''Shadow of the Comet'' (later repackaged as ''Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Comet'') is an adventure game developed and released by

Infogrames Atari SA (formerly Infogrames Entertainment SA) is a French video game holding company headquartered in Paris. Its subsidiaries include Atari Interactive and Atari, Inc. It is the current owner of the Atari brand through Atari Interactive. ...

in 1993. The game is based on H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos and uses many elements from Lovecraft's ''

The Dunwich Horror "The Dunwich Horror" is a horror novella by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written in 1928, it was first published in the April 1929 issue of '' Weird Tales'' (pp. 481–508). It takes place in Dunwich, a fictional town in Massachusett ...

'' and ''

The Shadow Over Innsmouth ''The Shadow over Innsmouth'' is a horror novella by American author H. P. Lovecraft, written in November–December 1931. It forms part of the Cthulhu Mythos, using its motif of a malign undersea civilization, and references several shared e ...

''. A follow-up game, ''

Prisoner of Ice ''Prisoner of Ice'' (also ''Call of Cthulhu: Prisoner of Ice'') is an adventure game developed and released by Infogrames Multimedia for IBM PC compatibles and Macintosh in 1995 in America and Europe. It is based on H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu ...

'', was released in 1995 and does not directly follow the events of this game. ''Shadow of the Comet: The Official Strategy Guide'' (

Prima Publishing Prima Games is a publishing company of video game strategy guides in the United States. Formerly, Prima was an imprint of Dorling Kindersley, a division of Penguin Random House, and produced print ''strategy guides'', featuring ''in-depth walkthro ...

, 1994; re-released by the author, 2019) was written by Steve Schwartz. In addition to a game walkthrough, all game dialog, and a disk of saved games, the book includes the Lovecraft story ''

The Call of Cthulhu "The Call of Cthulhu" is a short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written in the summer of 1926, it was first published in the pulp magazine ''Weird Tales'' in February 1928. Inspiration The first seed of the story's first chapter '' ...

''.

Gameplay

The player can control the protagonist Parker via the arrow keys. When Parker comes across something he can interact with, a button press will allow the player to do so. Items that Parker can take will project a white line from Parker's eye to the item, indicating that when the player interacts with the item, it will be added to Parker's inventory. Apart from this the game plays like a standard third-person adventure game.

Plot

The game takes place in 1910, and concerns the visit of a young British photographer, John Parker, to the isolated

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the Can ...

town of Illsmouth (an alteration on Lovecraft's

Innsmouth Lovecraft Country is a term coined for the New England setting used by H. P. Lovecraft in many of his weird fiction stories, which combines real and fictitious locations. This setting has since been elaborated on by other writers working in the ...

) to witness and photograph the passage of

Halley's Comet Halley's Comet or Comet Halley, officially designated 1P/Halley, is a short-period comet visible from Earth every 75–79 years. Halley is the only known short-period comet that is regularly visible to the naked eye from Earth, and thus the on ...

. In 1834, on the last passing, Lord Boleskine visited the town after learning that certain conditions near the town would allow astronomical objects to be seen clearer and closer than on any other spot on earth. He decided to test this theory by observing the comet from Illsmouth, but something unexpected happened and he went insane, spending the rest of his life in a lunatic asylum. Parker, learning of the 1834 incident and reading over Boleskine's papers, wishes to succeed where his predecessor failed. When he arrives, Parker stumbles upon a sinister conspiracy and must survive the three days between his arrival and the comet's passage while finding out what happened in 1834.

Reception

'' Computer Gaming World'' praised ''Shadow of the Comet''s plot, puzzles, writing, and "rather naughty, dark Gallic sense of humor" but criticized the lack of mouse support, calling object manipulation and puzzle solving without one "painful". The magazine concluded that the game "is a high quality graphic adventure that offers nothing particularly new as far as technological advances and is, in some ways, a touch old-fashioned. This may, however, not be a bad thing" given the plot's quality. In 2011,

Adventure Gamers ''Adventure Gamers'' is a computer game website created by Marek Bronstring in March 1998 dedicated to the genre of adventure games. It publishes reviews and previews of adventure games, as well as opinion articles and interviews with game desi ...

named ''Shadow of the Comet'' the 74th-best adventure game ever released.

Reviews

*''

Pyramid A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilat ...

'' #12 (March/April, 1995)

References

External links

* {{The Shadow Over Innsmouth 1993 video games Adventure games Infogrames games Point-and-click adventure games DOS games Games commercially released with DOSBox Fiction about Halley's Comet Linux games NEC PC-9801 games Works based on The Shadow over Innsmouth Cthulhu Mythos video games Video games developed in France Video games set in the 1910s Video games set in New England Video games set in the United States Windows games Horror video games Single-player video games