is a choice-based horror story by Tripper McCarthy.
This entry is a serviceable addition to the Lovecraft universe. The work stumbles over some common challenges that plague initial releases, but its attention to detail suggests that the author will publish outstanding work in the future.
The story visits standard New England locations that are central to Lovecraft's work, and design choices support a creepy atmosphere. Presentation details, like the custom background and buttons to choose your next action, are a welcome departure from Twine's black-and-white defaults.
I enjoyed my experience in the town of Innsmouth. It was briskly paced and full of suitably tense decisions. There are multiple ways to encounter plot points before fleeing to safety, and although bad decisions can end in disaster, the author allows players to undo their mistakes.
The investigation that led the narrator to Innsmouth was much less exciting. Early pages end with the equivalent of "click to continue" buttons, and every possible conversation option must be exhausted before doing something else. I felt less like a sharp-eyed detective and more like a bored student hearing lectures that repeated the same few ideas about Innsmouth and its sinister residents.
The writing in this entry suffered from a lack of trust — I couldn't tell whether the author didn't trust me to notice details the first time they were mentioned, or whether they didn't trust their own skills to correct the bloated, repetitive excesses of Lovecraft's source material.
My hunch is that later parts of this entry worked better because of lessons learned during the development process. My hope is that this drive for improvement will lead to great work in the future.
Artwork from Donald Conrad:
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