In this current era of gaming, it’s pretty damn common for a game to hold your hand a little too much. Whether it’s something like Pokémon Legends: Z-A making you play through a two hour tutorial or God of War: Ragnarok telling you the solution to a puzzle the moment you step into a room, it’s something that really gets under my skin as a lifelong gamer. This issue is particularly painful when it comes to games where you play as a detective, and instead of using your own brain to solve problems you magically find items with detective vision and just watch your character crack the case without your input. Thankfully Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is the exact opposite of this, with an expected horror twist of course.
Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss takes place in the not so distant future of 2053, and you play as Noah. As an agent of Interpol’s secret occult division, it’s your job to investigate spooky goings on. The game opens with you riding a boat into a house surrounded by water in the middle of nowhere, as you and your partner are looking for a missing agent and friend. It doesn’t take long for you to find out she’s got herself caught up in some Lovecraftian cult, as you find her notes about opening a portal to another dimension. You’ll have to put the work in to discover what’s happened to her though, because that’s what you’re paid to do.
The first chunk of gameplay in this preview involved me exploring this house for clues. Everything you find can be collected and pinned so you have a quick reference to it, helping you keep certain ideas in the forefront of your mind. Every single item you find has information that you can glean from it, be it a plant that hasn’t been watered in weeks or a newspaper clipping about a drilling company doing some shady shit. Putting the pieces together and working out what to do next isn’t easy, but it’s incredibly satisfying because of this.
You are never investigating alone either, because you’ve got an AI assistant called Key to help with the case. Key will often give you a handy nudge in the right direction, but also has some pretty snazzy features alongside this. One of these features is to analyze the composition of an object, and then send out a pulse scanning the area for similar stuff. In the house I used this to find different minerals, which I needed to solve a rock puzzle. It’s a seriously clever idea, and as even this early chunk of the game progressed I used it to find mushrooms, electronic systems and to navigate deep on the ocean floor.
Alongside this particularly interesting functionality, Key can also be used to piece together clues and seek out the truth. This happens in what is essentially the typical detective game mind palace, with different nodes you can link together. There’s a more manual sort-it-yourself element where you can use this digital space to keep your own thoughts organised, but alongside this there are also questions posed by Key that’ll unlock new vital information when answered. If you fail at these your mental state will be affected, because this is a Cthulhu game and not a friendly stroll in the park.
The horror side of Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is exactly what you’ll be expecting, with all sorts of Lovecraftian nightmares ready to upset you and dirty your underwear. There’s also just a distinct feeling of isolation as you adventure into the underwater drilling station and other worlds alongside it. I always felt on edge and in danger whether there were other worldly nightmares surrounding me or just excessive amounts of sea water, and that really impressed me.
Perhaps more than anything else though, it was hard to ignore the production values of Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss. The game looks absolutely gorgeous, with detailed AAA levels of visuals and a whole lot of sinister style alongside it. The voice acting is more than stellar too, with believable characters made all the more easy to connect with because of the actors playing them.
Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss quite frankly took my breath away, and I didn’t want to put it down after I reached the end of my preview section. The blending of adventure game problem solving with the horror theming has always appealed to me, and it’s done so well here. With AAA levels of polish, a constant sense of dread and a distinct lack of hand holding, a whole host of horror fans are going to fall in love with this game in April.
Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is coming to PC on April 16th.
