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Genre: Adventure Developer & Publisher: Out of the Blue Games/Kwalee Released: May 12, 2026 Requirements: OS: Windows 11 Processor: Minimum, Intel Core i5-10600KF/AMD Ryzen 3600X; Recommended, Intel Core i5-11600K/AMD Ryzen 5600X Memory: Minimum 8 GB RAM; Recommended, 8 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti/AMD Radeon RX570; Recommended, Nvidea GeForce GTX 1650/AMD Radeon RX 580 DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 25 GB available space Solid State Drive recommended
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By flotsam Call of the Elder Gods Out of the Blue Games/Kwalee As the Steam page says, “all is not right at Miscatonic University,” which as anyone who has ever been there will know probably goes without saying. A key institution in the Cthulhu mythology, it’s an Ivy League centre for the study of the arcane, not to mention its practice. Which tells you a fair bit about where the narrative is likely going. A sequel to the earlier game Call of the Sea, this game does a good job of drawing out the linkages. While you don't need to have played that game, my personal enjoyment was certainly enhanced by that earlier experience and I expect yours will be too. One previous character is front and centre, another an intriguing touch. You get to play two characters in the game. One is Evangeline (Evie) Drayton, a young physics student plagued by weird dreams featuring aliens and black goop, the other is Professor Harry Everhart, the Dean of Archaeology at the aforesaid University and a member of the expedition to the Pacific in the earlier game. Evie seeks out Harry in an effort to understand her dreams, which is the springboard to ancient cults, kidnappings, mind-melds, Nazis and alien beings amongst other things. It’s a wild Lovecraftian ride helped along by an ‘intriguing’ narrator. The game is both narrative rich and puzzling good, the latter tending towards the 'winkle out information to solve some rather elaborate environmental conundrums' type. Logic dominates, and while I resorted to trial and error at times, it was a ‘hail Mary’ based on my own deficiency rather than the puzzle required it. Only once could I not see the why of the puzzle. The game plays in Chapters and solving the puzzles is confined to those Chapters. More than that, you generally can’t move on until you have solved this particular bit of the environment, which further confines the solution. Which doesn’t make it simple, but ensures that you can feel confident that what you need is all there in whatever bit of the gaming word you are occupying (it can be quite large), provided you can uncover and then pull all the bits together. My favourite involved decoding messages with an Enigma Machine, and my proudest moment was recognising and applying a number system. The rolling sphere puzzle near the end can be a bit fiddly and might take several attempts, but I didn’t not like any of the puzzles. You do need to find and gather inventory items but just having them will cause them to be used. There is no inventory management whatsoever. Which I also liked. Most of the time the game determines which character you are playing, but there are times when you can switch between them at will in order to co-operate and solve a conundrum. I liked these interactions, and they added another dimension to the puzzling. The game utilises both the keyboard and mouse. WASD will move you around, but given that the mouse 'steers' your first-person perspective, apart from climbing down ladders you will probably only need the W key. You have complete freedom of movement and can look all around. Left click interacts with the world, right click backs you out of various actions, and certain keys control other actions. Chief amongst these is TAB, which opens your journal, which automatically collects important information and alleviates the need for pencil and paper. Assuming that is, that you haven't activated 'hard' mode. Much like crying in baseball, there is no journal in hard mode. I didn’t turn it on, primarily because the game itself says that the best way to play the game is to leave it turned off. So I did, but it can be toggled off and on as you go should you want to.. When exploring the game world you don't have a curser, which sounds odd but means there is nothing to distract. Inside a puzzle however, a curser will usually be present. Hotspots will appear as a small empty circle when you get close, and once close enough and when centred in your screen (as if you were looking straight at your objective) the circle will fill in and can be activated by a mouse click. It might sound a bit odd but it works well. The game exclusively but frequently autosaves, (a little array of dots bottom right will tell you that has happened) and you just pick continue from the menu. You can also choose to load a particular already reached chapter should you want to. It looks good, with a vibrant comic book style about it (especially in the cutscenes). There is not a lot of motion in many of the settings, but it doesn’t feel sterile, and the different locations are quite varied in their construction. The undersea vista is particularly good, and the occasional surreal world adds a bit of trippiness. The colours used throughout also accentuate the tone of the particular environment. It sounds equally as impressive, and the voice acting is top notch. There are also some very good lines of sarcastic dialogue. If you get stuck, hints are available through the menu. These will be nudges leading to full solutions, and they will ensure you aren’t stuck for longer than you want to be. There is a choice at the end which determines how your game finishes, and some intra and post credit material and scenes that mean you shouldn’t skip the credits. There is an excellent dedication as well. You can watch the alternate ending once done by choosing continue from the menu, which will return you to a few minutes before making the relevant choice. It finished well, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more to come. Depending on your use of the hints (and whether you play hard mode) Call of the Elder Gods should give you eight to ten very satisfying hours of enjoyment. I played on: OS: Windows 11, 64 Bit Processor: Intel i7-9700K 3.7GHz RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR4 32GB Video card: AMD Radeon RX 580 8192MB
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