Call of the Elder Gods

Call of the Elder Gods is a first-person adventure that wonderfully captures an otherworldly tone and the sense of mystery of its predecessor, and it nails the emotional core while giving its characters and puzzle design time to shine.

Although it may not reach the heights of other narrative-puzzle contemporaries released since Call of the Sea, Call of the Elder Gods is still an entertaining test for your noggin, wrapped in an adequately engaging Lovecraft-inspired story.

Call of the Elder Gods is a new adventure game from Out of the Blue Games. Following up on Call of the Sea, the game dives once again in its universe.

Call of the Elder Gods is a solid sequel for the first entry. Although this time it has no ace up the sleeve.

Call of the Elder Gods is smart, pretty, and, on occasion, satisfying, but it is also way too talky and too structurally obvious to become an absorbing experience. There are good puzzles here, and some will absolutely enjoy picking through its clues and strange story and lore. However, it lacks the confidence, elegance, and restraint needed to feel like an essential adventure-puzzle game.

Call of the Elder Gods has a strong mystery, useful sequel connections, and memorable locations, but unclear clue paths, underused character switching, and limited exploration payoffs keep it from matching the promise of its mystery and character setup.

Out of the Blue's sequel has a bigger canvas and more colors to play with, but new mistakes diminish the magic such eldritch adventures promise.

Call of the Elder Gods is a good game that fans of the original will find plenty to appreciate. The atmosphere holds. The lore rewards the curious. The hint system is a genuine quality-of-life step forward. But as a sequel to something I consider a minor classic of its genre, it moves the needle less than it should. The dual protagonists add texture without meaningfully reshaping how the game feels. The puzzles remain demanding in ways that the hint system accommodates without correcting. And the emotional specificity that made Call of the Sea’s ending so impactful is harder to find here, buried under a wider, louder mythology that doesn’t always know what to do with the feelings it excavates.

The momentum was just all off. Every time I started to get sucked in, a demand that I examine my notebook and work out details to continue progressing would eject me from being enthralled. It just wasn’t for me.

Call of the Elder Gods is the better game — more ambitious, more visually impressive, with stronger puzzle design and a story that actually wants to go places. The writing still has rough edges, the budget limits show in the facial animation, and one puzzle late in the game is a genuine misfire. None of that changes what the game accomplishes across its best sequences, or the fact that Out of the Blue have built something with considerably more range than where they started. If you played Call of the Sea and wanted more, this delivers more in almost every dimension. If you haven’t played the first game, both are on Steam and the bundle is worth the price.