Game Jam Winner Spotlight: Letters To Cthulhu
And here we are! We've arrived at the end of our series of posts looking at the winners of the sixth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1928! We've already featured Best Visuals winner Flight from Podunk Station and Best Adaptation winner Mickey Party, Best Remix winner The Burden Of Creation, Best and Deep Cut winner Solar Storm 1928, and Best Digital Game winner Millions of Cats, and today we're looking at our sixth and final game, Best Analog Game winner Letters To Cthulhu by Lucienne Impala.
A small tabletop roleplaying game is an excellent project to undertake for a jam like this, as putting one together requires nothing more than a clear theme and some written rules, but that doesn't mean making a good one is easy. To stand out, such a game needs to shine in at least one way whether that's highly engaging written content for the setting and characters, or rich and interesting rules that suggest gameplay depth, or - as is often the most impressive, and as is the case with Lucienne Impala's Letters to Cthulhu - a creative and clever core mechanic that brings the entire thing into focus.
The game, which is based on the H. P. Lovecraft story of the same name and the broader mythos of his works, puts players in the shoes (or robes) of Cthulhu cultists trying to communicate with their dark god. There's a thematic core that's essential to this kind of Lovecraftian story and setting: a roiling mixture of ambition, avarice, fear, power, awe, and madness. Lovecraft explored these themes through dozens of stories, while the game takes them on in a mere ten pages of rules.
The game is simple: one player takes on the role of Cthulhu, and will serve as the judge of the outcome, while the rest are tasked with composing the letter that will be judged. The group's goal is to bring Cthulhu forth into the world, but each cultist is also randomly assigned a secret desire of their own, and each contributes just one sentence to the letter as it's passed around the group. And there's a twist: each cultist also has a specific way in which they can alter the previous sentence.
How they use this power (and if they use it at all) is up to them - will they try to manipulate the letter to ensure their own desires are fulfilled, or try to stymie the greed of others and keep the group on track towards its shared goal? Perhaps both, or neither. It becomes a monstrously corrupted game of telephone, where every link in the chain matters. The balance of desires in the final letter will determine the outcome, as the player representing Cthulhu uses a few simple rules (and a lot of freeform narrative creativity) to decide the fate that befalls the group and each individual.
The game is designed to move relatively quickly so it can be played more than once, each time with different players taking on the role of Cthulhu and different desires for all the cultists, and it's best played with a larger group of 6-8 people. The tense, paranoid, conniving dynamic the game creates is subtle and specific to its source material, and is successfully established by just a few pages of rules that anyone can learn in moments. That kind of design elegance is always worth of note, and earns Letters to Cthulhu the title of Best Analog Game.
Congratulations to Lucienne Impala for the win! You can get everything you need to play Letters to Cthulhu on Itch, plus don't forget to check out the other winners as well as the many great entries that didn't quite make the cut!
And that's a wrap on this year's winner spotlights. A huge thanks to everyone who submitted a game this year! We'll be back next January, as always, with Gaming Like It's 1929 - and whether you've entered the jam before or are thinking about doing it for the first time, it's never too early to start exploring the many great works that will be entering the public domain in 2025.