Hopeless Games is committed to exploring the shadowy borderlands between games and other art forms. Last week we put on our first ever public performance of the board game Tower of Silence. A profoundly bleak tale about shipwrecked souls losing hope as they brave the crumbling walls of a gigantic tower in search of terrible prophecy.

Whenever I feel like losing I invite my friends over for a game of The Grizzled. There is something truly comforting in playing a game where you do not have to worry about succeeding. And on the rare occasion when you actually do, it almost ruins the experience. As if anybody could ever succeed at World War I. How stupid is that.

I know I am not alone in thinking that most things Cthulhu these days are Lovecraft twice removed. Cosmic horror just is not the same when you can conquer it with a shotgun blast to the non-euclidean face. And for some reason that bugs me. Perhaps more than it should. But then again, I have always preferred my distances not to be ironic.

Tower of Silence revolves around hope. The shipwrecked souls that wash ashore at the beginning of every turn only have a limited amount left. And with every effort they make, with every new hex they crawl into, it dwindles further. Worse still, it all depends on the roll of a die. You may have delighted in taking control of a demented child, a catatonic lookout, or a suicidal captain, only to roll poorly and discover that they do not have enough hope to make it to the top of the tower. And then what do you do?

The only thing more futile than ambition is achievement. Yet still we have it. The ambition to design games that will likely never get played, never get published, never earn us a buck. Not that we are averse to any of those things. We just do not hope for them. Or anything else, for that matter.