An agreement between Call of Cthulhu impresarios, Chaosium and new development studio Red Wasp Design will see the award winning role-playing game (RPG), Call of Cthulhu, coming to a mobile platform near you. The first title, "Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land" is set in the midst of World War One and pits a team of investigators and soldiers against an ancient enemy, older than humanity itself.

We caught up with Red Wasp's Tomas Rawlings to talk about Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land game.

Horror News Network: Can you talk a bit about what making this game means to you as a Cthulhu fan?

Tomas Rawlings: I've been a fan of both Lovecraft's work and the Call of Cthulhu for many, many years and have been pitching Cthulhu-esque ideas to various publishers for some time now. So to get to work with the actual Call of Cthulhu license and to actually make a Call of Cthulhu game is a dream come true for me as a games developer. Chaosium have been great throughout the whole process so far; open to ideas and offering us feedback on ideas and design. At Red Wasp we hope this will be a powerful combination of their heritage and knowledge and our technology and video games experience. I see Cthulhu-esque ideas growing and growing in popular culture, which is testament to the enduring power of Lovecraft and his fellow writers' imagination. Its great to be a small part of the ever- mutating Mythos-meme. As long as there is horror media, there will be Cthulhu....

Horror News Network: Do you feel added pressure in making this game knowing that Call of Cthulhu is such a popular RPG?

Tomas Rawlings: Huge pressure. The game is beloved and popular for all the right reasons - it's an amazing game. You don't get to be one of the best paper RPGs for 30 years now without doing lots of things right. However video games are a very different medium and its simply not possible to port the game over as is. Paper RPGs are guided by the imagination (and acting) of the players, so they work well when players come up with crazy schemes and mad solutions to problems. However in a video game the Keeper is the game-engine and it has restrictions from the hardware and software on what can and can't be done. Some games, like the PC/Xbox 'Dark Corners of the Earth', use Call of Cthulhu as a setting and make the game about the action. I've got this game and enjoyed playing it, but we wanted to take our game in a different direction. I'm a huge fan of turn-based strategy games (XCom, Fire Emblem) and felt that their turn-based nature fitted a game based on the RPG quite well. As a result, this is the direction we're taking.

Horror News Network: Will each character that you control have his or her own character sheet with skills, hit points, sanity points, etc?

Tomas Rawlings: There will be a character screen for each of your characters. In addition, as characters die and you recruit replacements, they too will have their own screen. As the game progresses you'll get to improve the characters and so shape them with skills, weapons and equipment too. As this is a mobile game, one of the main issues we face as a developer is that the size of the screen is small, so we're looking at ways to streamline the User Interface (UI) so that the player has the stats they need to play, but also can navigate around on their mobile and not be swamped in an overly complex UI.

Horror News Network: Can you tell us a bit about Professor Brightmeer?

Tomas Rawlings: He is one of the main characters in the game – a very Lovecraftian academic who is also a good shot with a revolver. He's a character in the mould of fellow academics from the Miskatonic University such as Dr. Henry Armitage (The Dunwich Horror) and Seneca Lapham (The Lurker at the Threshold). What is a little unusual is that he's a US citizen who is involved in the First World War (where the game is set) in 1915, which is before the US has officially become involved in the conflict. Interestingly there were plenty of US citizens who wanted to fight before their nation chose to do so and H.P.Lovecraft himself fictionalised one such early participant, a Doctor Herbert West in the story Re-animator.

Horror News Network: What can we expect to see in this game in terms of monsters?

Tomas Rawlings: We don't want to give away all the creatures that the game will have, as we want to keep some surprises for the player. However we can say that while zombies form some of the cannon-fodder thrown against the enemy, they are only the one wave of what the players must face. We've got a number of other familiar Mythos creatures lined up, eager to mutilate humans, plus a couple of new creations of our own. I’ve been thinking of this game setting for quite some time and so didn’t want to not do what I felt right for the game because of what lots of other games, films and TV might be doing with zombies right now, as much fun as it all is. Our inspiration for using the undead in a World War 1 setting comes from Lovecraft himself, from his story Re-Animator. The 1986 film version placed in this in a contemporary setting, be we wanted to take the idea back to Lovecraft's original. You'll see what I man from this extract of Part V of Re-animator which is set in a field hospital behind the lines in 1915: “Many men have related hideous things, not mentioned in print, which happened on the battlefields of the Great War. Some of these things have made me faint, others have convulsed me with devastating nausea, while still others have made me tremble and look behind me in the dark; yet despite the worst of them I believe I can myself relate the most hideous thing of all—the shocking, the unnatural, the unbelievable horror from the shadows.”

Horror News Network: When can we expect to see the first trailer for this game?

Tomas Rawlings: We don't have any firm dates as yet. Progress on the game is good and going well, so we hope sooner rather than later. Best thing is to sign up to our Twitter/Facebook (@redwaspdesign or http://on.fb.me/redwaspfb) or via our email list on http://www.redwaspdesign.com to be kept informed. We'll also be sure to email them to Horror News Network too, so your readers can see major developments too!

Horror News Network: Where can we find out more about this title as it develops?

Tomas Rawlings: We've got a blog where we are writing about the development of the title – there is a mix of general stuff and more detailed information about the game there. We welcome reader's comments and feedback on what we're doing. I know there are lots of Call of Cthulhu fans and Lovecraft enthusiasts from whom we can learn a thing or two.

Horror News Network: In closing, what would you like to say about Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land?

Tomas Rawlings: For me this project is very much a labour of love. A few years ago I wrote a Monograph for Chaosium (the makers of Call of Cthulhu RPG) called 'The Dark Mirror' and during that process I started a dialogue with them about making a game. However I was busy with other projects, so it had to wait. However now we've been able to put together the right development team with the right experience to make this happen. We're an indie developer, so no mega budget here, but we hope that what we lack in money we'll make up in passion, tentacles and the support of fellow fans.

Horror News Network: Thank you for your time, Tomas. Comment on this interview on our forum.

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Published on: 2011-06-09 (1100 reads)