Missed Classic 128: The Hound of Shadow - Introduction (1989)

Written by Vetinari

The Hound of Shadow is the first of two games created by British developer Eldritch Games and based on the Cthulhu Mythos by Lovecraft.

This game is a bit of a precursor to the other Lovecraftian games which were all the rage in the first half of the 1990s, such as Alone in the Dark, Shadow of the Comet or Prisoner of Ice, but still it was published two years later than Infocom's The Lurking Horror.

Eldritch Games was the child of software designers Chris Elliott and Richard Edwards, who created the company specifically to develop the Timeline computer games series, of which unfortunately only this game and its later sequel (Daughter of Serpents) were ever created.

Elliot and Edwards. I doubt that this was taken during a normal day at the office.

The other credits for this game are Mike Lewis, who is credited with the lion's share of the programming, and Carl Cropley as the graphic artist.

From Mobygames I see that Elliot and Edwards are (unsurprisingly) also the writers for the sequel, while Mike Lewis has no other credits after this game. None of them has worked for any other videogame that I know of... but Carl Cropley is credited as an artist for maybe one of the most underrated game of all time (and a personal favourite): Floor 13!

He's this guy here.

But I digress. It would seem that while Hound is an illustrated text adventure game, its putative sequel is more of a point-and-click adventure. Both games use the Timeline role-playing system, which as far as I understand was specifically designed for them. The game allows you to create your own character by selecting various backgrounds, professions, skills, and so on. Theoretically having different characteristics would open different possible choices, vignettes or even completely different paths throughout the game.

A bit like Darklands (another personal favourite).

I never played Hound of Shadow, but I remember playing Daughter of Serpents back in the day. From what I gather, there were some plans to make the characters from previous games available to be imported in later games (à la Quest for Glory), but I think this was never implemented, since I don't remember there being this option in Daughter of Serpents at all.

So, without further ado, let's begin!

Nice eye-effect.

Starting the game, after the splash screen the main menu gives you the possibility to customize your character, which we are obviously going to do because we are not some scaredy-cats that are going to balk at this prospect and just pick one of the default characters.

The first thing you can do is choose your gender, and by staring at this screen, it is the first time that I realise something.

That finger gun up in the sky is the mouse cursor.

For some reason I thought that this game was set in Victorian times, but instead it is set in the Roaring Twenties! Which, thinking back, does actually make sense since Lovecraft characters and more in general the investigators from the Call of Cthulhu RPG, which is an obvious inspiration for this game, usually hail from that period of time. I blame the Dracula Unleashed playthrough for setting me on the wrong path about this.

Since we are fully in Christie Time, I therefore decide on the spot that my character will be an amateur sleuth.

After having chosen our gender, we can choose a title (like Mr., Miss., Dr., Professor or even Sir or Lady), age and date of birth. Subsequently, the game gives you a randomly generated description of your main characteristics, which you can choose to re-roll at will. After each re-roll, the game teases you by saying things like “I hope this is more to your tastes” or “I don't even know what you are looking for anymore”.

The naming of this character goes at least twice deep into the fictional rabbit hole.

The game then lets you choose a possible nationality. Unfortunately, Finnish is not one of the options, so I default to choosing British.

For some reason it took me a long time to recognize that the flag on the left is the Union Jack.

Then, after that, you get to choose your profession.

It is at this point that I realise that I have no idea what any of this is. There are no mouseovers nor anything else to point out what any of these things mean, so I have to resort to checking the manual (fortunately retrieved online) to get a grip on what the various choices are.

Typewriter and magnifying glass I recognize, but what's the second thing in the upper row?

Apparently, the possible careers are (in order from upper left to lower right): Novelist, Aristocrat/Socialite, Reporter, Psychic Investigator, Gentleman Adventurer, Sleuth/Private Eye, Scholar.

Since I have already decided that I want to be an amateur investigator, I choose Sleuth. Then in the next screen the game asks you to choose what you did in WWI. You can say what you want about the process of character creation in this game, but it certainly is detailed.

Most probably choosing to be American would change the poster to Uncle Sam.

Finally, we arrive at the screen where you can allocate points to the various categories of skills.  I can distribute points in Physical, Social, Investigative, Academic, Logical, Creative and Spiritual.

The various levels of skills are much more granular than I would have liked.

As you can see I allocated most points to Investigative, Social and Logical. But that's not all! Because for each of these categories, there are various sub-headings with the proper skills themselves, and you must also allocate to these ones a total of points equal to how many you assigned in the previous step to the related category.

Each category has further subcategories to which the skill points must be allotted.

In this case the skills that are amassed under the Investigative category are: Electrical Engineering (?!), History, Research, Linguist, Listen, Mechanical Engineering (?!?), Escapology, Conjuring (?!?!), Psychology, Perception, Woodcraft (?!?!?).

I allocated the points to Research, Listen and Perception because they seemed the best fit for an investigator, plus Escapology because it is a rogue skill and I have a weakness for playing rogues in RPGs.

The other skill categories have a little less choices, but not that much less. In total I think there are about 40-45 skills to choose from, which range from Occult to Persuasion to Piloting an airplane.

After finishing the game I will endeavour to play again with a different character to see if and how many differences there are in the plot according to the chosen skills. I definitely am wondering right now what would happen if I played as a master Woodworker, or as an expert in Prestidigitation.

The skill allocation is the last part of the character creation process, then you get a small résumé of your character abilities and you can save your character and get back to the main menu.

No idea where the part about firing a shotgun comes from.

Finally, you can choose the character that you created (or one of the pre-generated ones, if you are a milquetoast) to begin the adventure.

I think that this is a good point to finish the first introductory post. Next time we will go investigating in 1920s London!

A very apt introduction for a sleuth character. I wonder how the other types of characters would have been introduced.

Session Time: 1 hour 00 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour 00 minutes

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