Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss Gameplay Preview: Wading Into the Black Seas of Infinity

It's quite daunting to admit considering his racist leniencies, but I am quite fond of the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. His conjuration of beings beyond our imagination and how they reflect the concepts of what it is to be human and our role among the stars consistently fascinates. Yet, I've always found myself drawn more to Lovecraft's lesser-known stories and monsters. Big bad octopus demon Cthulhu, well, he's almost too well-known and overly depicted by media, to the point where he lacks any sense of the mystery that lets your mind conjure anything remotely spooky from Lovecraft's admittedly outdated sense of horror otherness.

So, I was fairly cautious stepping into Big Bad Wolf and Nacon's Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss. A AA horror investigation with the massive flying squid in its title seemed like it could go in all the obvious directions, drumming up all the overplayed stereotypes of Lovecraftian fiction while failing to make it anything beyond tentacles and people screaming that they're going insane from reading a few squiggly letters on a wall. There is some of that, as it is a game based on Lovecraft's work we're talking about here, but in the few hours I played I found myself largely enjoying the beginning of this fresh mystery.

We play as Noah, an investigator into the Occult who finds himself drawn into the literal depths of the ocean and the metaphorical depths of a case far beyond his understanding after a colleague goes missing. After an eerie opening set in a cabin in the woods (or swamp might be the more accurate term), we're thrust into an investigation following an abandoned deep-ocean mining facility in the early 2050s, joined by an AI companion who helps us scan environments, connect clues, and can be asked for solutions to problems if you've got the setting turned on.

Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss comes across as an investigation game, first and foremost, which is probably wise considering as mentioned Lovecraftian horror fails to scare as much as say Resident Evil or Silent Hill. There's an unsettling undertone throughout, especially when you get past the introduction and into the meat of solo exploration of the abandoned facility. Something is down there with you, along with the trail of corpses it's left behind, but not knowing what it is, even as I wrapped the demo, left a much stronger impression than having a fish monster trying to chase me down throughout. That methodical approach to the gameplay gives you the time to immerse yourself in the world and get lost in the mystery, piecing together the clues bit by bit to uncover the dark narrative underneath.

There's a lot of depth to the investigation mechanics, which do take a minute to get used to. As you go around an environment, you'll keep your eyes pinned to the floor, walls, desktops, and even ceilings to collect clues. You get a bit of information from them once you first spot them, but if you spend a precious energy resource, you can then analyse them for more information, while storing them in the vault, a menu which allows you to pick a certain substance or element, and then use your radar to ping out for more things that share its properties. There's also a Sherlock-style mind map that allows you to connect the dots on various people, locations, artefacts, and more. I didn't tend to use it too heavily, as I would have rather focused on the next bit of the puzzle rather than trying to piece it all together in those early stages. You've got access to a pin tool, too, for certain clues and images you might want to keep handy. Again, full focus seems to have been put on the investigation here, which certainly suits a Lovecraftian atmosphere more than an action/survival romp through underwater temples.

Larger mysteries are not always straightforward, and while in the introduction you could get by from just looking at everything there was to look at, I did need to use my noggin for a maze puzzle in the second portion of the demo. Some assists from the AI companion Key came in handy, I'm not ashamed to admit, and in the end while I tried to get the "good" ending to the mystery, I had to use a tainted artefact to guide me through the maze. Each mystery offers you two solutions, with one playing into the all-important corruption mechanic. Being around all the fish folk and squiggly writing is quite detrimental to one's mental health, as you'd expect, and if you want a good ending, you'll have to stop Noah from going insane. To save time for the demo, though, I put that poor man's brain through the blender. It's an interesting enough mechanic, although I hope in the full game it isn't just a case of corruption is brought through the most straightforward path, while the no corruption solution makes you do more work, as that feels a bit too simplistic for the potential of the mechanic.

Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is certainly in the realm of a AA experience. While it looks great at times, has solid gameplay mechanics and an intriguing story, it does have its issues here and there. I noticed some visual bugs and what appeared like genuine mistakes in the map design (a label for Transfer Module called it Transfert Module). There were also some performance jitters each time I entered a new area, and while these didn't lead to any crashes, it did make me drop my immersion a bit, which is a shame considering the visuals and story do a very nice job of drawing you into the world Big Bad Wolf has created.

Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss might suffer from a lack of scariness, but like reading a Lovecraftian story in an age where fish people are some of the least horrifying monsters out there, there's still a grand sense of intrigue in Big Bad Wolf's mystery game. I'm drawn in to see the next steps of Noah's pursuit of this cosmic god, and whether we'll end up meeting old tentacle beard after all, or go far too insane way before we get the chance. Keep an eye out for this if you're looking for something to give you a bit of brain training as well as a neat story.