Dagon: Complete Edition features a main story and three included DLC’s that are presented as a series of near-static scenes that the player observes, listens to and vaguely explores, all set in the world created by HP Lovecraft. I was expecting a walking simulator, and if you imagine something like that but without the walking — you wouldn’t be far wrong.
With that said, Dagon: Complete Edition isn’t really a game. There are some trivia elements hidden in some scenes, but these are mostly easy to find and almost always add context that isn’t relevant to the story you’re exploring, so you can even turn them off for fear of losing immersion in the current narrative. That’s valid to be honest, as Dagon: Complete Edition is all about turning down the lights, turning up the volume and enjoying the story.
And that’s what Dagon: Complete Edition is — a story, plus three shorter ones. The core experience (no spoilers here) is a narrated experience that brings the world of HP Lovecraft to life. I’ve always been interested in Lovecraft’s work (because it’s so prevalent in video games and board games especially) but I never wanted to read it. This is partly because of his highly questionable views, but also because I just can’t be bothered with the writing style of the era.
Dagon: Complete Edition is perfect for people like me, since it dramatically trims down and simplifies the original language, shortens the experience by tens of hours and delivers a succinct, highly visual retelling of the source material, which I rather enjoyed. The core storyline is just a handful of hours in length, whilst each of the three included DLC’s can be over in as little as ten minutes.
The visuals, whilst almost entirely still, are suitably atmospheric and creepy. Distant mountains look dark and foreboding whilst the creatures that writhe and slither in the foreground are both familiar and alien — almost all inspired by the mysteries of the deep sea that must have seemed so otherworldly to people in the early 20th century.
The sound design compliments the overall atmosphere, with the main feature being the narrator who reads through each passage in a low, gravelly and enunciated tone. Incident sound effects are very few and far between, with just the occasional sound highlighting a point in the narrator’s story. It’s minimalist but fairly effective, and the more frequent background noise of waves on a beach, or wind across a desolate plain framing everything nicely.
Dagon: Complete Edition is not a game —it’s an interactive story. For me, it was worth the relatively short amount of time that it demanded from me because I was able to take a lot of Lovecraft knowledge from it that I simply didn’t have the time or inclination to gain from elsewhere. For Lovecraft experts, it might be a bit light – or it might bring a different visual interpretation to what they already know. Either way, it’s relatively cheap, and if the subject matter appears, I would recommend you give it a look.
You can purchase Dagon: Complete Edition on Playstation, Xbox and PC.
