The next time you run into a cult bringing about the return of the old gods, spare a thought for their tireless, tireless toiling. Thanks to Click of Cthulhu, we now know exactly how this process is exacted—and there's a whole lot of clicking involved.
So, Click of Cthulhu is an idle game: you click on a resource to acquire it, again and again and again, before eventually automating the process via upgrades. The difference here is that there's also a city-building element: in order to utilise more Deep Ones (basically, your demonic population) you have to expand your unholy realm by building roads and houses, before constructing mines and other structures for them to labour in. Ultimately, you're aiming to build a magic key to unlock the Gates of R'lyeh, but before that, there's clicking to be done.
City-building and endlessly clicking on stuff is a combination that works well, as there's a lot of overlap between the two genres. And I love how open Click of Cthulhu is with its theme: there's no A Dark Room-style mystery, really no messing about at all here: you're simply trying to raise an old one, now get on with it.
You're probably sick of all things Lovecraft by now, but here's a simple, effective timewaster that does something fresh with Cthulhu and its cosmic mates.
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Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.