A full-blown Lovecraftican x WWII-shlock FPS game for just THREE dollars?! Satisfactory.
Quartermain and the Cult of Cthhlhu is a Retro FPS developed by ThePrinceOfMars and their co. and published by DOSman Games. Running in the EFPSE Engine, it follows the titular Quartermain and his merry crew as they seek out a magical artifact , said to be able to transport entire armies to wherever they desire. But unfortunately for them, it's the 1940s and THOSE losers are back at it again meddling with super-natural nonsense and also somehow have robots AND dimensional horrors on their side. This leads Quartermain going on a full adventure to retrieve the artifact and stomp out the "enemy soldiers" team as much as humanly possible. While the game doesn't entirely push the EFPSE to it's absolute limits, the structure of the campaign and the gameplay itself is so standout from the other DOSman Games EFPSE games it has to be praised.
Gameplay wise, as you might expect with a DOSman Games involved Retro FPS, the game is structure with the classic Retro FPS formula. Featuring levels, with 3 distinct episodes mind you, a ton of enemies both in types and amount, keys for progression, as well as up to 60 secrets to find. The first notable innovation that Quartermain presents is altfires for the weapons. Surprisingly this is the first EFPSE FPS Game from DOSman Games to feature a alt-fire of some kind on Quartermain's Revolver, which is a welcome addition! You also have quite a decent range of weapons with era-appropriate weapons like the MP40 or a Shotgun, among other things. But you also have some more exotic weapons like a hand-held mortar cannon that shoots 50 cal. shells, or a ring that allows for a flamethrower attack. Enemies come is a wide range of shapes and surprisingly a lot of colors, while you do have the classic archetypes for EFPFE games of melee and ranged attack enemies. There's surprising a lot more enemies types this time around. Such as enemies that do nothing but spawn fodder enemies, enemies with complex projectile attack patterns, among other oddities. It's so refreshing to have a enemy roster that has a lot of variety, especially because the does not hold back when it comes to enemy amount. There's a achievement for killing 2500 total enemies and you will be hitting around that amount throughout the whole game. Another thing to note is how secrets are handled, as while they feature the standard health, armor, and maybe a weapon early reward they also come with a collectable treasure. As mentioned there are 60 total secrets and therefore 60 treasures to find. And these actually impact the game as they not only give you access to secret levels but also reward you with a secret ending if you get them all. Thankfully the game gives you a level select at the end of all it making a rerun through levels looking for secrets a much easier task. Honestly the biggest problem the shooting has that isn't solely a technical limitation of the engine is the ammo distribution. Due to the larger enemy count, and some enemies always drop ammo, it often led me to have way too much ammo for long stretch of time. While this doesn't really apply to the more powerful weapons, a lot of the common enemies can be taken down quite quickly with your earlier weapons. So by simply saving your more powerful stuff for the tougher enemies can kinda make the combat feel trivial due to the sheer amount of ammo you have
Stylewise, QatCoC has a more basic artstyle than other games I've played using this engine but makes up for that with the sheer amount variety in the visuals. You got villages, church catacombs, occupied villages, occupied castles, a train surprisingly, Atlantis, techbases, and so much more. Likewise due to the sheer amount of enemies and decent arsenal there's also variety there, although there is one questionably fine but very distracting aspect of the game's style, the use of tracing. While I'm not 100% sure how much tracing was used for some of the graphics, there's no doubt that there was some of it used. I spotted animations from Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Heretic, and etc. Now this doesn't effect the gameplay at all given that this isn't a Capstone game, it's just mostly distracting if you're familiar with where the animations were traced from. It's also quite strange considering the non-traced animations are quite great. To be more positive the character design is pretty fantastic, given greater appreciation thanks to the dialogue mechanic with NPCs, complete with amateur but charming voice acting. It's also fun to note that this entire game was based on the devs's tabletop RPG sessions which I just find insanely charming and sweet.
Overall, Quartermain and the Cult of Cthulhu was another surprised banger hit for a game made in the EFPSE engine. Everything from the surprising length of this swashbuckling adventure, to the significantly higher enemy count that makes the gunplay very engaging, to the fact this is all based on tabletop sessions that the developer had all comes to together to make one stand out title, especially one that goes for 3$. While I do think something like Dead Trash is the better game given that it's pacing and campaign are more polished since here it's a tad obvious that near the end a lot of the previous polish starts to disappear as Quartermain reaches the finish line. But as a whole this is another DOSman published title I would absolutely recommend checking out AND one that I hope gets some kind of continuation or sequel cause what this game has set up is really solid.
