Call of the Elder Gods review: A university with an alarming extracurricular program

The big picture

Miskatonic University has the sort of atmosphere that should make prospective students ask difficult questions during the campus tour. Shadows are behaving badly, dreams are becoming suspiciously specific, and an ancient artifact is once again failing to remain an object in a room. Call of the Elder Gods sends Professor Harry Everhart and student Evangeline Drayton looking for answers, which is admirable academic initiative and probably terrible for their calendars. Some universities offer study abroad. This one appears to have interpreted “abroad” rather aggressively.

Out of the Blue Games' single-player narrative puzzle adventure follows Call of the Sea with a new journey built around observation, objects and missing loved ones. It launched on PC and PS5 on May 12, 2026; Nintendo's Australian Switch 2 listing uses May 13. Expect a thoughtful first-person mystery rather than a promise that every eldritch inconvenience can be resolved through enthusiastic gunfire.

Assistance without confiscating the puzzle

Hints, icons and journal entries can be toggled, allowing players to choose how much guidance accompanies the investigation. That flexibility matters in a genre where the gap between pleasant concentration and staring resentfully at an object can be surprisingly narrow. A clue that looks obvious to one person may remain an elaborate decorative insult to someone else.

Having controls over that assistance gives the adventure a broader invitation. You can preserve more of the interpretive work or allow the game to help keep the narrative moving. Neither approach needs to become a referendum on your intelligence. Ancient secrets have survived for ages; needing a nudge before dinner is hardly a personal scandal.

Optional Occult Books offer further reality-warping enigmas for players who want more puzzle work. It's a wonderfully appropriate arrangement for this setting: the main investigation is already alarming, but the library contains additional alarming material for people who feel underutilized. That optional layer helps separate following the story from actively seeking out another mental knot to untie.

A field trip with questionable travel insurance

The journey ranges from a New England mansion's libraries to the Australian outback, frozen landscapes and otherworldly cities. That spread gives the sequel a broader geographical imagination than a mystery confined to one familiar environment. It also lends the investigation an appealing sense of escalation. The reasonable response to strange visions would be to seek help locally; these two seem destined for a rather more complicated itinerary.

The visual premise is especially attractive for players who enjoy inhabiting places that imply a history before anyone explains it. Architecture, landscape and unusual objects can carry the mood alongside the explicit narrative. The important expectation is exploration in service of a puzzle adventure, rather than a free-roaming holiday. These are places to examine, and whatever their scenery offers, their tourist boards have some difficult disclosures ahead of them.

Eduardo De La Iglesia returns as composer, while Yuri Lowenthal and Cissy Jones feature in the fully voiced story.

Family trouble on an unreasonable scale

The story draws inspiration from Lovecraft's The Shadow out of Time and centers on grief, family and sanity. Missing loved ones give Harry and Evangeline a human reason to pursue revelations that might otherwise look like a strong argument for leaving the artifact alone. Personal attachment is a credible engine for bad decisions. “Someone I love may be involved” can get a person through doors that every sensible building inspector has already condemned.

That emotional foundation is important to the premise. A succession of mysterious structures and ancient entities needs something more immediate to keep the investigation meaningful. The characters' losses supply that connection, while the puzzles give their search a concrete activity. Players chiefly interested in direct action should keep that balance in mind: the appeal here is uncovering and interpreting, with the story providing reasons to care about what the evidence means.

The verdict

Call of the Elder Gods is an appealing prospect for narrative-puzzle fans who want adjustable guidance, intertwined protagonists and a mystery with personal stakes beneath its enormous mythology. Its strongest invitation is to follow curiosity through increasingly improbable places without surrendering the small pleasures of careful observation. Bring an interest in puzzles and a healthy suspicion of university artifacts. The admissions brochure has almost certainly left something out.