Wednesday, June 13, 2018

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.164: Hot War



Set in the same alternative history as Cold City, Hot War reimagines the Cuban missile crisis as precipitating an apocalyptic Third World War: one forged not only from the fires of nuclear fission, but as a result of the deployment of incomprehensible esoteric technologies harvested from Nazi Germany by Britain, America, and the Soviets.

Here a devestated London - over which the provisional government only just manages to maintain control - forms the focal point of the game, where players are trying to deal with the harsh realities of martial law, sedition, unnameable monstrosities summoned from beyond time and space through the use of weaponised arcane machineries - and of course, foreigners.

Imagine Wyndham meets Ballard meets Lovecraft by way of Charles Stross and Tarkovsky, played out against the background of Threads and the emboldened xenophobia of Brexit, to produce a peculiar and horrifying British post-war bleakness.

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