The Deep Awaits
Really starting to feel like it’s the ‘Year of Cthulhu’ or something. I just reviewed Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss, in a few months we are going to have The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu; and then there is this game that I am talking about today, Call of the Elder Gods. Call of the Elder Gods is a sequel to the disgustingly fantastic Call of the Sea from 2020. Due to the nature of that game, I will have to talk about some spoilers in this review for the new game, so if you are sensitive then you should finish Call of the Sea before jumping in to Call of the Elder Gods. That being said though, players do not have to experience the events of the first game to understand the sequel.
Call of the Elder Gods picks up the story after the events of the previous game. In the original Norah Everhart traveled to the South Pacific in search of her husband Professor Harry Everhart in 1937. She finds Harry and a cure for a Lovecraftian illness that she had been afflicted with. Though this cure caused her to never see Harry again, there is a lot of narrative in the first game, and the sequel will summarize it for you, and players will need to make a choice on how it ended, which will determine how the story starts. Thirty years later Harry is haunted by the events of the past; he constantly sees visions of things that aren’t there. Meanwhile a student at the college Evangeline Drayton is having nightmares of an object that has a connection to Norah. Early on the two meet and end up on an adventure that spans the globe and has them ducking Nazis.
MSRP: $19.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, Switch, PC
Price I’d Pay: $19.99
Call of the Elder Gods tells an amazing adventure story from start to finish. Grounded by the stellar voice over work by Yuri Lowenthal (Harry), Cissy Jones (Norah) and Mara Junot (Evangline), while the whole of the adventure is voiced, the main cast really did a fantastic job in helping to sell this story of horror, loss and Lovecraftian lore. Music is another area where this game shines. I am a sucker for jazzy, up-tempo, dramatic beats, and this game has it in spades. From the various musical and audio cues, Call of the Elder Gods really gives off an Indiana Jones vibe.
That vibe carries through over into the visual style of the game as well. Call of the Elder Gods is made in Unreal Engine 5 and I got to tell you, as much negative as I have read about this engine; I think this is game type is where the engine shines. The art direction for this game is similar to the last in that it’s a colorfully stylized world that avoids the boring photorealism look. Players will see a wide array of environments from Nazi office builds, to snowy bases even beyond time and space.
There is no combat in Call of the Elder Gods instead the game is focused on puzzles and really emphasizing players observations skills. As the story deepens there will be times when players will have to switch between Harry and Evangline in order to progress with interconnected puzzles. But thankfully there is a mechanic where if players end up being stumped the game will provide them with solutions of the puzzles. I did have to use this a few times just because I was tired and didn’t want to figure it out, but I can say that all the puzzles in this game felt challenging but fair. I never really had one that felt like the game was cheating.
Call of the Elder Gods is a worthy successor to Call of the Sea in almost every way. Combining exploration with some stellar puzzles and gameplay the game manages to tell a wonderful story with a Lovecraftian twist. The fantastic soundtrack mixed with the wonderful job the voice actors have done really help to make Call of the Elder Gods stand out. This one is sure to be on my Game of the Year list for 2026.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
