2020 may seem a strange year to invite the stress and headaches of complex puzzle-solving into a gaming library, but Call of the Sea proves to be just the beautiful and infuriating distraction this year needs. Released Dec. 8 for PC and Xbox, the game relies on Myst-like puzzles to present a compelling story, drawing the player in with beautiful art and good design.

Call of the Sea is a puzzle game set in the 1930s South Pacific. Players embody Norah Everhart, a protagonist whose husband set off in search of a cure for her mysterious illness, but has gone missing on a deserted island in this tropical paradise. To find out what happened to him and if any such cure exists, players must follow his path, solving puzzles to uncover the island's alien history.

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Call of the Sea pillars

Players are brought to the island to explore the abandoned camps of the expedition. Along the way, they uncover artifacts of a missing civilization, including wall murals and art -- but also mysteriously powered elevators, floating rocks and an ominous black ooze. Later, players uncover the wrecked ship that had abandoned the expedition here, along with evidence of the party turning on each other over conflicting goals and through the corruption of the ooze.

Call of the Sea features touches of Lovecraftian horror, drawing if not from the canon of characters and ancient gods then at least from the dreamlike aesthetic and slipping reality. Norah's disease is determined to originate from the mysterious culture the expedition has found on the island. As she and the player learn more about this alien culture, they begin to experience strange, dream-like environments interceding on reality, waking up with sea-creature arms or in unknown deserts.

The game later reveals that Norah's husband, Harry, becomes the dean of archaeology at Miskatonic University. This is the only direct Lovecraft reference in the game, borrowing the fictional University introduced in Herbert West -- Reanimator that later became a staple in the Cthulhu mythos. While Call of the Sea is no horror game, the light Cthulu touches bring a tinge of cosmic horror to the non-creepy tale.

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Call of the Sea island

Call of the Sea is primarily a puzzle game. Ranging in complexity from escape room-style trial-and-error puzzles to ciphers and hidden clues, the puzzles of Call of the Sea are the biggest draw of this expansive game. They hit the perfect note, making players work to figure out multi-part clues but providing just the right amount of guidance using Norah's notes in her journal. Answers always seem clear and obvious in hindsight, but require some legwork and thinking in order to get there -- the exact way a puzzle should feel.

The hidden objects required to solve some of the riddles encourage players to really dive deep into the game's atmosphere. With no guarantee that a letter left by the expedition is just a piece of the narrative, rather than a clue about how to make progress or the answer to a puzzle itself, players must engage deeply with the environments. No chapter is too big to thoroughly explore, and the importance of any individual object encourages players to leave no stone unturned.

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Because players must interact with the environment in such depth, the detail in Call of the Sea is unmissable. In environments ranging from lush jungle to rain-soaked machinery, as players seek out shadows in wind-swept dream deserts and learn to swim in vibrant seas, Call of the Sea pulls the player into its narrative of mystery and puzzle-solving goals through absolutely luscious art.

Call of the Sea also immerses the player in its worlds through first rate voice acting, leaning on the talents of veteran performers Cissy Jones and Yuri Lowenthal for Norah and Harry Everhart. Not only do these voice actors bring the characters to life, they also elevate the discarded letters and abandoned photographs littered around the island, pulling the player further into the game's world.

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Call of the Sea waterfall

Part of the voice acting involved recording two different versions of a love song created for the game, depending on which ending the player chooses. As Norah realizes the truth of her illness and her relation to the mysterious civilization responsible for the artifacts on this island, she must choose whether to accept her ancestry to recover from the disease or succumb to its spread but return to the life and man she had chosen. With two separate endings, Call of the Sea leaves Norah's fate -- and her love song -- in players' hands.

It's an interesting ending that feels more familiar in narrative-heavy, interactive story games. The ultimate challenge -- the final boss -- isn't some ultra-complex puzzle, but a simple choice.

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Call of the Sea desert

Call of the Sea, while a joy to play and absolutely beautiful to look at, steps troublesomely close to some old colonialist tropes. It's a shame to witness aspects of Polynesian culture through the lens of white travelers inserting themselves into the island's history. The aesthetics of colonialism are rampant, too, in the 1930s European style of the white visitors to the island.

The game tried to avoid these problems by working closely with Yunick Vaimatapako, director of Ia Ora Tahiti International School, as a Polynesian cultural consultant. This is absolutely the right direction to go for ensuring accurate and respectful representation, but it is a shame to feature yet another white heterosexual couple at the heart of a story rooted in the South Pacific.

Despite these issues, Call of the Sea is a stunning debut for development studio Out of the Blue. The puzzles are well designed, the environments immersive and the story compelling. Call of the Sea envisions a new era of Myst-like games that engage with real-world locations and established fictional mythos, inviting players into these worlds with fully realized, wonderfully elaborate environments. The game goes by quickly but is worth every second spent playing it.

Developed by Out of the Blue and published by Raw Fury, Call of the Sea is available on PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

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