Call of the Sea (2020)

Beautiful art, especially for the architecture and underwater parts, great voice acting, female lead, someone called it "1930s charm with eldritch flirtation" and I am stealing that. The sound is also amazing, adding a lot to the atmosphere and being part of some of the puzzles. There are definitely slight Myst/Riven vibes at times, and I needed a walkthrough once, but when I understood that all you have to do is fill in your little book, and once the pages are filled, you definitely have all the information to solve the puzzles, they were not too hard and made sense.

I wonder why so many older reviews complain about the walking speed, because it has fast movement. Maybe they added it later because of the complaints? Her being very slow at the beginning is actually story relevant, as is her being able to walk faster later on. I had no problems with this and sometimes even chose to walk slowly to take in the environments. Swimming fast felt very satisfying.

The chapters not only separate the story, but also the world. You can jump into all the chapters at the start (great for achievement hunters), but once you enter a new chapter you can't go back, so backtracking is minimal, which I like. They also add shortcuts once you have explored everything, so if you need to backtrack a bit you will be there quickly.

I loved the underwater parts. I usually hate that in games, but here I was hoping for more. I can see myself going back and trying to get more achievements just to relive the atmosphere of some parts of the game.

The ending(s) are sufficient and you need to stay through the credits for a bit more of the feels. You can easily get both endings if you just save at the right moment and you will know when that is.

On a scale of horror and gore it is a 2 out of 10. People die and there is blood and there is occasionally something spooky, but it is never shown in too much detail and not the center of the game.

As with most walking sim/story driven - puzzle games there is no replayability besides the achievements and I missed a lot of them as it seems.

All in all I had a very good time with this Call of the Sea. I hope the devs will "call"again "Out of the Blue" in the future. :D

Beat during free trial on xbox gold. Got to love it when they offer free play for longer than it took to beat the game. This was not my kind of game but I enjoyed it well enough. The art was excellent, both sound and visual. I liked how colorful the environments were. The story was interesting with all the ancient alien megalithic machine stuff. I definitely seen some similarities with Stargate, Arrival, Assassin's Creed, X files and the classic mermaid love story, among others. I am not sure if the lore was trying to say that aquatic aliens were enslaving people and transforming them into mermaids to be more useful to them, or if humans evolved from an aquatic alien. And it was not clear at all why the protagonist could not survive as human and was essentially a mermaid trapped as a landlubber.

While the sci fi was thought provoking, the actual mechanics of the game were a bit annoying. Not my kind of puzzles, too much obscurity and trial and error. Chapter 1 was good with simple puzzles. I liked the bridge one where all I had to do was figure out which symbol meant what, and exploring rewarded the answers. That felt satisfying and I actively wanted to explore and find more content rather than just crack the code and move on. Chapter 2 was where I had to start looking up the solutions. Assembling the torn up page was a good puzzle mechanically but I had what I thought looked ok but seemed like some pieces were missing. I was not sure if there was a completion state and it would have been useful if she commented that my solution was wrong. Then matching up those symbols to the totems was a huge WTF. While I understood that it wanted me to match the symbols to the appropriate totem, I had no idea how I was supposed to tell that. Whatever just use the guide. Then the stupid lenses machine. The game should not have let me even use that machine before getting the solution, and it was around this point that I realized all information needed to solve the puzzles was written in the log. Chapter 3 was even more annoying. I found the sound frequencies from the little keyboard and figured I had to input those into the 3 knob machine. But that was a stupid trial and error fiddle with the knobs until I stumbled upon the right setting. How is that even a puzzle? I knew the date and realized it was new moon, but incorrectly assumed that meant the tide level was at the lowest point. I had missed the end puzzle path with the tide level markings. I figured out the puzzle from there but that was ridiculously convoluted. I solved chapter 4 on my own for the most part, though it took me some time I figure out she was supposed to use the microphone thing to sing. I had trouble with the transition puzzle because it was dumb how they assigned quadrants; why the hell would you use the 4 cardinal directions to indicate which quadrant? That was more obtuse than necessary. The generator puzzle (one that I have done countless times in other games where pressing a button changes the 2 adjacent buttons as well) and the Simon says drum puzzle were dumb because it made no sense that they needed to be completed that way. They should have designed something more realistic for the situation. Chapter 5 was my favorite with much of the lore and plenty of lovely environments. I never want to do those damn timing puzzles again though. I aced the gargoyle bridge puzzle in 6 but the constellation puzzle made me want to lay down and stop playing. Like there were too many possible options to try and I really did not want to fiddle with it, so I just used the guide. I chose the ending for her to go off and be a mermaid or whatever. Then loaded and watched the other, but it was sad because she died in only a few years.

It was a short game with minimal replayability. Very well made but some of the puzzles were either lazy tropes or way too complicated. But then again this was not my kind of game, and my type of puzzle solving is more about killing dozens of enemies to see which weapon/tactic kills them the best. I would never pay for this game but I can give it a solid 7.0/10.