Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss
Review
Not the worst swimming trip, but far from the best...
by Dan Lenois
reviewed on PC
The crashing waves of change...
The developer behind Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss, Big Bad Wolf, has a history of producing reasonably high-quality narrative-focused games, most notably their debut title, The Council, an episodic adventure game released back in 2018, which was well-received. They would later go on to develop Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong, which released in 2023 to mixed reviews.
Publisher Nacon is no stranger to Lovecraftian adventure games, having initially published The Sinking City in 2019, before a protracted legal battle between the publisher and the game's developer, Frogwares, eventually saw the IP rights revert to Frogwares, leaving Nacon looking for a new avenue through which to explore the expanding Lovecraftian video game subgenre.
Sinking to the depths...
One thing that Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss gets absolutely right, straight at the start, is in allowing the player to customize their experience. There's nothing wrong with providing players a carefully-scripted linear game, but as a developer, if you can find ways to enable player choice, without sacrificing your game's unique creative vision and identity, go for it. Players here can choose one of two default game modes: "Investigation" or "Exploration". Investigation focuses more on elaborate puzzle-solving mechanics, whereas Exploration reduces these mechanics to focus more on the game's narrative elements, providing more of an linear experience.
Once you pick your difficulty, you can then further customize your selected game mode by tweaking sliders and enabling/disabling a few additional options, to influence the impact of certain perks and/or penalties on your character throughout the campaign. If you want to experience a particularly punishing run, you can do so. Conversely, if you want to play the game on what some might call "journalist mode", where difficulty is all but eliminated, you could do that as well.
For this review, I completed one run on "Investigation", and then did a partial run on "Exploration". Aside from "Exploration" making it a tad easier to find investigation clues, there wasn't all that much of a difference in gameplay difficulty.
Visions from the deep...
Solving mysteries and conducting investigations aren't easy at the best of times, let alone when you're alone, underwater, where no one will hear your screams. Games like Bioshock have already explored the immersive horror potential of underwater settings. There's lots of secrets to uncover here in The Cosmic Abyss, including both mandatory puzzles needed to advance the plot, as well as optional side mysteries you can piece together on your own time should you choose to.
Players store clues in a mind map that can be accessed at any time. The problem is, the UI controls here aren't great. The game doesn't make it particularly easy to sort information by potential relevance, and the mechanic for connecting multiple pieces of evidence together is very sensitive and unreliable. At several points, it would take me a dozen attempts or more in order to successfully connect the same two pieces of evidence into connection.
Bugs and input issues are commonplace throughout this game. Unless you're standing in the exact same spot, or dragging/dropping in exactly the intended way, or otherwise completing any other precision-based task, you're going to run into issues. There were even one or two instances where I even had to reload just because certain interactable objects would suddenly become nonresponsive.
Staring into the abyss...
Just from the premise, there's a lot of potential here in The Cosmic Abyss. You've got the perfect setup. You're searching an underwater facility, and venturing out to the deepest depths of the ocean, to uncover terrifying truths beyond human comprehension. Thankfully, the game's visual aesthetic, sound effects, and original soundtrack, all combined, do an excellent job of conveying the intended mood. The problem is, while the setup is excellent, the progression and conclusion aren't.
Without giving away spoilers, the final third of the game, particularly the ending itself, is remarkably unsatisfying. For a game that claims to be all about player choice influencing the narrative, all you end up changing is a few lines of dialogue, and a few seconds of alternative cutscene material.
Additionally, for longtime Lovecraftian fans, there's not all that much meat on this particular bone. It's as if this game wanted to toy with the visual aesthetic of Lovecraftian fiction, and toss in a few scripted moments here and there, rather than deliver a fully-fledged narrative experience that meaningfully explores the darker, esoteric entities and worlds within H.P. Lovecraft's unorthodox mind. Markiplier's Iron Lung movie did more with Lovecraftian themes by far in two hours than Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss does in five hours.
It's worth noting that the game is remarkably short, only 4-5 hours long, depending on your puzzle-solving and exploration skills. As a result, its asking price of $39.99 is more than a bit steep for the game's limited offerings. Its replay value likewise isn't high, as aside from toying with whichever mode you didn't initially pick, there's isn't really anything new to unlock or discover.
Overall:
Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is a visually-impressive game that delivers remarkably stable technical performance on both mid-range and higher-range specs, as well as immersive original music and sound effects. Its set pieces and exploration mechanics are carefully crafted, and its vocal performances range from decent to passable. That said, The Cosmic Abyss seems less like a Call of Cthulhu-inspired game and more akin to a hidden object mobile game, where the object is to spam click around each room, grabbing up each item and determining whether or not it can contribute to the overarching puzzle.
It's a horror game that isn't scary, an adventure game that isn't exciting, and a narrative-driven game that feels more like a glorified tech demo. There's nothing bad to be found here, but nothing worth writing home over either.
As always, follow Hooked Gamers on Instagram for news updates, reviews, competitions and more.
5.5
fun score
Pros
Impressive graphical fidelity, strong technical optimization, decent SFX and music composition.
Cons
Short playthrough length, limited replay value, limited Lovecraftian connection, not enough gameplay mechanic variety.
