Call of the Sea - A Love Letter to Lovecraft

If anyone has followed our streams for any length of time, you will know how much of a love/hate relationship I have with puzzle games. I struggle with games that use a "different brand of logic" than my own, and where the game revolves around puzzles to be solved rather than the reason to solve them. I faced this problem with Mutropolis, as I found myself getting frustrated at the puzzles rather than the several storylines going on. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the puzzle game I am about to discuss...

Call of the Sea is the debut from "Out of the Blue" games, and boy what a debut it was. Featuring Cissy Jones (known for the indie classic Firewatch) as the lead protagonist Norah Everheart, we join her as we delve into the deepest jungles of a mysterious island, one she had seen in her dreams so many times before, on the hunt for her missing husband Harry.

That is the premise of the game, but in order to truly understand all the game is, you must become familiar and accustomed to all the characters in this story. The journal feature proved very useful later in the game, as you start to unravel the events of what happened to Norah's husband, and for getting you as close to the story as you can be. It is only then, that Call of the Sea really starts to shine.

Surrounded by a brilliant aesthetic borrowed from postcards of the 1930's setting, the scenery surrounding you is sometimes picturesque, though can turn astoundingly otherworldly. All of them do an astounding job of collating an atmosphere that surrounds you as you work out just how you're meant to proceed with the next set of clues you've been given.

A snapshot from where you first land on the island. Beauty and danger abound...

The puzzle mechanics are based around exploration, which was rewarded even if you didn't find the right clue by giving you hints about the overarching mystery of the game. Having these two stories intertwined was a brilliant narrative move, as in order to care about one, you had to care about the other. This was pulled off in a seamless manner and it is only now as I write about my experience with the game do I realise exactly what it was doing for the 3-4 hours I spent playing it.

Even if at some points in my playthrough I was begging Norah to just "get a new husband" when things got a bit hairy, by the end of the game, I was scorning myself for ever thinking such a thought. While I grew to care a great deal about reuniting the couple, through the puzzles and the astounding scenery there were elements of horror. Enough to make a scardy cat like me unsettled, but still eager to see where the story took me next. It culminates most in Chapter 3 which nearly got me to stop playing it entirely I'll admit. But what follows are some of the best parts of the game.

Through all the intrigue and charm of Norah's characterisation, a larger mystery is afoot. A mystery within a mystery within a mystery. It was something I reflected on at the start of streaming the game, that being my favourite genre, the Lovecraftian mythos. The first words heard in the game are that of the language R'lyehian, invented by H.P Lovecraft to represent the tongue of the Old Gods. While he was a problematic person, Lovecraft's style is immediately recognisable to anyone familiar with his work, or at least horror in general. Other games influenced/replicating his work have gone down the very traditional "inescapable monstrosity" route, but I appreciate what steps Out of the Blue have taken in advancing the stories that can be told in this genre. There were even some rather funny Easter eggs eluding to other works by the author that really made me giggle, something I'm not accustomed to doing at a game that has "Lovecraftian" in the description.

Call of the Sea buries the lead on what exactly is going on with this island, and how the main characters tie into it. The end result is a brilliant story that orbits the paranormal, but has love as it's centre. Though these later discoveries are muddied somewhat by some sudden mechanics that almost disturb the delicate storyline, the finale is a choice that truly depends on how you played the game. The choice is yours at the end of the day, but it boils down to choosing the story or it's characters.

One of the loading screens, all of them beautifully illustrated.

This isn't a puzzle game to me, despite the fact that it sits very comfortably in that genre. It's something that I've never really played before, a game that is this dedicated to story and yet still maintains some fantastic head scratchers (that even I had to take notes for). Whenever I hit a block, all it took was a different perspective, a pause, or maybe just revisiting it later. With other puzzle games I felt I had to brute-force the solution, here it felt naturally earned, even for someone as bad at puzzles as me.

I've kept this review as spoiler free as possible, because I just really want you to play this game. The care I felt for Norah and Harry was driven by the amount I invested in seeing them reunited and the brilliant voice acting by Cissy Jones and Yuri Lowenthal. You can play it for the puzzles, the love, the horror, or maybe just to see what all the fuss I've made is about. Either way, you should play it. And I bet you you'll end up caring about this game as much as I have.

Call of the Sea is available for £15.49 through Steam, Xbox, Playstation, gog and Humble.