Unsurprisingly, Call of the Sea hits all of the beats one would expect in a Lovecraft-style tale: remnants of ancient civilizations, fish people, body horror, characters going mad for various reasons, bizarre science and physics-defying objects and landscapes, but what makes it unique is how none of this is mined for horror (well, not much). Only the remains of it are left behind, and now Norah has to find out what happened and hopefully find Harry, all while being unable to shake the feeling that she almost seems to feel at home on the island… And there Norah immediately finds Harry and his team, stranded but working hard, very much happy and…nope, of course the expedition has completely gone south. But then a mysterious package appears with clues suggesting that he’s still alive, so off Norah goes to a mysterious island in the South Pacific, where the expedition was dropped off. When her husband Harry sets out on an expedition to try to find a cure for it, he ends up missing. Set in 1934, Call of the Sea follows Norah, an ordinary art teacher suffering from a mysterious disease. And this game brings up an even bigger question: can you actually get a good game and a good romance story out of Lovecraft-inspired material? Why not have a Lovecraftian game that’s not only more of a straight-up first-person graphic adventure, and why not one that takes a different approach with a different story genre? To answer that question, we have Raw Fury and developers Out of the Blue with Call of the Sea. Maybe part of the problem is that all these games are horror titles, and as such feel the need to insert combat and/or stealth. Call of Cthulhu was thoroughly average, The Sinking City already left me bored after a couple of hours and Dark Corners of the Earth was ambitious, but too bugged and difficult. Lovecraft have often had trouble translating to solid adventure games.

Call of the sea chapter 6