CALL OF THE SEA STAR PUZZLE SKIN
CALL OF THE SEA STAR PUZZLE FULL

But even though it dips its toes in horror, Call of the Sea never becomes a full-on horror experience. Norah must piece together the fate of her husband’s expedition, in a story that strangely (and unintentionally, I’m sure) parallels that of the recently released Amnesia: Rebirth. At times Call of the Sea goes between Cthulu-esque horror to poignancy through its journey of discovery. Unfortunately, the story is a bit uneven. Sometimes it feels like Norah’s responses aren’t quite in-line with what’s on the screen, but this is a rare occurrence.Ĭall of the Sea is a narrative adventure, with a story that is the main driving force, as well as a major focus. The production values are overall pretty high, with good voice acting for the most part. It makes traversing each beautiful section pleasurable instead of just tolerable. Almost every scene makes a good screenshot, and every vista would look at home hanging up in an art gallery. One of the things that surprised me the most about Call of the Sea is its graphics and art style: they’re absolutely stunning.

I’m not talking about moving at Quake speeds, but I wouldn’t have felt less immersed if Norah’s run speed was much faster. Norah’s slow swim speed is particularly egregious for story reasons I don’t want to spoil. There are a few sections with annoyingly slow movements, especially those sections that take place underwater. It’s annoying if you’re forced to move at a snail’s pace while making puzzle solving attempts. Some puzzles in Call of the Sea require you to move across large areas, and if a button is pressed out of order then you have to do the whole thing over again. One of my pet peeves in puzzle heavy games is slow movement. And while there are a decent variety of puzzles to solve, a lot of them boil down to pressing buttons in the correct order. Call of the Sea’s puzzles are well made, though, with solutions that make sense and can be sussed out with examination of the environment and mechanisms. That’s not a bad thing, but if you’re going into Call of the Sea hoping for brain busters, you won’t really find them here.

Playing Call of the Sea hot off of reviewing Myst for VR, I think I spent a lot of time overthinking solutions that turned out to be simpler than I initially presumed them to be. I always argue that puzzle game difficulty is subjective to the person playing the game, but even so, Call of the Sea seems to be on the easier side in terms of puzzles. While story heavy, Call of the Sea is all about puzzles. As Norah, you’ll have to follow in your husband’s footsteps to learn the mystery of the island, Norah’s illness, and even her past. Norah’s husband takes an expedition to the island only to disappear, which causes Norah to follow him to the island to find her own answers.

CALL OF THE SEA STAR PUZZLE FULL

It’s also killing her, and the only hope she seems to have is on a tropical island full of ruins and mysteries.

CALL OF THE SEA STAR PUZZLE SKIN

Norah has an unnamed disease which causes her skin to break out into strange spots. The plot starts off enigmatic and intriguing. It features a set of puzzles that seemed like they were going to take some real brain power to solve, but as it turns out I was overthinking almost every single one.Ĭall of the Sea is a first person adventure puzzle game where you play as Norah, a woman searching for her husband on a strange island that has risen from the ocean. Call of the Sea is full of great “eureka!” moments. Some people can get through a puzzle game in half the time it might take me, for instance, because certain puzzles just click for certain people. I’m usually the first to say that puzzle games are completely dependent on the person playing them.

Call of the sea star puzzle