[Disclaimer: I received a review key for Innsmouth 22 through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators. The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience. Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]
Systems: Windows, Linux*
Release Date: October 25, 2024
Publisher: Raven Novels
Time Spent: 6 Hours 42 Minutes
First off, we have an entire playthrough of Innsmouth 22 up on our YouTube channel here if you want to go watch that before reading the article. But just a heads up, it runs about 6.5 hours, and it's best watched in chunks, probably not all in one go. And apologies for the seemingly random cut-off times for the videos. Since there werne't any specific chapters, I decided to end a video either when Lorenzo went to bed, or when I myself started dozing off. Secondly, the developer mentioned this on the Steam page, but Innsmouth 22 exclusively uses AI-generated art. From what I can tell, the rest of the in-game text is all created and written by Raven Novels, although as evidenced by the title, is heavily inspired by The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft, but only in ways that we'll get to later. Secondly, while I haven't found
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The game follows an Italian professor, Lorenzo Righi as he travels to New England for a conference for fringe and mainstream history where he takes a short trip to the small town of Innsmouth that was organized on his behalf by the group that organized the conference. What was nice about the overall story in Innsmouth 22 was that while it was inspired by The Shadow Over Innsmouth, it is not an attempt at a direct translation or retelling of that story. You know, an adaptation. Because Innsmouth 22 takes place in the present day, Raven Novels immediately has to come up with reasons how and why Lorenzo would react to certain events and anomalies while carrying around a smartphone. It's an approach that I really appreciate because I feel it's almost easier to create a period piece and limit the technology available to our main character which does increase the tension why you can't just make a phone call or look up information on Google.
Because the game only uses AI-generated art, it was sometimes difficult to gauge the actual look and feel of the town of Innsmouth, especially as the story progressed. In the story by Lovecraft, it's described as:
... a town of wide extent and dense construction, yet one with a portentous dearth of visible life. From the tangle of chimney-pots scarcely a wisp of smoke came, and the three tall steeples loomed stark and unpainted against the seaward horizon. [...] The vast huddle of sagging gambrel roofs and peaked gables conveyed with offensive clearness the idea of wormy decay, and as we approached along the now descending road I could see that many roofs had wholly caved in. [...]
The harbour, long clogged with sand, was enclosed by an ancient stone breakwater; on which I could begin to discern the minute forms of a few seated fishermen, and at whose end were what looked like the foundations of a bygone lighthouse. A sandy tongue had formed inside this barrier, and upon it I saw a few decrepit cabins, moored dories, and scattered lobster-pots.1
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The Innsmouth in
Innsmouth 22 is an interesting anomaly. At first, it's described in a similar manner to the Innsmouth in the book, but as the story progresses, it is described and appears to be a more hospitable town. While not a bustling and vibrant coastal community, there are people around here and there, although I don't recall anyone being described as having the "
Innsmouth look" but regular people who just lived in a small New England fishing town. What further confused me a bit about Raven Novel's depiction of Innsmouth was that later in the game, Lorenzo makes a comparison to H.P. Lovecraft's stories which then brings up several dozen questions about this world, mainly, is this fictional town then supposed to have just been the basis for Lovecraft's real story about a fictionalized version of the in-story real Innsmouth? I don't know if I worded all of that correctly, but I
think my point might've come across? Yes?
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There are several connections Innsmouth 22 has to the source material such as a church that isn't specifically named but we can assume that it's the Esoteric Order of Dagon as Lorenzo accidentally wanders upon a ceremony/mass one of the evenings he's in town. There's also the character of Zadok, although here he's not the exposition dumping Zadok Allen, but instead, he's Jim Zadok who's unemployed but living on a pension who does give Lorezno a bit of history on Innsmouth, but most of that had been left to an unnamed Bartender in the previous scene. Together they're both contextually important scenes, and I suppose that they were split up between two people to create more characters in the town, and again, this is just an adaptation.
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And this is an adaptation after all. There are references to the break into the hotel room at the Gilman Hotel, there's references to Deep Ones and Deep One Hybrids but not in such a prevalent way that they are used in the book, there's the sequence with the Bartender talking about the Marsh and Eliot families although here it is almost a variant retelling of Dagon; although thankfully it never felt that Raven Novels was trying to shoehorn in every other Lovecraftian reference. Lorenzo does discover familial connections to But Lorenzo is allowed to leave Innsmouth halfway through the story and continue with his conference, which surprisingly, has the player sit through several minutes of multiple speakers instead of glossing over the conference itself.
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Rather than try to finish writing an exhaustive book report, I'll say that the remainder of the game there were some interesting choices as far as the story went. There were additional revelations about Deep Ones, there was more international travel, and surprisingly considering Lorenzo's penchant for describing nearly every woman he met, there was no infidelity. Or maybe I just made the correct dialogue and choice options to avoid that scenario? I did greatly appreciate that there were frequent choices that I could make so it wasn't just pressing either A or ZR for the whole 6.5 hours. Even if the different choices ultimately led to the same outcome, it was nice to at least have the illusion of agency in a visual novel.
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I had several issues with the game. Most notably, because the game was originally written in Italian and translated into English, at times, it felt that the translation was not the greatest in the world. This is not a dig at Raven Novels or an attempt at Anglocentrism as most everything was legible and I did experience a full story. There were times when the translation though didn't feel either fully authentic or I would think, "That's an interesting way to phrase that." Secondly, and related to this, was that there were times when there was no English translation and Italian came up on the screen. In my head, I had created the headcanon that this happened because a character was just super excited about something and slipped into using Italian. I'm not 100% sure if it happened with any character that would not have spoken Italian, but that was what I thought.
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The last thing was the use of AI art, which I partly understand, but I found it at times distracting. I know the generalities of what to look for when you're trying to determine if a picture is AI-generated like where lights are hung, table and chair legs, windows, light sources, etc, and since I already knew that this game exclusively used AI-generated art, I knew what I was getting into, but at times I found myself more compelled to look at a setting for things that looked off or structurally impossible. On that note, there was a drastic change in artistic style toward the end of the game (Episode 11 if you're watching along) when Lorenzo, Tom, and Emma dive to look at the engravings at Plum Island and upon their return trip to the harbor. It's a very different choice in art and it doesn't remain consistent for the rest of the game compared with the previous six hours. I guess it could make sense in a Colour Out of Space sense, but here, to happen out of the blue was an interesting choice.
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Overall, I thought that the weaknesses of Innsmouth 22 did not overpower what I enjoyed about the game. I appreciate an attempt at a modern adaptation of a story that was not only written but also takes place 90 years ago and places it in a modern setting with all of the amenities and conveniences we have today. I also enjoyed the use of music and occasional environmental sound effects, even if the music might come across as repetitive after the first hour; and it's pretty dangerous to play late at night because I think I've now conditioned myself to become sleepy whenever I hear that song now. As far as the end of the game goes, while it was fairly abrupt, there was a certain Lovecraftian charm to it. Once you make your final choice in the game, there are a few lines of text to read, then the game simply ends with an "End." I'm sure that "Fine" looks a little fancier than simply "End" the same way that some films end with "Fin" instead of using English, but in English, "End" almost comes across as a placeholder or just poorly written.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
P.S. You might've noticed that around the 17-minute mark on Part 9, the aspect ratio changes, and that was because I went back and "refilmed from this point until the end, because I had dozed off while playing and I skipped through this part rather quickly. So when I went back to the game and started it to "refilm" the game had been released and updated since the previous night, which included changing the aspect ratio along with the title screen.
P.P.S. There were also several times when I accidentally brought up a secondary settings menu while playing, and that apparently happens when you press the Steam Deck joystick to the left in this game; so it's an in-game feature, not a bug, which confused me the first time it happened. And to ruin some behind the scenes magic, when that happens in subsequent videos, it's because I was starting to doze off. Sorry.
1. The Shadow Over Innsmouth by Lovecraft, H.P.
Visionary Publishing Company, April 1936
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