The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu

Дата публикации: 15-07-2026 08:00:00

I'm starting this review with a huge disclaimer, as I've not managed to play much of The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu with the recommended four-player co-op. The vast majority of my experience has been as a single player venturing through maddening jungles and spooky shores. Therefore, it's likely the case that if you have a few buds ready to buy and play this game with you, your experience may differ. Although, I doubt it'll improve too much.
The Mount: Omen of Cthulhu has a pretty strong premise. You play as an explorer on a ship scouting the New World in the 17th century, searching for treasure. Unfortunately, that search leads you to Lovecraftian horrors beyond your imagination. You'll have to fight humans lost to corruption, and face the mind-boggling effects of cosmic horror yourself, all while gathering enough loot to make your expedition a success.
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That sounds quite fun, right? Unfortunately The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu seems resistant to the concept of the player having fun. Especially when playing alone. Plenty of co-op games can be fun for a solo player. I've ventured into Vermintide 2 lobbies with nothing but bots plenty of times when none of my usual squad has been online, but The Mount: Omen of Cthulhu has all the joy of actually being an explorer venturing through a muggy, zombie-infested jungle, where an old priest follows you with his wagon, driving it with all the coordination of a 90-year-old woman about to make the highlight reel of a dashcam compilation.
While The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu can win you over with its setting, premise, and enemy design, as a game it begins to fall apart quite quickly after a few rounds. Once you get used to the core loop, which involves carving a path into the jungle so you can grab loot and put it on the aforementioned wagon, reaching a certain amount of gathered treasure (which almost always is just Metal Idols) before hotfooting it back. By then, you're hoping the forest isn't too annoyed and you've not been ripped to shreds by the many creatures lurking in the jungle. On paper, it sounds like a fine loop, but in practise, it quickly becomes tiresome, largely thanks to the sluggish nature of the gameplay.
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In an attempt to make The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu much more of a horrifying experience than it is an action-packed one, nothing moves quickly. Your character, the cart following you, the animations that get tiresome after a couple of rounds where you are shown everything you pick up. Despite the game telling you there's a sense of urgency to collect everything you need and get out, very little in the gameplay pushes this idea forwards. The idea of an extraction-type game seems to clash with the slow-burn, Lovecraftian horror element of The Mound, too. You're finding out a little bit more about The Mound with each expedition, but then effectively hitting the reset button each time you return to the galleon. The setting, while well developed by Ace Team, is hindered by the genre the game is stuck in. I'm not a fan of extraction-based games, but I can see those that have their merits. Far Far West strikes me as a recent example, a game that's fast, fun, and rewarding even as a solo player. It also feels like it would be an extraction-based game even if they weren't the thing right now, whereas The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu has the sense - whether true or not - that the extraction part of the game is an afterthought. Model this co-op game after Vermintide 2, for example, with interesting, individual levels that have their own structure and narrative, alongside a cast of characters that bring a unique loadout alongside plenty of personality, and you'll have an experience that makes you want to push through elements that feel like a slog, because you know there might be something else waiting afterwards. As it stands, after finishing a round of The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu, win or lose, I'd not be enticed to go again, knowing I'd get the same, bland experience.
As I mentioned before, I did spend most of my time with The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu as a solo player, which wasn't recommended, but apparently there is a reduced scale of difficulty depending on how few or many players you have in a party. I don't know where that reduced difficulty was for my time with the game. Enemies were incredibly tanky and could dish out serious damage to you. Without many defensive options at your disposal as a player, and with the combat being as slow and unrewarding as most other elements of the gameplay, you'll end up taking a beating more often than not with encounters. You do get an AI buddy as a solo player, but he's about as useful as you'd expect. Co-op was simply easier, because you're not relying on yourself to survive the run, and you have someone else to backstab an enemy if you get ganged up on.
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The loadouts and loot you get are okay, but especially when starting out you can really struggle if you've not got the right items. Plus, due to there being limited inventory space, you'll end up with no slots to pick up loot if you say pack a knife, sword, gun, ammo, and food or healing. Again, this hurts most when playing solo, but it's a detriment anyway, as it means you have to go back and forth to the cart quite often. With the cart AI being unreliable at best, and downright confusing at worst, having to backpedal to wherever it is at a given moment once you've picked up a valuable item again enforces a sense of slowness and a lack of progression in your run. You're given chores to do, not a game to enjoy for the most part. It's also not particularly enjoyable when random effects spring up and threaten to ruin your runs out of nowhere. Some of them are entertaining, like a centipede spawning out of your stomach at a random interval, but others just frustrate, like where your screen goes red randomly to the point you can barely see what's in front of you. Or, when a bird starts hovering over you, impeding your vision. That last one isn't so bad, if you've got a ranged weapon in your loadout. If you don't, you're screwed, which is kind of how the loadout system operates as a whole. Either you have what you need, or you've wasted your time.
The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu has some promise, but only if you're playing with friends. If you were hoping that you'd be able to dig through to the secrets of the game on your own, I cannot recommend it unless you're a sadist who just wants to suffer for hours on end. The setting and premise are intriguing, but the game is so bogged down by its core loop that I can't help but wonder if this story would've been better told as a book or some other, less interactive media. I didn't reach the end of The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu, but it does have one. If you're going to stick it out all the way through, make sure you bring some buddies, or at least join a populated game with a free spot. I don't like speaking so negatively about a game this way, but in what is quite a golden age of co-op titles these days, there's much better out there.

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