Call Of The Sea
A change in tide for cosmic horror creepers
You suffer from a strange, hereditary illness, and so your husband set out on an expedition to find a cure. Now he’s missing, and after a mysterious package comes your way, it’s up to you, Norah, to retread his steps across an eerie island and find him.
Set in the 1930s, Call Of The Sea echoes pulp adventures of the period, particularly the works of HP Lovecraft. In fact, Norah’s quest to find out what happened to her husband is one of the best gaming adaptations of the Lovecraftian mythos we’ve seen. This is largely down to the fact that there’s no combat at all, simply head-scratching puzzles as you explore deeper into the island, your sense of unease growing ever stronger as the gorgeous beaches give way to strange structures and confusing geometry.
Naturally, you find logs from your husband and his crew revealing things didn’t quite go as planned (obviously, as he never returned with that cure), and there are more than a few creepy images and sinister moments, directly scooping from the pot of the Cthulhu mythos (short stories like Dagon and The Call Of Cthulhu, to be specific).
CHANGING TIDES
With that said, it’s often a surprisingly chill journey. The 3D environments are gorgeous to look at, the island is wonderful to walk around, and you rarely feel in physical danger. The story’s themes of identity and repression feel positive, and the relationship between Norah and her husband is sweet. It’s nice to feel a bit of glow from a Lovecraft-inspired story, given the miserable (and overtly racist) source material.
Though the island is filled with puzzles, progression is linear. Each of the six levels revolves around a couple of major puzzles. Some of these are better than others, and the bigger ones are let down by requiring so much walking – Norah’s slow pace makes experimenting with solutions a real drag, and turns potential ‘aha’ moments involving some quite unusual mechanics into chores. The smaller puzzles, on the other hand, feel drawn from the similar wells, and are often merely a matter of pushing buttons in the right order or overlaying simple information. It’s also a shame the DualSense’s technology isn’t utilised, as a bit of Bugsnaxstyle light immersion would have been a nice bonus.
As a mood piece, there’s a lot to love about Call Of The Sea. It’s hard to understate just how
Your unease grows stronger as the gorgeous beaches give way to strange structures.
wonderful the environment design is – many screenshots could be passed off as concept art. But neither the puzzles or story quite come together over its short runtime, and its multiple-choice ending left us wanting, some themes feeling not quite tied up.
What we saw as we sailed by was delightful, but not quite enough to make us want to drop anchor for long. Chart for exploration at your own discretion. Oscar Taylor-Kent