Lovecraftian horror fixates on the unknown and imperceptible, and yet Lust for Darkness, a new first-person horror game built in the stealth-and-puzzle mold of Amnesia, attempts to use the same abyssal themes and set dressing to fixate on penises and vaginas. As for what it has to say about sex, I'm not sure. I do agree that a kneeling, armless figure coughing up a penis the size of a mailbox is not pleasant, but genitals on their own, adorned with Giger-esque gills and pipes, just look like genitals at the Hot Topic. 

Horror isn't just a slideshow of interdimensional vagina doorways and anthropomorphized dick statues, especially if they're preceded by a fairly tasteful, pleasant-looking orgy (which is how Lust for Darkness attempts to set the mood). I grew up in the era of internet shock sites. Four different literature professors made me watch Eyes Wide Shut. I'm well beyond dick statuary, whereas Lust for Darkness is very much stuck in perpetual, snickering adolescence. 

Unlovedcraft 

It's almost comic the way the player-character gasps and shivers at organs so common. If he behaved like a human at all, I'd tell you his name. Just know this: his wife is kidnapped by a horny horned man, who then forcefully aborts her baby and rapes her because dark magicks. It's an upsetting premise that immediately invokes sexual trauma that never actually addresses the act. 

Again, the bulk of the sex in Lust for Darkness is a pleasant, consensual orgy in a nice house, while the horror is reduced to dark hallways, an occasional splash of body horror, and groin simulacra. Kidnapping and rape are just excuses in the brittle plot required to rope in an eldritch sex cult for the player to be scared of. It's one of the most cliched, shallow, and predictable premises I've seen in a horror game. 

The flimsy attempt at Horny Amnesia doesn't help either. Doors are physics objects you need to click, hold, and pull with your mouse like a real person that doesn't know how to open doors. You can also just forgo grabbing doorknobs and bash through them. Dressers and bookshelves are decorated with bric-a-brac you can inspect in 360 degrees, sometimes to open a hidden compartment or solve a small puzzle, though most are reduced to finding a key or code hidden a bit too conveniently nearby. Most objects are just the same tea set and vases over and over. I don't think there's a mansion in the world, or Cthulhu's, with as many damn tea sets. 

Early on, after strolling through the delicate evening orgy, you're transported to a dark dimension where you wander corrugated hallways and run from a slow, stupid monster twice for about ten seconds. Getting away is never a challenge because the environment is so narrow there's only ever one way forward. Eventually you get a magical sex cult mask that shows hidden paths and symbols when it's equipped, but the navigation never gets more interesting than that. Put on the mask, look for the invisible red floor, and you're golden. 

While the place is lit with moody greens and purples and adorned with the expected weird geometry, the sex is just as superficial in tentacle hell. I almost looked forward to what kind of statue I'd see next. Ah, here's a penis with legs. Ooh, this chair has a vagina. This switch looks like something a duck has! I highly doubt the elder gods, beings that our puny human minds can't comprehend, are obsessed with our fleshy mortal sex bits. The way they adorn their dimension with penises and vaginas is embarrassing, the human equivalent of decorating a dimly lit studio apartment with Dilbert paraphernalia. 

Such a juvenile, shallow fascination with sex makes Lust for Darkness hard to take seriously from the start. It fails to even attempt to explore the horrors of sexual trauma, anxiety, or taboos. Instead it banks on a simple apprehension with Doing It™ and the organs involved to get a rise out of its players, but its clumsy arrangement of story, themes, puzzles, and stealth are as flaccid and unfinished as I am right now.

Lust for Darkness, the eldritch sex adventure that bears the distinction of being the very last game I voted for on Steam Greenlight, will be out on June 12. So let's take a moment to lie back and watch the recently-released cinematic trailer, a creepy mix of Eyes Wide Shut and American Beauty, with a sprinkling of The Rats in the Walls to keep things interesting. 

Lust for Darkness follows a man named Jonathan Moon, who receives a letter from his wife a year after she went missing. It guides him to a secluded mansion that also serves as a gateway to Lusst'ghaa, an alien dimension that was similar to our own until its people undertook to transform themselves into literal non-stop sex machines. "Hundreds of years have passed since that metamorphosis and Lusst’ghaa is now a land overgrown with alien vegetation and full of monstrosities squirming in a never ending ecstasy," the Steam listing says. 

That sounds vaguely Agony-like, but I played an alpha build of Lust for Darkness awhile ago and it was actually kind of interesting: Visually reminiscent of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, but more interactive and a lot more sexed up. It sometimes gets so overt as to be distracting: The underlying story is interesting enough as videogame plots go, but the sex bits (and there are plenty of them) can feel forced and out of place—not as heavy-handed as, say, BMX XXX, but still pretty weird. 

It may be that all the sweaty writhing will be explained in a satisfying and narratively consistent fashion; it's also perfectly possible that we'll get some hand-waving nonsense like "she breathes through her skin" to justify gratuitous boobs. Against all reasonable expectations, I'm holding out hope that it's the former. 

You can find out more about Lust for Darkness at lustfordarkness.com. The cinematic, which is not explicit but not exactly safe for work either, is below.