I’ll start off by getting the nasty out of the way: from a technical point of view, Call of the Sea is a walking simulator that relies heavily on puzzle solving, and in this regard, it is far from being amongst the most accomplished games out there. The movement can feel a bit sluggish, and even though some of the puzzles are truly interesting and rewarding, others are so convoluted and overly layered that they can turn the experience into what feels like an exercise in futility that nevertheless needs to be solved in order to progress the story. I enjoy challenging puzzles as much as the next person, but a few of the ones present here seem to be out to frustrate the player for the sake of it (ironically, in the second half of the game features lot more logical puzzles which feel more rewarding to solve). Enraging complexity without particularly relevant information in regards to how to tackle it isn’t exactly fun. Maybe I’m dumb, but that’s how I felt going through a couple of the game puzzles, to the point where I had to cave and do something I hate doing and very rarely do, which is to look for a solution online. That’s usually enough to completely take me out of the game and make me not want to continue playing it.

Fortunately though, by the time this started happening, I was already hooked, which is a testament to how much CotS is able to nail so many of its other aspects. The world is stunning, the artwork is near perfect, the story is quite elegant and intriguing, the game doesn’t outstay its welcome (you can finish it in about 6 hours), and the whole experience is fantastically narrated. Norah is a wonderful (and wonderfully voiced) character who I didn’t fully understand at first (it took me a while to grasp why she was seemingly so positive going into what clearly felt like an ominous journey), but who quickly grew on me to the point of making me feel fully invested on her outcome. I do wish there had been a heavier leaning into Lovecraftian horror elements, but even without it there is plenty here to engage with and truly appreciate.

Overall, I’d give Call of the Sea a 8/10. The obligatory caveat that needs to be made when recommending it is that this is a walking simulator based on puzzle solving and narrative exploration, and as such it certainly won’t be for everyone. Additionally, if you’re anything like me, some of the puzzles might have you sigh with a hint of despair and make you wonder if you’re maybe not as smart as you once thought you were. However, if this is a genre that you appreciate, I’d definitely give this one a go if you can. Its beautiful world, mysterious story, captivating fantasy and engaging main protagonist blend together perfectly to deliver an experience you’re almost certain to enjoy.

Call of the Sea has been lingering in my periphery for a while. I saw it on the PS Store and the main draw for me was the box art. A 1920’s redhead on a tropical island? Alright, that sounds like it’ll be a fun, pulpy adventure. It went on sale, so I decide to take the plunge.

The art style pops with color. It doesn’t go for a photo realistic look, instead leaning into a 1950s movie poster aesthetic. It makes the island much more engaging to explore and build the sense of dread or wonder when needed. The loading screens are beautifully painted & remind me of the original Tomb Raider loading screens. The music is the orchestral score you’d expect from this game, even still, it’s good. There’s not a lot of animations on display. You never come across any other NPCs during gameplay, & I could guess that from the intro scene. If you are conversing with someone in person, they are always behind a door or just off screen.

Calling this game a Walking Simulator would be a bit disingenuous. While it does have some of the trappings of that genre, lone protagonist, reading notes about a past event, limited gameplay, melancholic emotions, etc., Call of the Sea does feature puzzles. You aren’t simply on a tour of this remote island. Each level, or chapter, has a big puzzle for you to solve. Luckily, they aren’t too cumbersome. I only needed a walkthrough on one puzzle, the rest I could work out through trial and error. The game presents you will all the information you’ll need to figure the puzzle out then leave you to your own devices. My favorite was the language puzzle towards the end. There was one puzzle that involved running around a whole village that got annoying with all the back tracking. While it’s nowhere on the level of a LucasArts adventure game, the puzzles add just enough flavor to keep this being something like a Firewatch or Kona.

In regards to the story, I quickly learned this game was not, in fact, inspired by the pulpy adventure comics and novels of the 1930s and instead pulls from Lovecraftian inspirations. Admittedly, I was a little disappointed when I first learned this. It’s not heavily marketed as a “Lovecraft game” like Sinking City or Call of Cthulhu. While I can appreciate what Lovecraft did for psychological horror, I find his work overhyped and it never really grabbed me. Your character, Nora, is searching for her husband’s lost expedition he went on to cure your mysterious illness. You get a photo of his crew at the beginning that serves as the “You’ll get to see how all these people died” scorecard. Chapters 2 & 3 lay on the looming, oppressive horror of the Lovecraft style, and it’s fine, but… eh. We follow the tale of your husband’s expedition team as they all die in predictably Lovecraftian ways. Luckily, I knew this game wasn’t going to have any big scares with a monster or anything, because there’s never any NPCs.

Then, as the game progressed, it surprised me. The developers put a twist on the Lovecraftian elements I hadn’t seen before. There’s still that underlying unsettling feeling as you look at the macabre murals left by the ancient peoples, but the game starts to feel a bit more like a romantic adventure tale. Instead of Lovecraftian Horror, they gave us Lovecraftian Romance. Spoilers from now on, but you can see through his writings that your husband is slowly going mad, and these types of tales aren’t known for happy endings. But when he was on insanity’s doorstep, it was his love for you that brought him to his senses and devised a solution to your illness. It leads to a binary choice you must make at the end, with both endings being bittersweet in their own way. I didn’t leave this game feeling dread, I left feeling sad, which is an odd way to leave a Lovecraft-inspired game.

While you spend a lot of time following the tragedies of your husband’s expedition, Nora is an interesting character herself. When she first arrives on the island & through a majority of the first act, she’s very casual about all of the strange and awful things she discovers. At first, I chalked it up to her flippant, 1930s attitude, but that explanation could only support so much weight. We then learn that she is actually a fish person, or transforming into one. Her “fish blood” is causing her slow death and will kill her unless she completes a ritual to become an immortal fish being. This is what her husband realizes, so he sends her to the island so she can be “cured” at the cost of never being together again. You can either complete the ritual or say to Hell with it and go back to him, as he is one of two from his expedition to survive the ordeal. Becoming a fish person wasn’t presented as this horrific thing, more a supernatural evolution of life. It was up to you whether you took the leap.

All in all, this game started out seeming like just another Lovecraft game, but it twisted the inspirations into something more adventurous and self-reflective. The puzzles helped to give this game some meat and the story knows how to tug on the heartstrings. While it wasn’t the pulpy, Indiana Jones-esque adventure I was expecting, I enjoyed my time with Call of the Sea & would recommend it to any fans of neat stories or puzzles, even at it’s normal asking price.

Terwijl ik tien minuutjes deze aanwinst op Xbox Game Pass probeerde te spelen, viel me iets op. Het waren niet de prachtige 'cell shaded graphics' (ja, hoe vertaal je dat naar normaal Nederlands?) die mijn Xbox Series S produceerden, waardoor ik gelijk naar The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD verlangde - en tegelijkertijd was het alsof ik die sfeer gelijk ervoer? Heel apart - en ook niet dat fantastische jaren '30 avonturierssfeertje wat in alle goede manieren deed denken aan de Tomb Raider gameserie. Nee, ook niet de opvallend slome bewegingen, de geinige omgevingspuzzels of alle virtuele muren die de illusie van vrijheid breken, zoals het gebrek aan springen. Het was het schrijfwerk van de dialoog waarvan mijn tenen meteen krom stonden.

Hoewel ik mijzelf niet als fictieschrijver zou positioneren, weet ik genoeg over schrijven om het verschil te zien tussen een stijlkeuze en goed vs slecht schrijfwerk. Dat soort dingen leer je niet door schrijfervaring, maar door kritisch te kijken naar schrijfwerk van jezelf en van anderen. Juist nu ik het minder belangrijk vind om altijd 'goede' (lees: kwalitatief volgens recensenten) media te ervaren ('consumeren' noem ik het zelf), kom ik meer kleine mislukkingen tegen. Ik zou het niet heel relevant noemen, al prikt het wel bij elk stukje dialoog. Dit is een klassiek tekstueel avontuur (sterke Myst-vibes, die ook op Game Pass staat) in moderne stijl. Er is erg veel tekst en dialoog, wat naast de puzzels de essentie van de ervaring is.

Wat er mis is met de dialoog? De hoeveelheid uitleg die elke zin probeert erin te stoppen. Het klinkt onnatuurlijk. Wat me in die eerste tien minuten irriteerden, waren zinnen als "I've been here my entire life. I'm trapped in here!" en de vreselijke "Those horrible dreams again! I've had them repeatedly ever since my mom died and left me that music box in her will." Het ligt niet aan de jaren '30. Het is onnatuurlijk, omdat ze geen reden heeft om het te zeggen. Ze spreekt ze uit naar zichzelf, maar zij weet al die info al. Die info is voor ons als speler. Dat is heel onnatuurlijk.

Er zijn elegantere oplossingen binnen het medium. Zo kun je die informatie weergeven in de spelwereld, waardoor je het 'game' deel van een spel vooral tot zijn recht komt. Maar goed, als je het in tekstavontuurstijl wil doen, dan begrijp ik dat het dialoog is en dat het enigszins cheesy (maar niet té cliché) mag aanvoelen. In dat geval zou ik het herschrijven naar "Wow. Again? I... I thought that I was done with them. My mom has been dead for so long. I still don't understand it. Why did she leave me that music box in her will? And how did it spark these... uuugh * horrible * nightmares?"

Misschien moet ik fictieschrijven toch maar eens overwegen.

Played the PC Version.

You play as Norah, a woman who goes to an Island in order to find your husband and to know how it went to his research. Saw this game on gamepass and wanted it to give it a try and I have to say it was a fun time. Of all of the puzzles only one I really could not understand and had to cheat :c (I'm a failure I know, I know).

The puzzles themselves are not really hard and you can probably solve each one of them in less than 10 minutes.

The story it's ok. Could not really care for our protagonist (Norah) or her husband that much really. But maybe that's just me.

The graphics are Okay-ish. You can't really customize a lot of options sou that's never a good thing. The framerate it's also a negative point this time. I never had a stable 60 fps despite having a "decent" PC. I could run it at 100+FPS but fail to run it smoothly at 60 fps :c :c and with and the stuttering was also really bad.

Also, despite being a 6 hour game I crashed it like 6 times. Pretty much all of the crashes were climbing up or climbing down some ladders. So a piece of advise. Save everytime you found a ladder.

Overall I would say that, if you have PC gamepass give it a try. Like I said before it's around 5-6 hours so you can finish the game in one seating.

I love Myst-like games. By that I mean, games with interesting worlds to explore and whose mysteries are revealed by solving puzzles and reading journals. They are typically lonely journeys and the only interaction with other characters is by reading notes they've left behind. These types of games typically put the player in a situation where very little makes sense, and through careful attention to detail the situation slowly starts to clarify itself until the amazing "AH HA!" moment where you believe you're a genius for figuring out the brilliantly designed puzzle. If you've played any of the Mysts, Riven, Obduction, or Quern, then you know the feeling I am talking about.

Call of the Sea looked like this type of game, and in many ways it does match the description. You are wandering around an uncharted island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that does have some bizarre characteristics. There are puzzles needing to be solved that block your way forward. There are journals left behind you must read to understand the story and get clues for solving the puzzles. I think it's pretty obvious the developers were using this Myst-like genre as their inspiration. There are good things about this game. The story is well written. I wanted to keep moving forward to find out what happens to the characters. The graphics are very good.

There are some key differences to a typical Myst-like game that I do want to point out though.

First, in Riven, Obduction, Mysts, etc the world is designed to be completely available for backtracking and exploring. The only obstacles to places are the puzzles blocking the way forward and once they're solved you can advance and later come back. Often backtracking is necessary as there are details in early areas that won't make sense until you have more context. Call of the Sea however splits the game into small chapters that you cannot move backwards through. And there is no reason to move backwards. The effect is that the player knows exactly what few puzzles are laid out before them, and that everything they need is readily available. There is a trade off here, easier puzzles and less frustration for the huge payout of finally figuring out that mind blowing mystery.

Some of the best Myst-like puzzles are ones that make are contextual with the story and the environment. It makes sense in Riven that a rebel society would make their hideout difficult to find, or very believable that a piece of alien technology works the way it does once you figure it out in Obduction. Call of the Sea does have some puzzles like this, but most of them are just puzzles for puzzle sake. Needing to play Simon Says on the drums really doesn't make a lot of sense why that would be required to advance. Or finding the correct order of 4 power switches to power on using trial and errors. The puzzles are pretty shallow and probably more tailored for someone that isn't a die hard adventure puzzle game fan and wants to dip their toe in the water before diving into one.

Finally, even when there is a tough, interesting puzzle that needs careful examination to piece together, the game just holds your hand for it. For example there's a foreign language that uses symbols to communicate. It would have been really cool to figure out what each symbol means through observation and realize that combining them in certain ways have different meanings. Unfortunately the game narrator simply just tells you this fact and writes the meanings for you before you even have time to think about it. This happens quite frequently. I think the developers should have included an option to not spell everything out for you if you're looking for more of a challenge.

I really don't mean to sound condescending if this lighter puzzle fare is your type of thing. As I get older I have less free time and less mental energy to dive deep into a game like Riven after taking care of children and working full time. I spent months deciphering Riven's mysteries and it would be the only game I would play during that time. Now there are simply too many great games available to dedicate to a single one for so long. And there is a great temptation to simply look up how to advance with the internet at our fingertips if the puzzle is too opaque. I would probably bounce off something if it was too difficult and demanded too much of me at the moment.

Call of the Sea does not demand very much but you will likely be mentally challenged as you progress and treated to an interesting story along the way.

Call of the Sea is an extremely well-made narrative puzzle adventure, where you are a sick wife searching for your missing husband after he traveled to an island to find a cure to your illness. It is just very high quality in every way- visually rich, incredible voice acting, and really well crafted puzzles.

It’s a unique gameplay loop. You are essentially traveling deeper into the island, and at each stop there is one grand puzzle blocking your progress. The puzzles are very good, and usually involve exploring around, reading lore, and finding clues to fill in your notebook. You then need to reference these clues to make your way forward.

The visuals are really impressive, with large set pieces and striking colors. Best of all, the game is super optimized and I had no issues running at high settings on my mid pc. The voice acting is also extremely well done, the lore notes and everything well written … it’s just very impressive.

The game occasionally could drag a little bit in pacing. There’s underwater sections that are a chore to explore and my interest in the store would wane at times. But mostly it’s a matter of taste rather than anything wrong with the game itself.

If you’re a fan of well-made narrative games that actually have some good gameplay (not just a walking sim), this is an easy recommendation. It’s not the most dense puzzle game, as every bit of gameplay is balanced out with storytelling and visual presentations, but I had a pretty good time with it regardless and haven’t played many games like it.

not sure what to make of "cozy lovecraft" as a vibe. I'm all for subverting and reinterpreting ol h.p., most especially in ways he would hate, and the faithfulness to canon with polar opposite theme/tone is... well, it's certainly something!

not sure about the reviewers wot said its puzzles are occasionally obtuse/poorly-clued... I am no kinda genius and I am not above looking at a walkthrough when needs must, but I got through this in two sessions with zero hints. was stuck a few times, but never for terribly long, and that's what a puzzle is supposed to do. I mean, there are lots of things a puzzle may do, but generally when we say "puzzle" we mean a thing it is possible to get stuck on until you figure it out. and I always figured it out, and the solution was logical. if anything, they were too logical, given the ancient technologies and cosmic knowledge. might've been improved by some dream logic.

all in all is tight and well-presented but insubstantial. (not sure about norah having a mid-atlantic accent that harry does not share; plot says he's a rich boy who stooped to marrying a middle class girl, seems like it should be the other way around. I like cissy jones plenty but the accent is unconvincing.) I will unlikely think about it beyond this review except to occasionally remember someone once made a game that was "shadow over innsmouth but uplifting" and it kinda worked.

Unfortunately, I can't say I enjoyed Call of the Sea. It is a fairly simple puzzle game/walking simulator and it isn't very good at either of these things.

It is not terrible... There is clearly a lot of work put into the game. The graphics and artwork are very nice as well as the voice acting. However, the writing and story just feels flat. So many of the voice lines are just "What could this be??", "What does this mean??", "I am so confused!", "This is so mysterious!!". I found the general plot to just be very silly while taking itself far far far too seriously. Most of the story is delivered by Norah's inner monologue as well as random notes and letters left conveniently around. I tend to read most logs and notes in most of my games, but here I just found myself just skipping them after a while and not feeling like I was missing much. It is never a good sign when a game makes me sleepy.

The puzzles themselves are not complicated but feel very contrived. Most of them consist in finding some combination of buttons/symbols/numbers to open the next door using the aforementioned convenient letters and notes. They are vaguely themed around a polynesian aesthetic though I highly suspect that any resemblance to real polynesian culture is purely coincidental (even leaving out the supernatural elements).

But, by far and away and without a shadow of doubt, the worst aspect of the game is the abysmal walking speed. Almost as an insult, the game starts you off with only "walking" and after a short while lets you "run". The run is so slow that I often had it turn off to check if I was actually working or if it was somehow off. Going through these puzzles crawling from button to button and note to note at a snails pace was excruciating. Absolutely unsufferable.