Cthulhu Keeper Revitalizes Classic PC Game Genres Through A Lovecraftian Lens

Some hardcore PC game genres have had a renaissance in recent years. Baldur's Gate 3 reinvigorated love for the CPRG, while Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 tapped into a communal love for hardcore first-person RPGs that hadn't been satiated in a while. Not all classic PC gaming genres have been so lucky. We've yet to see a new stealth-tactics game like Commandos or a dungeon management game like Dungeon Keeper become a breakout hit. That's not for lack of trying, as games like Desperados 3 and Evil Genius 2: World Domination have kept the legacy of these genres going, albeit in a way that has stayed niche. Kuuasema's Cthulhu Keeper aims to resurrect these struggling genres and become that surprise success.

Cthulhu Keeper is a real-time tactics game split into two parts: One half sees players building up their home base of operations and defending it from intruders, while the other sees the player command cultists and Lovecraftian monsters with special abilities to complete stealth missions. I had the chance to go hands-on with Cthulhu Keeper exclusively following its reveal last month, and I found it to be an entertaining hybrid of those classic PC game genres.

The version of Cthulhu Keeper I played didn't have much narrative content, although the eldritch theming still emanated from everything I played. There's no shortage of Lovecraftian video games out there, but the distinct perspective of Cthulhu Keeper helps it stand out. As I hear my subjects say, "Yes, master" after I give them commands during stealth missions and slowly amass power by building my cult's compound, I feel like a puppet master in the way Cthulhu and other horrors often are in Lovecraftian tales.

That vibe remains strong when I'm commanding minions within my cult compound, digging out areas so I can build altars, libraries, and other structures to increase my power and defend against potential intruders. Then, when intruders arrived--they ranged from genuine snoopers to a lovey-dovey couple who ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time--I could see everything I built work in harmony to keep those invaders at bay.

Management games like Two Point Museum are good fun, but I appreciate how Cthulhu Keeper is more in tune with the gameplay loop that made Dungeon Keeper such a classic. This cult compound gameplay is the backbone of Cthulhu Keeper, but building defenses or earning upgrades does require resources. To earn those resources, I had to venture out and complete stealth missions around the world. This part of Cthulhu Keeper is what plays more like Commandos, or contemporary examples like Desperados 3 and Sumerian Six.

Stealth missions took two different forms. There are story missions that serve as the set piece levels, while expeditions were mini-roguelite runs where I had to strategically get my units through a series of smaller encounters as unscathed as possible. I love stealth-tactics games because they reward my smart planning but also require me to think on my toes based on how enemies react to my actions.

Cthulhu Keeper does not reinvent this style of gameplay; I still have to delicately choose where to place my units to navigate around enemy vision cones and smartly utilize each unit's abilities to kill enemies or open up opportunities to move past a unit without getting spotted. Player units are fragile, so I wasn't successful in Cthulhu Keeper whenever I tried to run and gun through a scenario.

The Lovecraftian twists Cthulhu Keeper applies to this tried-and-true formula do provide a unique flair within the stealth-tactics space. When I started missions, I only had one unit to command: Lilith West, a corrupted neurobiologist. Lilith could stealthily kill an enemy just fine, but she doesn't have much in the way of offensive abilities. Instead, her skills focused on increasing the number of units at my disposal.

After killing an enemy, I could harvest their corpse to get an eyeball or choose to reanimate them. The former would allow me to see an enemy's vision cone and surroundings even if they were out of my sightline, while the latter would create a whole new unit I could use to attack enemies or damage the sanity of civilians scattered throughout each level. Once I terrified a civilian, I could have Lilith use her Enlighten ability to turn them into a unit under my command.

These units couldn't kill enemies but were useful for scouting areas or temporarily stunning enemies so I could get past them. Occasionally, I would encounter a pylon in a level and destroy it to summon eldritch monsters. These monsters were the units that could tear through enemy forces, but even then, I had to carefully manage their health to ensure they did not die. That was particularly tough in the lengthy story mission, as I could no longer rely on quickly running to an encounter's exit to move on.

Even from this light smattering of encounters, I'm already enjoying the stealth-tactics part of Cthulhu Keeper as much as I enjoy games like Desperados 3. When a game juggles two different genres of gameplay, it risks becoming a jack of all trades but a master of none. I did not get that feeling while playing Cthulhu Keeper, as I found it to provide equally polished and engaging takes on stealth-tactics and dungeon-defending gameplay.

It's also a solid entry point to both of these hardcore genres. The menus and currencies required to build out the cult compound aren't overly complex. Meanwhile, the bite-sized encounters of expeditions should make learning the intricacies of stealth tactics less overwhelming and reliant on save-scumming. Cthulhu Keeper could reanimate PC gaming genres that have struggled to have a breakout hit in recent years, Lovecraftian-style.

Cthulhu Keeper is in development for PC. A public playtest for the game will begin on March 17.