Game: I’a I’a Cofflhu Fhtagnyaa
Platform: PC
Genre: visual novel, parody
Style: directly based on Lovecraft’s work (as a parody)
Verdict: Not Recommended in English
I’a I’a Cofflhu Fhtagnyaa is a Lovecraftian visual novel set in a coffee shop, hence the title being a play on the “Cthulhu fhtagn” chant.
This isn’t quite a horror story; as you might have guessed from the premise, it’s a romance. A romantic comedy, in fact.
Soon after taking a job at a suspicious coffee shop, you meet three girls that actually turn out to be Nyarlathotep, Hastur, and Cthulhu… or at least fairly benevolent incarnations of them. A couple of choices early on will determine which character’s romantic route you end up on.
Despite the bizarre premise, it’s clear the writers were familiar with the stories they based these characters on, with numerous references throughout the visual novel.
In fact, the humor comes across pretty well, the three character routes are unique and worth reading, and the romances are rather sweet. Normally, this visual novel has what it takes to get a recommendation from me for anyone looking for a lighthearted twist on the mythos, but it has one huge problem: the translation.
I’a I’a Cofflhu Fhtagnyaa has a number of technical problems, but by far the biggest problem is an English translation that is so bad, I spent a good portion of my playthrough trying to figure out what the lines were supposed to say. Character names change randomly, pronouns get mixed up, and the lines range from understandable at best to garbled nonsense at worst.
If you can read it in its original language, which I believe is Chinese, then it’s probably worth going for. But if you’re going to struggle through the English translation like I did, I unfortunately cannot recommend I’a I’a Cofflhu Fhtagnyaa in its current state.