Call of the Elder Gods

Lovecraftian horror turned into a neatly structured escape-room experience. The universe seethes with ancient madness, humanity stares into truths it was never meant to know, and somehow, the puzzles remain fair and the clues are surprisingly considerate.

I liked Call of The Sea, but this sequel just doesn't cut it. Bad writing kills it. It's shorter (fine), but the plot is so convoluted and at the same time full of shallow tropes that it hurts. For example, there is a stereotypical villain (meh) and a final showdown (meh) and it's not even clear which bad thing would happen if he succeeded. The one plot twist I could smell from miles away. Nothing about the story makes sense.

Gorgeous game with on point gameplay and art The beginning is also spotless with the introduction of mysteries and well thought puzzles However the smoothness falls of hard: you're forcefed "enigmas" that completely break the pace of the game. There are multiple places that make no sense at all and just stops the immersion completely. Each "vilain" has the most stupidest way to protect their "secrets". it shows too much the puzzles have been designed and then the areas built around. And they just come down to "collect all the clues" and "find a combination in the manual" I had a really good time at first, but in 4h in I'm just bored down... And I think the interpretation of a "lovecraftian" story simply failed: while it's mysterious and a bit anguishing at first it becomes quite fast a clown show where nothing really matters and entities/groups that should be far too much for us to handle are put before us. And it's hard to care.

I keep thinking about this game and keep being disappointed. It's not bad, but it's underbaked. It has some good ideas and tries to emulate some of the successes of Call of the Sea but doesn't really succeed. I didn't enjoy the narrator because they just didn't feel like they added much. Additionally, the fact you have two actual people in the same space as each other makes the writing feel worse, because it feels like they barely talk. The ending just kind of happens right as the game is getting good, or at least better. The ending itself is also kind of just.. weird? I kinda feel like it ruins the mystique of the first game's endings. This game also has two endings and they both Exist while being almost the exact same. If you didn't have compelling ideas for two endings, why bother? Will Call of the Other Thing be changed based on if you chose ending 1 or 2? No, not at all. Something to note is the game jumps from location to location - you're not on one island, you're traveling the globe trying to solve a mystery. It doesn't really feel like this was fully fleshed out - some areas are beautiful, like the desert, some are interesting, like the underground places, but overall they all end up feeling unfinished and short. The whole game feels short. I get it's a puzzle game so most of the content needs to be kept secret, but the trailer shows bits throughout almost the entire game, even showing a bit of the ending. The puzzles were there. I feel like the fact I've avoided mentioning them until now shows how unremarkable most were. I don't really have anything to say on them. One was annoying and I used the in game hint system because I didn't enjoy it nor the area it was in. I went into this game with pretty high hopes, which is definitely partially responsible for how this game landed for me. I had basically just finished CotS and wanted to play more of this interesting world they had made. I was disappointed about how small that world felt. I think Call of the Sea is truly special. Call of the Elder Gods is a game. Grab it on sale if you're still interested.

I am so glad that I didn't discover Call of the Sea until after this game was already released! The first game left me absolutely wrecked and devastated. So when I found out there was a sequel, I was SO excited to learn it was about Harry. While I think Call of the Sea had a better storyline and was more emotional, the puzzles and gameplay of this game were more challenging. I felt like I had to work a lot harder to figure things out, which I loved. Both games have made me a forever supporter of the game devs. I will play anything they put out!

Call of the Elder Gods is a first person puzzle game set in the 1950s, where a university student, Evie Drayton, must investigate a strange artefact with the help of Professor Harry Everhart. This is a sequel to Call of the Sea, which I played for free on the Epic store. Harry is the husband of the original game’s protagonist Nora, while Evie is also linked to the island expedition. [h1]Gameplay (high quality)[/h1] • The player must solve puzzles by searching the environment for clues hidden in notes, pictures, and other objects. • Use symbols to identify number codes to open locks. Rotate objects into the correct position, or press buttons in the correct order to operate ancient machinery. • Some puzzles require switching between both characters as they work together to solve different parts of the puzzle. • Most puzzles are well designed. I didn’t have to use hints or a guide, and I only had to resort to some minor brute forcing on a couple of occasions. The objective of each puzzle is usually easy to understand, so if you search thoroughly to find all the clues, the specific solutions can be identified through logical reasoning and process of elimination. • Each chapter takes place in a different location, including a mansion, underwater ruins, Egyptian themed secret lair, and a World War 2 outpost. [h1]Story (medium quality)[/h1] • Starts out interesting. I liked both Harry and Evie, while their investigation into the artefact puts them under threat from members of a secret society. And with Nora taking on the role of a narrator, I expected to learn more about what happened to her after the events of the first game. • However, the last couple of chapters kind of lost me as the theme shifted away from horror and turned into more of a generic science fiction story. • Compared to the first game, there are more conversations with NPCs, and the voice acting is very good. • However, cutscenes are shown as stationary images with very little animation, which feels low budget. [h1]Technical (high quality)[/h1] • It took me just under 7 hours to complete the story. • I didn’t have any problems with bugs, crashes, framerate or stuttering. • Graphics are simple but the quality is elevated by the colourful art style. • Controls are fully rebindable and work well with mouse and keyboard. • Sprinting speed feels about 1% faster than walking speed, which can be slightly annoying in locations where puzzle elements are more spread out. [h1]Recommendation[/h1] Call of the Elder Gods is a good game which fans of puzzle games should enjoy. I’d suggest playing Call of the Sea first to understand Harry and Nora’s story. Both games have a similar quality of puzzle design, and I’d recommend picking up the bundle on a small sale.

I loved Call of the Sea, it was a great adventure. Call of the Elder Gods was entertaining in some aspects, but it was still a disappointing sequel. The game had lots of potential and build up, but there was little to no payoff. The dynamics between the two main characters felt intriguing at the start, but their development feels rushed ultimately True to what its title suggests, Call of the Elder Gods also includes Cthulhu Mythos elements, but they're more like window dressing and references instead of getting deeper into the themes and aspects you would expect from those stories. The game's ending was too hopeful, there's nothing wrong with making a more hopeful ending in a Lovecraftian Horror game, but the direction they went with that twist felt rushed, unearned and did a disservice to all of the buildup the game had prior. Credit where it's due though, the voice acting, the environmental design and art direction were all top notch, and the puzzles and interactions were also pretty fun and rewarding, on sale it might be worth checking out for fans of the first game or Lovecraft Novels/other Cthulhu Mythos media, but manage your expectations with that in mind

Extremely disappointing. I loved Call of the Sea, it's a masterpiece. This game however feels like rushed, shoddy, low effort attempt to copy the original, badly. It's worse in every way. The story sucks, the villains are boring and generic. The levels are forgettable. Compared to the first game, this is a colossal difference. In Call of the Sea, every location was stunningly, breathtakingly beautiful, so much in fact I was taking screenshots all the time, they have been enriching my life every day as desktop backgrounds for years. But in this sequel I never felt like taking a screenshot even once. The puzzles also felt unpolished and weaker. Some of them clearly lacked an extra playtesting and polish pass, because unlike in the first game, I found myself stuck a few times, missing something stupidly obvious, some tiny piece of clue that was easy to miss, and once missed, you now have to crawl through the entire level looking for it, and that just shatters any enjoyment and immersion I had with the game, so I just had to resort to reading the walkthrough. In the tower full of broken statuettes I missed the little interaction circle like three times I crawled through every inch looking for interactable objects, and the 3-digit bunker door codes, I almost quit in frustration looking for these damn door codes. The walkthroughs would just give you the codes without telling where do you get them ingame! It turned out you had to stand in two very specific places and looking at a specific point to even notice that the code is painted on one side of the door, when I was looking all over for a letter, a document or a memo! And the most complex puzzle with the 5 cult members details? I get the idea, it could be very cool, however it was butchered by execution. There are like 2 or 3 pieces of information that are vague and could be easily misinterpreted. This means that with 5 statues and 5 dials you had to readjust 10-15 dials, which is slow and tedious. Big and complex puzzles like that, for a puzzle to be enjoyable to solve, they must have their clues rock solid without any vagueness, so that if you're mistaken during solving this sudoku, you're going to see the contradiction down the line, which is not the case here. Second, don't make me fill out a bureaucratic form of 25 entries! What is this, a DMV simulator? Here's a good example on how to do this: Dishonored 2's Jindosh riddle. 5 characters, 5 cities, 5 heirlooms, 5 drinks, 5 colors and 5 sitting positions. The solution is just 10 dials - match each character with the heirloom. Slightly more complex than the cult puzzle - 6 variables vs 5, but only 10 dials for answer, and the clues are all very clear and unambiguous. I had a blast solving the Jindosh riddle on paper, and when I entered the solution ingame, I knew it was correct, because everything fit. But in this game, I've entered 2 wrong solutions before my patience ran out. The first chapter is rather good actually, but that's a negative rather than positive, because the first chapter is what you get in the free demo, which is deceptive and dishonest, because the quality rapidly drops after that. I only bought the full game so soon after release because I liked the demo.

Excellent sequel to Call of the Sea with some truly great puzzles. The logic puzzle where you had to fill out the identification information of several cultists was the standout one, But all of them where good and only one truly stumped me at first bacause it was so... weird and abstract, but looking back it wasn't that bad i guess, should probably have paid more attention. In regards to playtime, It's definitly not 25 hours long, must have had the game running for quite some time outside of playing it. I think 10 - 15 is more correct with no (or minimal) hints. Nothing is missable in the achievements, you can go back to chapters and keep your filled logbook and just pick up the ones you missed, same with any achievement. When you know the solution to each major puzzle in each area you can quickly move forward if you missed something.