Publisher: Red Wasp Design
Developer: Red Wasp Design
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 1.8 GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM, OpenGL-compatible graphics card
Genre: Strategy
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

Oh, what is man? What can pierce the sky with metal and fire? What can split the foundations of the universe into kindling for laptops and iPods? What god is man? And yet, when we stare at the universe, either through a telescope or a microscope, we see the same things. Beyond the banality of planets and particles, we see a large darkness. No matter how much we look into it, it never looks back. This is our modern horror, the unthinking, unfeeling insanity of H.P. Lovecraft’s lauded Cthulhu mythos. These century-old works of fiction have gripped the modern mind and spread through Internet culture like a mutated cult. Heck, even Batman’s Arkham Asylum is a nod towards Miskatonicly minded individuals. However, when the awakening cults finally hit gaming, I expected a Korean MMO, a card-battle game, or something equally insane. What we got was The Wasted Land, a turn-based strategy game originally on iOS. Much like the works that birthed it, what The Wasted Land lacks in body it has in soul.

The Wasted Land makes full use of its World War I setting. Dreary trenches, tangled wire and clouds of nerve gas dot the despairing landscape. Nazis, cults, mad scientists and tentacle monsters all show up like a Lovecraft Christmas special. Character dialogue during the nine missions advances the plots, each of which have multiple objectives to accomplish. What starts out as a standoff might end with a frantic escape as enemies begin to pour out of every crevice. All of this works well to keep the game out of the dreaded dullness that often soils the genre.

The gameplay should feel familiar to anyone versed in turn-based strategy. Spend action points to move and attack, or save them for possible attacks of opportunity during the enemy’s turn. Of course, each character has a sanity score, which decreases when attacked by monsters or when casting a spell. When your sanity is gone, your unit gains a manic boost of AC until it collapses from exhaustion. Each character has a set of weapons from which to choose, and special inventory items to use. Between each mission you earn XP to spend to upgrade your squad; a nice touch of spice.

The Wasted Land was originally designed for the iPad and it shows. It looks like its title: blasted, chunky and muddy. In this era of indie development, these things are digestible. However, our gaming organs have never adapted to poor controls. I’m sure that they’re perfectly good for a touch pad, but they’re quite a bit less than intuitive with a mouse. Instead of simply dragging the camera around by holding down a left click, it becomes a virtual thumbstick of sorts, which usually ends up tossing the camera wildly about the map. A simple left-click selects a unit, but instead of using a right or double click to attack, you’ll have to click and hold, an action often misinterpreted as a command for the dread camera to move. The trick to porting games from a touch environment is to understand that now that you have (at least) two mouse buttons, you don’t have to cram everything onto a single input.

Rare is the moment that you feel like you decisively have the upper hand. More often than not, you feel like you’re just barely pushing against a massive wave, even without any fog of war. The mission-complete screen comes as a wave of relief. Sometimes that relief is an earned respite from your battle against the dark. Sometimes it’s because you had to trial-and-error your way through a brutal difficulty spike. Also, better make sure none of your mission-critical characters (most of your six-man squad) die, lest the game instantly end. However, once you identify the redshirt of your squad, you can use him as tentacle bait while the rest of your guys make a run for it, a tactic that never gets old.

In the end, Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land is not a particularly stellar TBS, but it has its moments. I can honestly say that I’ve never experienced this kind of tension in a turn-based game before. For the success of this experiment alone, I award Red Wasp Design bonus points. On the PC, it can be found solely through Intel’s AppUp store for $5, a price that does a lot to soften its uneven design and awkward controls. Fans of either TBS games or the Cthulhu mythos can add another star to this rating. Though rooted in a long-running tradition, as a game it has a unique style and soul. I dearly hope that the developers find a more worthy vessel for their ambition next time around.

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