In 2020, the game Call of the Sea presented gamers with lots of puzzle solving on a tropical island and a well-written mystery, sprinkled with a bit of atmospheric mysticism. This sequel, Call of the Elder Gods, follows up with more world hopping, environmental puzzle solving and mystery unraveling, while definitely leaning into the dark, mystical side of the original tale.
The adventure picks up in 1956, some twenty years after the timeline of the first game. It’s narrated by the former protagonist, and now quite deceased, Norah Everhart. Norah’s husband, Harry, is now an older, somewhat grumpy university professor, who suffers from dark, ooze-spattered visions. And he’s taking prescribed medications to try and avoid them.
As much as Harry just wants to be left alone, his life is sent tumbling forward by a university student named Evie Drayton. She comes to him with reports of personal memory lapses and dreams involving a strange tentacled creature and an ancient artifact—things that Harry recognizes all too well.
It’s only after a shadowy cult attacks, however, that Harry and Evie join forces. They set off on a quest through manors, mysterious caves, forbidding deserts and otherworldly realms to reveal the mystery at hand and figure out how their personal visions and dreams tie into it all.
There’s definitely a dark, twisting, mystical story woven throughout this game. But the lion’s share of gameplay involves exploring the colorful locations and looking for papers and physical items that can be used to solve and unlock the many, many environmental puzzles on hand.
Evie and Harry tag team their way through pattern-matching conundrums and memory challenges, cryptic code and musical note mechanics, and other escape room-like tests involving deduction and deciphering.
Though players switch back and forth between controlling Evie or Harry throughout the game, Call of the Elder Gods is a single-player game with no multiplayer or co-op modes. You can play the game offline without an internet connection.
Gamers play as a duo who are trying to stop a group of cultists from gaining great occultic power and endangering the world. Evie and Harry both put their lives on the line in this effort, and one of them (as a part of two separate but interlinking game endings) will step forward to potentially die in that pursuit.
Call of the Elder Gods is a classic puzzle game with compelling art direction and a solid voice cast. The game uses a Myst-like, first-person, puzzle-solving mechanic. And it features a very well-written story with tons of smaller riddles to unlock, a good-sized environment puzzle to master for passage through each chapter and a twisting overall mystery to eventually unravel.
(It should be noted, however, that some of the clever puzzles may require a separate notepad and/or parental help for younger players.)
The cultist foes in this game present a sense of threat, and one character wields a gun on a few occasions. But there is no bloody violence in the story mix. There are explosive moments with no mess. There is, however, a dark ooze that’s central to the storyline and said to be deadly if touched by human hands. Someone notes that this ooze is actually the blood of an “Elder God.”
As mentioned, that Elder God mysticism is a very large part of this story. The game story references H.P. Lovecraft’s book The Shadow Out of Time and focuses on body-swapping, stolen memories, occultic ceremonies and odd spiritual connections through time and space.
The Elder God is a many-tentacled alien creature that Evie initially sees in her dreams. It rules over a mystical domain that holds the spirits of past loved ones (including Evie’s father and Harry’s wife). And those spirits suggest that this creature might actually be the biblical God as they understand Him. They also call the god by several other ancient names including that of the Japanese sun god, Amaterasu.
The dialogue includes exclamations of “d–n,” “darn it,” “Sweet Jesus” and “Good Lord.”
Call of the Elder Gods follows up its predecessor with lots of challenging puzzles and a well-voiced story. But that story feels much darker this time, and it ventures into twisted spiritual realms.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
