Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss review – Investigation with a cosmic twist

If you love games that make you use your brain, Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is for you, even if you’re not typically into the cosmic mythology of H.P. Lovecraft. It’s the work of Big Bad Wolf, a studio you might be familiar with if you played 2018’s episodic and rather unusual narrative driven adventure game The Council. After that, the studio released Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong, a narrative-driven RPG. Both of those titles had investigative elements, but for Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss, they’ve been turned up to eleven.

While other games based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft tend to lean more into horror, often featuring combat or stealth, Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is happy to push all of that to the side in favour of making players work to unravel a mystery. In each chapter, you’ll be scouring for clues to further your investigation and overcome the challenges that lie ahead of you. And with only your wits, a place to look over your findings and a handy sonar device that you can attune to various frequencies to guide you, it makes for an experience that feels fresh and somewhat unique.

It all begins when a member of your organisation, known as Ancile, goes dark, no longer responding to calls or other forms of contact. And so, you go searching for her, arriving at her house to find the door locked. Finding a way in, it’s clear she’s not there, and things seem a little… off. The house is a mess, food has been left to rot, and there’s writing on the walls. Things go from bad to worse when you go into the basement an find blood along with a recording which makes it clear that her wounds were self-inflicted. Oh, and there’s also a strange organism down there that might just be a portal to another world.

Your first real task will be opening that portal, and you’ll have to figure it out for yourself, studying any documents you come across in the house to work out if they might be useful. This is a game that doesn’t hold your hand, certainly not by default at least, and even with some of the helpful assists that are available enabled, you might struggle to find a way ahead. But that’s what makes it all the more rewarding. Not every document or item you find in Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss will be beneficial to your cause, and thanks to limited inventory space you really need to consider what you pick up and whether it might actually have a use somewhere.

Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss really begins after the events at that house, however, with you sent to investigate a mining station in the Pacific abyss which is also no longer responding. It’s there that even more gameplay elements come into play, such as expending energy to analyse items which may help your investigative efforts further down the line. One thing you’ll be doing a lot of here is making use of your AI companion, Key, to hunt down items via sonar. If, for example, you need to replace a power cell containing hydrogen, it’s helpful that you can set hydrogen as something to scan for in a room of power cells that may or may not be empty.

Given its cosmic horror theme, it perhaps won’t come as a surprise that your mental state is something you need to keep measure of in Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss, too. Certain actions and events in the game will lead to your mind becoming more corrupted, not only potentially having a bearing on the outcome of your adventure, but also affecting the equippable perks you find along the way. And so, with that in mind, you’ll want to be careful about how you go about certain tasks, and make sure to keep an eye out for any bright orange mushroom-like growths that can be harvested to replenish your mental energy.

With so much to praise about Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss, including its visuals which are pretty eye-catching at times, it’s a shame that it also has some rather frustrating elements. Its deduction board feature, for example, is very fiddly to use and often feels like it relies more on trial and error than true intuition. Additionally, some late-game puzzles are a little too obtuse for comfort. It’s on the technical side that Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss disappoints the most, though, with some moments of slowdown as well as occasional bugs and other issues getting in the way of your work.

Throw in a mandatory autosave system that doesn’t make it abundantly clear when your progress has been recorded, making it possible for you to lose progress when taking a break, and you have a game that doesn’t quite fulfil its potential. Still, it’s hard to deny that Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is a game that grabs you from the off. And it’s really refreshing that it walks its own path, favouring players embarking on a true investigative adventure in which they need to work to progress the narrative forward rather than being spoon-fed a story between bouts of basic stealth or simple exploration.