A while ago, the game Sunless Sea had a free weekend on Steam.

I tried it and found it to be delightfully weird and somewhat Lovecraftian. I eventually bought the game, although I haven’t gotten back to it yet.

Sunless Sea, as well as the rest of the Fallen London franchise, was developed by Failbetter Games. Their founder, Alexis Kennedy, left in 2016 to work on his own projects. Now he has launched a Kickstarter campaign for a new game called Cultist Simulator.

According to an article he wrote about the title, he stuck with the name Cultist Simulator despite some negative feedback about the “simulator” part, because the title “suggests you’re going to be playing as, approximately, the antagonist from a Lovecraft story. That’s only half the story, but it’s the hook.”

All right, you have my attention.

Cultist Simulator is “a game of apocalypse and yearning” and a narrative-driven crafting digital card game. Although it definitely features Lovecraftian themes, it has “less cosmic nihilism than Lovecraft, and more perilous longing.”

If you (like me) are a bit confused about what exactly it is, there’s an early prototype available here.

Backing Cultist Simulator on Kickstarter will give you the Perpetual Edition of the game, which means you’ll have access to all early builds and get any eventual DLC/expansions for free.

Sound interesting? Did you enjoy Sunless Sea? Then it’s probably worth taking a look at Cultist Simulator to see what you think. (And I really need to get back into Sunless Sea.)