Ace Team take Lovecraft's novella to 17th century South America
Seeking relief from the terrible light of the Xbox resettification, I fall into the sweet, dank embrace of The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu, a 17th century extraction game in which four crucifix-wielding, musket-toting Spanish explorers venture to a jungle full of creatures inspired by Lovecraftian horror. Why would they set foot in such an awful place? For loot, of course. Why else do Europeans travel to other countries?
I confess, I've not paid much attention to The Mound, hitherto – there are a lot of Lovecraft adaptations, many of them pretty abysmal – but that was before I realised that it's the work of Ace Team, developers of Zeno Clash, The Eternal Cylinder and Clash: Artefacts of Chaos. Aside from being a terrific studio, Ace Team are based in Chile, a culture that has seen more than its fair share of Spanish conquistadors. I'm interested to see what they do with this particular setting. I'm also interested to see what they do with Lovecraft, whose presentation of people and spaces beyond North America and Europe could charitably be described as "a wee bit biggoty".
The Mound is actually the name of a Lovecraft novella. The original book is set in 1920s Oklahoma, so copious liberties are evident even before you get to all the sexy chat of mission tiers and XP. Here is how it works: you start on a galleon owned by an avaricious Captain, whom I suspect of harbouring tentacles somewhere about his person. Each mission sees you rowing to the mainland and searching for treasure, while running errands such as rescuing stranded sailors and gathering Dihuene mushrooms for the evening repast.
Then it all goes wrong. People start puking up centipedes. The dead walk. Giant bats get all up in your grill. Worse, your senses begin to betray you. You'll take a swing at a lunging horror and realise you've just murdered the expedition's priest. The sky rains blood. Layouts glitch, with some players seeing spike pits where others detect solid ground. The gaps between certain trees become somewhat... detached from the rest of the environment. Dreadful wrigglebeasts appear from behind one trunk and disappear behind the next, like Cheshire Cats decked in demon spaghetti.
The jungle broadly consists of open-ended areas and trashed colonial forts that serve as spawn points, once you've acquired their logbooks. Somewhere at the heart of it all lies the Mound, source of the greatest plunder. Fark me, I'm not going in there. I'm just here to pick mushrooms. The vibe and handling at large put me in mind of Left 4 Dead – in place of Valve's auld AI director, the jungle itself is framed as a sleeping presence. Sooner or later, all your blundering and thrashing is going to wake it up.
You can find a demo for The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu on Steam – the full game launches on 15th July. If absolutely nothing else, this should give good munster. Ace Team have created some amazing grotesques. One big question is whether the project can weather the decline of publishers Nacon, who filed for bankruptcy in February.