Lately my life has been focussed on games (video and tabletop) with an eldritch feel to them. Now Call of the Elder Gods whispers to me.
Call of the Elder Gods is the latest puzzle adventure from developer Out of the Blue Games and publisher Kwalee, taking players on a globe-trotting journey filled with ancient mysteries, cryptic symbols, and enough eldritch weirdness to make even the most seasoned archaeologist consider a career change. As the sequel to Call of the Sea, it continues Out of the Blue’s love affair with Lovecraftian storytelling and intricate environmental puzzles.
Having never played the original game, I arrived with all the context of someone who had accidentally wandered into the second film of a trilogy. Fortunately, Call of the Elder Gods does a good job of welcoming newcomers like myself and, with full transparency, I didn’t realise there was a first game until I was a few hours in. I did not struggle with any part of the game or the story without prior knowledge. But, as a spoiler to how I feel about Call of the Elder Gods, I am going to go and buy Call of the Sea.
Call of the Elder Gods wastes little time in throwing players into a world where nearly everything feels like a clue of some kind, be it a carving, a book title, or a painting name. The core game experience revolves around exploration and observation, and it quickly becomes apparent that it expects players to pay attention. I played Call of the Elder Gods with the notebook feature activated. This meant that every time I interacted with an object relevant to a puzzle, it made a note, often with a picture. I’d also best mention that thankfully you cannot leave an area, or miss anything you need to complete a puzzle.
What impressed me most was how naturally the puzzles fit into the world. Several puzzles left me staring at a wall covered in symbols, convinced that the answer was obvious to everyone except me. Naturally, the solution only became clear about thirty seconds after I gave up and made a cup of tea. It became obvious to me what the primary puzzle component was very quickly, but how to use it that was the tricky part.
None of the puzzles felt that they were arbitrary challenges inserted to slow my progress, they emerged organically from the environments themselves. Solving them requires careful observation, logical thinking, and occasionally staring at a collection of symbols for so long that you begin questioning your own intelligence (I’m talking to you ‘star sign puzzle’). The solutions feel satisfying once discovered, producing that wonderful moment where everything suddenly clicks into place and you immediately forget the previous twenty minutes spent wandering in circles. And I did wonder in circles more than once. I pointed out that the primary puzzle element to me was always obvious, sometimes I had to go back and forth in an area to find the things I needed to work out how to use the main puzzle section. That could be frustrating at times. One section I had to travel back and forth along a beam of light a few times and I was a bit bored of it after a while.
During the course of Call of the Elder Gods, you have two protagonists. Harry Everhart comes from Call of the Sea, so will be familiar to old hats, and Evangeline Drayton, who also has a connection to the first game, but I don’t know without playing how obvious that connection will be. There is no mechanical difference between the two, which is maybe a shame, I would have liked to see a way for each of them to add their own spice to some of the puzzles. During some of the puzzles you will swap back and forth to unlock certain paths. Those puzzles were still good though, one of them was in a former Nazi base that was pretty cool. There is a pun there, I will let you find it when you play.
As a fan of eldritch stories and settings, I think that Call of the Elder Gods has a good balance between an adventure vibe and cosmic horror. It had the same vibe as the classic Indiana Jones films, in that it feels real and has an amazing quality.
Visually, Call of the Elder Gods is consistently impressive. Its environments are packed with detail, ranging from ancient ruins and forgotten temples to locations that become progressively more surreal as the story unfolds. The effects are large without being too large, most of the time. It didn’t waste too much of my time with empty rooms or spaces that add nothing to the story or puzzle you are doing. But I might not like the back and forth walking so much. How art imitates my life.
There is no combat. There are no jump scares. If you want those, play something else, I can’t recommend one to you, as those games scare me, but there are enough games here at Big Boss Battle to tick those boxes for you. Call of the Elder Gods does however give you some tension, some stress (from a few frustrating puzzles) and just a sense of wonder that I think was the target of the game, and I think they nailed it.
Like all good puzzle games, Call of the Elder Gods sometimes asks for your patience. There were times I had looked at a clue multiple times, and it hadn’t clicked with me that it even was a component of the puzzle. At the end of the day, isn’t this the universal experience of puzzle games? The solution is either brilliantly hidden or sitting in plain sight, whilst your brain refuses to acknowledge it. I always think of what I was once told about doing a quiz, its only easy if you know the answers. Some will find it very easy, others will find it very difficult, and most will exist in the happy middle 90%, I know I did.
As someone coming to the series for the first time, I was pleasantly surprised by how accessible the experience felt. While returning players will undoubtedly appreciate callbacks and references that escaped me entirely, I never felt locked out of the story. The game provides enough context to make its central mystery engaging without requiring an encyclopaedic knowledge of previous events.
Call of the Elder Gods is a very fun puzzle game. I played it together with my other half and it was a nice experience working our way through the different puzzles. No two puzzles use the same thinking or methodology, so you will always be tested. It is a thoughtful, atmospheric puzzle adventure that values curiosity over action and rewards players willing to engage with its mysteries. It may not convert those who break into a cold sweat at the sight of a logic puzzle, but for anyone who enjoys exploration, clever challenges, and stories involving ancient secrets best left undiscovered, it delivers an entertaining and memorable adventure. Just don’t be surprised if you start seeing symbols everywhere after a few hours.
Call of the Elder Gods is available now on PC, as well as PlayStation and Nintendo consoles.
