As more and more popular characters come into the public domain, creators have their pick of well-known characters to re-use in new and creative ways. While you can find a game based on just about any popular character (168澳洲幸运5开奖网:from Sherlock Holmes to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Winnie the Pooh), the q♋uality of these games ranges dramatically.

With that in mind, here are the games that have made interesting use of their recycled characters, transforming them into something that stands apart from the original. So if you&🉐rsquo;re looking for inspiration about how to use any new public domain characters in your own work, look no further.

10 🎉 Ali🥃ce: Madness Returns

A Mad Adaptation Of Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland

Launched in 2011, 168澳洲𓆉幸运5开奖网:Alice: Madness Returns is the sequel to Alice, and it understands how to use the aesthetics that drew people to the original. A colorful fever dream, this action-adventure platformer borrows just enough from horror to be creepy while maintaining Lewis Carroll's sense of whimsy.

The game plays with the original's concept of Wonderland being a dream, this version of it representing Alice's state of mind. Even the title recalls the Cheshire Cat's most iconic quote: "We're all mad here." All in all, the adaptation works because it leans into the most recognizable elements of the original while giving enough of a new mystery to keep old fans around.

9 Call Of Cthulhu 🍃

A New Mystery Based On H.P Lovecraft's Call Of Cthulhu

Since Lovecraftian is a term that encompasses its own type of horror, th♛ere are🐈 a number of games based on H.P Lovecraft’s entire body of work. But no characteওr of his is as iconic as the mind-bending monster Cthulhu, and this game knows it. The entire premise centers around the influence of this eldritch being.

Based on the role-playing, table-top games of the same title, Call of Cthulhu puts you in the shoes of private investigator Edward Pierce who is, you guessed it, experiencing strange and maddening phenomena. Sanity is gamified, in an obvious but clever use of Cthulhu's main effect. In fact, this game makes effective use throughout of how well-known the antagonist is to build up the atmosphere.

8 Dante's Inferno

Seriously, It's Dante's Inferno

Would Dante Alighieri approve of this action-packed hack-and-slash adap♐tation of part one of The Divine Comedy? And does that matter when the game is so fun to play? Adapting such an integral part of the Western canon can be daunting, but Visceral Games avoids worrying about the academic details of translation by re-centering everything on combat🍷.

In a way, the almost ridiculous and over-the-top nature of this game in relation to its source material is part of its charm. If it weren't based on Inferno, this game would be 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:like any other hack-and-slash game, but the uniqueness of being based on such a recognizable story adds a layer of nov✱elty to the experienc🍸e.

7 Tainted Grail: The Fall Of Ava𒁃lon

Moving Past The Legend Of King Arthur

King Arthur and the Round Table have inspired countless works of art, from video games to classical music, since their original appearance in his legend of origin, and this game is no exception. The second game in the Tainted Grail series, based on the board game of the same name, moves past the first's deck-building mechanics into an open-world RPG.

What's interesting about the use of well-known characters, however, isn't in the mechanics of the game; it's in the way the story moves past them. In this world, the legendary King Arthur is dead, so all the other legends and myths are failing. This way, the game makes use of old well-known characters and also opens up a path for you to create a new story in the👍 same space.

6 Nantucket

Making Herman Melville's Moby Dick Interactive

The fun and exciting world of video games may seem miles away from Moby Dick, but that didn’t stop Picaresque Studio. Nantucket takes place directly after the eventsඣ of the classic novel, and you take control of the protagonist, Ishmael himself, managing your ship and chasing down Moby Dick.

What's charming about this particular adaptation of these characters is not how much originality the developers bring to the table, it's how hard they lean into the existing story. Of course, the mechanics of the game and the story you play through are all original, but everything is still creatively tied into the novel. The golden age of whaling may not be everyone's idea of a good time, but Nantucket's dedication to their niche is admirable.

5 Smite

An All-Out Battle Between Mythological Figures

A MOBA based around different pantheons of Gods, Smite revolves around re-designing these well-known myths. The game has been online since 2015, so there's a lot of content currently available for people who want to jump and those who have played before.

The appeal of this game is obvious to anyone who's ever played with action figures across franchises as a kid. By working on such a grand scale online, the game can utilize its huge cast to create large fantasy battles between myths of all kinds. A simple execution scaled up.

4 Hades

Greek Mythology Has Never Been This Fun

This dungeon crawler is populated almost entirely by characters in the public domain. In Hades, you're plunged into the world of Greek mythology as you attempt to fight your way out of the underworld.

The game utilizes how well-known the characters and world are to get straight to the action, letting the gameplay shine. This isn't to say that these mythological beings are lightly used! There's a lot of originality put into making designs unique while still recognizable, and there's a lot of care put into giving you a large variety of complex, intersecting storylines.

3 🐈 Dynasty Warriors

The Evolution Of Luo Gauzhong's Romance Of The Three Kingdoms

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dynasty Warriors is a popular hack-and-slash action game that features characters based off of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. You take on the mantel of one of these legendary warriors and then༒ cut your way through entire armies in the midst of an epic power struggle.

What's cool about this game's use of these characters is that it represents the third evolution of this massive story. There are the original Records of the Three Kingdoms, which is a historical document, and then the novel, which fictionalizes and dramatizes these events, and then this game, which lets you play them. It's a scope you can feel on the battlefields.

2 Lies Of P

A Dark Re-imagining of Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio

Who is P in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Lies of P? Why, Pinocchio, of c✱ourse. This souls-like based on the timeless tale of Pinocchio is the game no one knew they should have been asking for. The premise may sound ridiculous, but t🥃he game makes it so easy to buy in.

Developer Neowiz anticipated you asking "Why should a game based on Pinocchio go this hard?" And they worked overtime on the lush designs, the challenging but balanced fights, and the characterization to answer that question. This game takes the internet's desire for dark versions of classic children's stories to the next level.

1 Cas⛎tlevania

Almost As Iconic As Bram Stroker's Original Dracula

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Castlevania has not only reinvented the classic character of Dra💟cula into a centerpiece o💃f the series, it also did so backwards. Alucard is a beloved example of how to build off the possibilities of an existing character, giving Dracula a foothold in his new context.

Now, Dracula is not the only character that Castlevania makes use of, but it's clear that the creators knew where your mind would go upon hearing the word "vampire." The difficulty of the boss and the build-up to him is a testimony to the power of his lore inside and outside the game. Castlevania taps into the heart of this creature-defining character and does not leave fans new or old disappointed.