Call of the Sea - first person adventure set in the 1930s South Pacific

[Life of the Party]

https://www.calloftheseagame.com




https://af.gog.com/game/call_of_the_sea?as=1649904300

Spoiler

 

[Infinitron]

Coming December 8th.

 

[Silentstorm]

Day 1 on Game Pass too, also the rare indie game that only comes out to PC and Xbox so far, no Switch at all.

Don't know how good Call Of The Sea will be, one thing i do know is that it's a very pretty game, the island seems gorgeous and fun to explore, just hope the plot and puzzles are good too.

 

[WallaceChambers]

Watched this 18 minute gameplay preview and I was pretty impressed by it. I love the visual style and the puzzles seem well done, fairly traditional. There's some streamlining, like the main character automatically writing iconography in her journal for you to reference, but It doesn't seem overbearing. It'll spare me some paper at the very least.

Narrative wise the devs are describing it as a lovecraftian story about rising from insanity rather than sinking into it. There's only little glimpses of that from the start but it's only the first area so no shock there. From what I did see it's a competent set up, albeit with some notably clumsy exposition at the start. Kinda weird because the template for relaying all that same information via environmental story-telling is well established at this point. Which they proceed to somewhat still do afterward. Far from a deal breaker but a bit awkward to start things off.

Overall I like it. The atmosphere of the island is looking really good, early look at the puzzles and narrative seem promising enough. We'll see how it turns out. I'll most likely be giving it a go.

 

[Silentstorm]

I will play it, at the very least through Game Pass(hey, MS gave a nice time period for 1 dollar so may as well use it) but looking at the trailer i just couldn't help but notice it was a gorgeous game but refused to really look into it because of spoilers, but the idea of a Lovecraftian story about rising from insanity is something i am into.

 

[V_K]

Isn't like the whole point of FP in Adventures to allow for a blank-slate protagonist?

 

[Infinitron]

This is out: https://af.gog.com/game/call_of_the_sea?as=1649904300

 

[Silentstorm]

And thanks to Game Pass i am playing it and seeing if it's worth buying, i was never a fan of characters just randomly spouting exposition so Nora starting by giving backstory to herself after waking up was weird, particularly since you quickly find a journal and a diary, you'd think that would have been a more natural way of telling the story, or a cutscene before...but whatever.

Anyways, for now the puzzles are...fine, really easy if you are paying attention though, and Nora tends to write important details in her journal, maybe later on they get harder, but for now, it feels like if i can't figure out a puzzle, it's because i missed a detail somewhere that pratically reveals the solution, for example, a certain "slot machine" has the solution stamped right on it's back, they're not the hardest puzzles is what i am saying.

Still, the game is really pretty and it's enjoyable, just wish the puzzles were a bit tougher for now.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-12-09-call-of-the-sea-review-eerie-puzzles-in-paradise

Call of the Sea review - eerie puzzles in paradise
Love and craft.

A dazzlingly different debut with a haunting sense of place and adventure.

One game really leapt out at me during the Xbox Series X showcase earlier this year, leapt out like a big wet fish. It was Call of the Sea. I'd never heard of it and never heard of the developer. But even among all the other blockbusters it stood out. And once I'd seen it, I couldn't stop thinking about it.

It was partly the setting: a vintage, 1930s exploration mission to a dazzling tropical island, where colours burned brighter than life. Literal red sun baked the sands, literal green shone luminously from pools. It was a cartoon exaggeration of paradise.

But it was also the tone. Here was a non-violent and eerie game about a lone female on a voyage to find her husband, whose expedition hadn't returned from the island. An island that appeared to be calling to her. Who was she, Norah Everhart, and what happened to her husband? And what was waiting for her there?

The prospect seemed magical. I know now, having played Call of the Sea: it is.
It surprised me how much of an adventure game Call of the Sea is. The game is broken into chapters, and each of these takes place in a self-contained area of the island, which you cannot leave until you solve a handful of major puzzles there. Since this is a game, these puzzles often focus on opening a door of some kind, but not always.

Solving puzzles involves combing the area for clues, until you have all you need to tackle the conundrum at hand. Clues can take many forms, but usually a fair few are gleaned from the detritus left by your husband's expedition. You always seem to be one step behind him. So you nose through photographs, letters, notes and drawings for anything which can tell you how his team managed to proceed.

You have one crucial tool to aid you in all of this: your journal. This both serves as a place for Norah to record events, and as a quick reference dump for clues. It's tremendously handy. Not only will Norah automatically record the vital clues you find, she'll also often elaborate on them, providing the spark you need to solve the puzzle.

Spoiler

The puzzles themselves usually center around some kind of contraption, often those invented by your husband in order to overcome a hurdle in the island. Therefore, solving the puzzle will involve both working out how your husband's contraption works, and understanding the puzzle he was trying to solve. It can be taxing work. There's always enough space left for your brain to have to make the leap between clues and answer.

Sometimes the answers are obvious, other times, more obscured. I'm a bit embarrassed to say two puzzles collectively took me about four hours to solve, if not a bit more. Both were in the same chapter, though different areas of it. I had everything I needed to solve the puzzles but no matter how much I looked at them I couldn't see the answers. It's a bit like doing a Magic Eye puzzle: you stare and stare and stare in the hope something will magically materialise. When it does, it will seem obvious, but when it doesn't, it's just impenetrable noise. In one of the puzzles, understanding did magically materialise, but in the other, it did not. I still don't know why that lucky turn of the dial opened the door but I'm bloody glad it did.

There can be frustration then - although I should point out that those two particular puzzles were outliers, and none of the others stumped me like that. But from frustration comes a fluffy kind of elation when you do get through. And to be honest, in a game gated solely by puzzles, I'd prefer it this way around. Yes, it leads to walking back around areas wondering if you've missed something, but I can't think of nicer areas to walk back around. And in your thoroughness, you allow time for the story, and for a deeper appreciation of the environments around you.

It's a frequently a beautiful game, although I didn't realise until I looked back through my screenshots, how much of the beauty disappears when the game is not in motion, when you can't hear the sounds of tropical life around you, or you're not experiencing the flashes of lightning and the pelting rain.

The template wears thin eventually. However varied the environments may look, and the puzzles within them may seem, they all boil down to putting things in the right sequence in order to unlock some kind of door. I believe Out of the Blue has done all it can with the systems available in its game, it's just that there aren't that many elements here, and the resulting effect is a kind of weariness and deflated anticipation for what's to come - because you're fairly certain what it will be. Especially when you've spent a good chunk of time solving a puzzle beforehand.

It's something a game like Uncharted - a very similar kind of game - gets around by having combat and traversal mixed in. In this way, Uncharted can go from puzzle to shootout to monkeying around and give each component time to refresh and breathe. It's not the same here.

But though that puts strain on the core, I'm glad Call of the Sea doesn't do those other things. Having no combat calms everything down and makes more sense contextually with who you are in Call of the Sea. Likewise, traversal. This a lady who has used a cane and been in bed with a mystery illness for most of her life - why would she be swinging around like a monkey now?

It also mixes weird interludes into the game, and bookends chapters with gorgeous artwork.

Call of the Sea can't dazzle with sheer cash and work-hours the way Uncharted does, or build to quite the same spectacle. And you don't have to look too closely to see where compromises have been made, or to hear them (I know it's petty but I wish the beautiful score had been performed by live musicians rather than a music program), though I should say Cissy Jones brings a touch of class to voicing Norah Everhart. Which isn't to say it's not beautiful, by the way. It's a kaleidoscope of colour and vibrancy, and seeing the island open before you, in more and more miraculous ways, will almost certainly elicit a few wows.

But instead Call of the Sea dazzles by being different. A bigger game would never be this weird. A bigger game would never tell a story of love and self-discovery in this way, and do it without resorting to violence, and, though it pains me to say it, tell it about a woman. It's that independence which made Call of the Sea stand out during the Xbox Series X showcase and what makes it stand out now.

 

[Silentstorm]

Yeah, the game is much better when in motion, my one big complaint would be Norah's diary having letters that are way too small, you have to get really close to the screen to read it, i do not mean the journal which is really helpful and thankfully can be accessed even when doing a puzzle, but the actual diary where Norah puts her thoughts on what she finds, what has happened and even some backstory details you can't find on the map, with more drawings and photos too.

The diary isn't needed to solve puzzles, but i just like reading text in my games, someone should really tell Norah to write in bigger letters.

 

[Humphrey Plugg]

Finished this yesterday. I thought it was pretty good. I did get it via Game Pass so it's a low bar, but I would be in for buying their next effort for full price if it was similar.

I then made the mistake of looking at some user reviews on metacritic, some of which decried it as a walking sim with no puzzles. I don't have a problem with walking sims, but let there be no doubt there are definitely puzzles in the game. Are they very difficult? No. There was one where I got a bit stuck for a bit, but other than that they provided enough friction between the plot bits to have me running about, looking at symbols, checking note books, pressing buttons, watching gears or blocks move. You know, video game stuff. It's fine. I liked not having to make my own notes.

Story is well written and voice-acted. It runs out of steam right at the end, but that's true of 99% of all games. The theme is Lovecraftian but it's not horror-based. That means no late arrival of half-baked survival horror or stealth mechanics to sully the stately puzzle-solving. I just want to work out how to rotate symbols to make the stone thingy open at my own pace. And this game let me do that repeatedly and then had the decency to stop. Thank you game.

Finally, the protagonist's husband Harry looked a bit like Warren Spector in his Savage Empire prime.

 

[WallaceChambers]

Just finished this and it's really good. I loved how varied and colorful the visuals were. The game takes you to a lot of cool and imaginative spots in its brief 6~7 hours. The puzzles are more in the Cyan/Syberia school of adventure game design, so you're gonna be futzing around with foreign contraptions and manipulating the environment to progress. Everything is well designed and integrated into the plot. Nothing stumped me but you still need to pay attention and apply a satisfying degree of logic. Norah takes notes for you in her journal and a few times I felt this over signposted things, but overall it was a very nice addition.

Norah is a well written, well performed and likable character. She's appropriately serious given the stakes of her adventure but never too dour. There are times where she laughs to herself recollecting aspects of her and Harry's relationship and those lighter moments round out her personality nicely. The plot kinda runs out of surprises a bit too early so for the last level you're kinda hammering home revelations you've already made. Small issue in an otherwise well written game, though.

Overall I really liked the game a lot. It was fun scouring through notes and observing ancient artifacts to piece together the mystery. It hits a sweet balance of plot and puzzle solving and it looks really good. Looking forward to what Out of The Blue comes out with next.

 

[Starwars]

I played this for just under 2 hours and then refunded it. I liked the premise a lot and I enjoy narrative-driven puzzle games, especially if we're dealing with amystery, but this just didn't grab me at all. The opening puzzles seemed very boring to me as did a lot of the storystuff. Norah blabbering about her situation felt out of place and her chipper attitude towards heading to an unexplored island on her own to find her lost partner felt weird. Like she was going on a vacation.
Maybe it would've all made sense later on but yeah... not for me.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-03-17-call-of-the-sea-interview-lovecraft-myst

Call of the Sea: Lovecraft, new studios, and the legacy of Myst
"It isn't a descent into madness, it's a rise to sanity."

Call of the Sea was one of my favourite games of 2020. Even when I think about it now, I feel warmer. Partly that's to do with the literal warmth of the tropical island setting, but I think more of it is to do with the gentle nature of the game. It's a game without combat, a game about puzzles. A game with an eerie mystery pulling you farther in. It's an adventure played at walking speed, both metaphorically and literally. And I relish that. I relish an adventure I can sink into like a comfy armchair each evening, one that doesn't rough me up and shake me around before I sleep. I wish more games were like it.

And the more I read about Call of the Sea, the more remarkable it seems. It is the debut game by a Spanish studio called Out of the Blue Games (appropriately), and it was made in only a year-and-a-half. For a game to be built so assuredly in such a short space of time, by a new studio, is very impressive. Intrigued, I tracked down studio co-founder and Call of the Sea game director, Tatiana Delgado, for a chat.

Hello! How are you? How are things over in Madrid?

Tatiana Delgado: Well, it's almost a year since Covid is started, so we are at home still and we're good. We now are enjoying the release of the game and all the good reception we are getting.

I'm very fond of your game. It was one of my favourite games of last year. And you've just been nominated for a BAFTA-

Tatiana Delgado: Yeah! Wow, that was amazing. We cannot believe it. It's... wow. [laughs]

You're nominated for Best Debut. So who are Out of the Blue Games? You founded the studio, is that correct?

Tatiana Delgado: Yes. I have a business partner that is Manuel Fernandez, [and] we've been in the games industry for, I think, eighteen years. The average experience in this studio is more than ten years, so we have been working a lot of years in the gaming industry. And we have learned how, mostly, not to do things. We have been seeing so many mistakes being done in other companies. That's why we were really very focused in production. We wanted to do a strong pre-production. We set the goals for the game and we tried to follow everything until the end, so we didn't add anything crazy at the middle, or change systems. [...] Everybody knew what they had to do.

We trusted a lot in the team. We wanted to give the team the chance to do what they really wanted to: to put their soul in the game. And I think everybody was so invested in the game that they put so much passion [in], [and it] is something that you actually can feel when you play. Everything has a level of polish that is amazing.

You say you learned how you didn't want to do things. Does that include crunch? Did you manage to avoid it?

[Update: Tatiana Delgado got in touch to clarify her comment on crunch, and her updated comment follows.] Tatiana Delgado: We manage to avoid most of it. Sometimes, there are situations that are out of control but our duty as managers is to avoid those situations affecting the team. And I think we achieved it, or at least we tried our best. What is totally unacceptable is to crunch all along the project. I think that with proper planning you can if not completely avoid it, at least downplay crunch. Also you have to stick to your original plan, not changing crucial parts of the game during production.

[Original transcript:] Sometimes [it's] very hard when you see another game releasing [while you're developing] that has a feature that you love, and you feel like, 'Oh, we should include that in our game.' And when whenever you do that you're breaking the game because-

Was there one such feature for Call of the Sea that you saw?

Tatiana Delgado: We didn't see that, but there are things that we wanted to do. We knew from the beginning that we couldn't, for example, have other characters to interact with, because that would make... We know how small we are, so we have to play with the tools we have. And with 3D characters and animations: it's like the scope of the project goes up a lot. So these are the kinds of things that, for example, if we decide [in] the middle of the project, 'oh this will be very cool to have a 3D model to interact with', then the production schedule is broken and this results in crunch.

So your solution was to have one character, Norah Everhart, and have her talk to herself and write in a journal. A very elegant solution! It does away with the need for other characters while focusing the action more, and I also really like the feeling of loneliness and vulnerability that comes with it.

Tatiana Delgado: Yeah. I believe when you design a game, actually having more limitations makes it more brilliant, the result. Because I think limitations are good, actually, when you design something.

Spoiler

So are these ways of working - a year-and-a-half development with a strong pre-production - going to be features of your studio in years to come?

Tatiana Delgado: Yeah, because we've seen it has worked really well. So, we want to focus on games with puzzles and narrative-

Good!

Tatiana Delgado: [laughs]. Perhaps we will explore different things, but we still want to keep those two core things, because we love to make [them]. We think we are learning a lot and we can do it better, so we want to keep doing that.

I think that strong pre-production is key for the project. You need to finish pre-production with all the answers that you need, so you make production - reproduction, actually, [and] not investigate things. Just create and fill the gaps you have.

Where did the idea for Call of the Sea come from?

Tatiana Delgado: We - Manuel [Fernandez, co-founder] and me - we've known each other for a very long time. We met each other at a tabletop role-playing association.

What were you playing - Dungeons & Dragons?

Tatiana Delgado: No. Well, at first yes, but we really love Call of Cthulhu.

Of course!

Tatiana Delgado: [laughs]. So you can find inspiration for this game in two things. One is these role-playing game stories. When we started playing, they used to have more action, monsters, things like that, but we evolved them more into investigation, and more like Call of the Sea: more psychological [and] focusing much more on the narrative than the action. So we wanted to tell a story similar to the ones we were playing.

And on the other side, we have grown up with games like Myst, Riven (the second part). We love those games. So we wanted to bring something that could remind [us of], or was inspired [by], those games, but bringing it to the modern audience. So that's why the puzzles are a bit more... easy.

One wasn't! (I refer to the language puzzle at the end of Chapter 4, the absolute rotter.)

Tatiana Delgado: Oh yes! [laughs]. I know which one! I agree.

Did lots of people struggle on that puzzle?

Yeah! Actually, [in] one of the patches, we improved one of the clues to try to make it a bit more accessible.

So yeah, we were trying to make a kind of Myst game with a heavy narrative part.

So where does Norah Everhart come from? Where is she born in all of this?

Tatiana Delgado: So this is a hard question, because I don't want to spoil too much about the story, but we were inspired by one of the HP Lovecraft stories. We wanted to change the focus, give a twist to it; we wanted a female protagonist. But also, the important part is Norah is a woman that hasn't done anything risky in her life. This is the first time she exits her home. She's in her 40s, and now she finds herself in the middle of the Pacific and this island. So we wanted to show the evolution of this woman from being someone living a normal life, into the adventurer, and see how she confronts the situation.

In most of the Lovecraft stories you find that people, their circumstances overwhelm them, and that's why they fall into madness. But here it's like, 'Okay, what happens if people accept what is beyond their control?' So we wanted to try to answer that.

I read a quote by you where you said "Call of the Sea isn't a descent into madness, it's a rise to sanity", and it really struck me. It's a perfect way of describing her journey. Which Lovecraft story is it that inspired you?

Tatiana Delgado: This is perhaps too much of a spoiler but The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

Is that where the tropical island comes from too?

Tatiana Delgado: So there is a sailor that tells a story about these tropical islands. And we said it could be so cool, because most of the Lovecraft games happen in New England, Massachusetts - these areas in the United States - [to go] to these tropical islands. And also because I've been studying Polynesian culture for three years now.

Oh have you!

Tatiana Delgado: I have a friend that was studying Ora Tahiti: that's a dance they do in Tahiti. And I said, "OK let's go and see how it is." But actually what they have is a school about culture, so they don't only teach you how to dance, they teach you [...] everything about the culture: the language, the gods, how they live. It was so good. I always had it in my mind [that] I need to make a game that includes all this knowledge. And we were really lucky because my teacher, he's from New Caledonia, and I told him, "Okay, can you come to the studio with us and make us a workshop about the culture?" So we spent four hours, the whole team, learning about how the villages were built, what kind of plants there are in the Pacific, how they display the things, what a marae is - these stone structures I define at the beginning of the game. And I think it was super-cool because we could put actual culture into the game that was from the Pacific.

Watch on YouTube
Lovecraft is obviously an enormously influential creator of fiction, but the problem is that as a person, he was a bit of a monster. He was racist, he was a misogynist. How did you deal with that side of his legacy while being inspired by him?

Tatiana Delgado: The same way that we did with the twist with the 'rise to sanity': we wanted to do 'Lovecraft but different'; everything is the opposite. That's why we wanted to have a female protagonist. Also, The Shadow Over Innsmouth is racist so we wanted to change [it] so the game is the opposite. So we [use] his work as a starting point and then adapt it to our point of view.

Do you have any data about what decision people made at the end of the game? Do you know which choice was more popular?

Tatiana Delgado: We don't. The only data I have is from what's in the streams, and I think it's fifty-fifty. I really love seeing this trial because every time we see a streamer reach the question, they are like, "Nooo!" It's so cool to see that moment.

What has the reception been like to the game? Has anything people said surprised you?

Tatiana Delgado: Yeah, one thing that is not related to the story but one thing I really like is, we receive a lot of comments about people playing together with their partners.

I did!

Tatiana Delgado: I really love that, because it's amazing that we can read [about], say, mostly women that never played before, or didn't like games too much, and they play together as a couple. Because after all, this is a love story too. And also, it reminds me of when I used to play games like Riven and Myst. I used to play with my friends, because there was no internet at that moment, seeing people trying to solve puzzles together. For me, that was really cool.

Looking back, would you have done anything differently in the game?

Tatiana Delgado: The Journal. Not how it looks because it's very useful, but the logic inside has been crazy for the design team, creating all the information, every text, every image, and then making sure it triggers at the proper time. It was very-

Oh I really liked the journal, the dual-aspects of it, and how it helped you both recap the story and tell a bit more story, as well as be a functional place to store and give clues.

Tatiana Delgado: No, no, I think that's why we didn't cut it because we believed... I was the kind of player who used to play with a notepad beside me and write everything, so that's what we wanted to bring the players and we knew it was important.

When the game began, I got quite excited at the prospect of controlling Norah, a character with disabilities, because we rarely if ever get the opportunity to do that. Away from the island, Norah has to walk with a stick. But when she gets to the island, she's cured in some way and able to walk unaided. I'd almost rather she hadn't been. Did you ever consider keeping her disability?

Tatiana Delgado: This is a thing that a lot of people have given feedback to us [about], because the walking speed of Nora is never too fast. We didn't want her to run a lot so we got a lot of feedback saying she could have been running more. We were struggling with this because some puzzles you have to go back and forth a lot, so there is a speed that we cannot go below. We go below that, it will be boring. So I think we are in this sweet spot where she's running but not as a very healthy person.

I followed this up with Deglado over email because I felt there was a fuller answer to be given here.

Tatiana Delgado: Without spoiling the story too much, the disease that Norah has been suffering with for some time, which has affected her both physically (she relies on a cane to walk) and emotionally, is connected to her disconnection of self. When she gets to the island and slowly starts to find her true self (and all that it entails - again I don't want to spoil anything), she starts to feel better and better, and that is reflected both in the story and in her movement. Norah's story is a tale of self-discovery and the freedom that comes from that, and the profound effect that it has on her.

So, Call of the Sea was a Game Pass game. Do you have any idea how many people played it?

Tatiana Delgado: We cannot share that data. I'm sorry. I can say I am happy!

Okay, and is there a chance at some point in the future, when the Game Pass deal fades, we could see Call of Sea on other platforms?

Tatiana Delgado: Sorry! I cannot speak about that.

So finally, and thank you very much for your time today, what are you doing next? What is the studio up to now?

Tatiana Delgado: Well, we are starting a new game now, and as I said, it has puzzles, it has a powerful story again. We want to continue making these kinds of games, so I really look forward to telling the people what we are doing next.

 

[Spukrian]

I played this game a while back. I liked it.

The puzzles were good but a bit easy. I liked the story.

The Protagonist talks a lot, but most of the time it's relevant (unlike a certain other game I don't want to talk about...)

 

[HoboForEternity]

I just finished it too. Beyond what i expected. Developers use "puzzles" very liberally today so to my delight the game actually has puzzles. Streamlined, but enjoyable and never feel obtuse. Everything follows a proper logic and have proper context to the story.


And the story itself also exceeded my expectations. At first i found the chatter annoying, but as you familiarize yourself with the characters, it became endearing and heartwarming even.

Solid puzzle game.