Night of the Cephalopods (2008)
Night of the Cephalopods is a survival horror game with old school pixel art graphics and an innovative fully voiced dynamic narrative system.
The game begins with a man lost in the woods having mistakenly summoning legions of preternatural octopi through a mistranslation of the Octinomicon, an eight volume set of books with mysterious power. Now you must fight till dawn with only your shotgun and a handful of shells. Throughout the game your status, the actions you take and the locations you explore are narrated back to you in the style of classic horror master H.P. Lovecraft with full high quality voice acting.
Night of the Cephalopods was originally created during the third round of the Artsy Games Incubator, a six week event where Toronto artists help each other learn how to make their own games.
“Its success is based on both the quality of the writing and the unexpected timing of the narrative tidbits... ...If the breathless voice of the Lovecraftian scribe fills you with glee, then this is most certainly for you.”
Screenshots
“...your actions are fully narrated by the protagonist’s voiceover. The poor fellow is, it seems, trapped in a Lovecraftian fiction, and he tells you all about it, from your failure to reload, to missing your shots. He’s going mad, and you have to hear about his plight. Well worth playing, if just for those bleak comedic utterances.”
Gameplay Video
Spoiler Alert!!!
Most of the fun of Cephalopods is hearing the narration for the first time and discovering what actions will trigger unique responses. Unavoidably this video gives some of that away. However If you've already played the game and want to know more about it, I've added some optional commentary on what went into creating it.
“NotC’s gameplay feels deliberately slow, and claustrophobic, which adds weight to the dreadful narrative.”
“Nice title, but I’m sorry, it’s Windows only, so no way will I ever sully my gaming muscles to play it..”
Blog Entries Mentioning Night of The Cephalopods
Credits
Miguel Sternberg: Writing - Code - Art - Sound Design
Scott "Pirate" Moyle: Voice Acting
The sound effects and soundtrack use audio from freesounds.org and are used under a Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0 License. These sounds were created by the following people:
Music by: Dan Oberbauer, Connum
Various sound effects use samples by:
AaronGNP, Shades, Wolfsinger, vibe_crc, HardPCM, digifishmusic, sverga, tigersound, adcbicycle
Created using Game Maker 7.0 Pro
In addition the following 3rd party dlls were used for sound and Xbox 360 gamepad support:
GMXInput.dll by Yellowsix
supersound.dll by tsg1zzn