Call of the Sea – Think for Your Life.

The Witness is one of the best video game experiences I’ve had in a long time. The puzzles it offers are more addicting than caffeine and sugar cigarettes, which leads me to revere the title in a somewhat toxic way, as most of the left brain has likely died all over the place. the pressure he suffered under the very difficult riddles of Jonathan Blue. What was missing, however, was a contemporary, changing, and moving story to serve as a guide. To fix this bug, a new contender on Xbox and PC, Call of the Sea, comes from the hands of Madrid’s Out of the Blue. Obviously, it doesn’t offer the exorbitant amount of puzzles we saw in The Witness, rather it has a big narrative part. So if I had to choose, I would stick to the latter.

Norah is sick, but really sick. The disease that haunts her can be seen in some strange places on her arms and in the hours she spends in bed, and it could be said with almost absolute certainty that her days are numbered. Will there be an answer as to what disease you have? And is there an effective drug for this disease from the extensive list of remedies that existed in the 1930s? Harry, Norah’s fearless and courageous husband, is motivated to have a successful and happy marriage and ventures into the world in search of a cure.

The weeks and months go by and the letters Harry sent Norah suddenly no longer arrive and some time later she receives a package. The content allows him to travel to an island somewhere in Tahiti despite his chronic illness, and there begins the search for Harry and an effective remedy for the disease that is killing him.

On this exotic and paradise island, Norah begins to follow in the footsteps of Harry and his companions. Everything revolves around reaching the end of the mystery this place hides, which won’t make it easy at all with the many riddles and riddles it contains. The first are relatively simple, like piecing together the pieces of a broken photo or finding codes in nature and introducing them in the most classy way, and meanwhile Norah will speak with the voice of her mind about her relationship with Harry, about how wonderful it is. It was and how much he misses it. I got fully immersed in this soap opera love story by listening to her feelings and watching her smile as she remembered past moments recorded in her head. The story itself is of course not too deep, but thanks to the voice of Cissy Jones, which among other things certainly sounds like Firewatch, everything works perfectly.

In terms of gameplay, Call of the Sea is a pure running simulator but very rough. It is a fact that the slowness with which Norah moves is stressful, but it is also true that it reflects her mood and the atmosphere of the place. The design is very colorful, cheerful and full of details. As this is the first title I am analyzing in Xbox Series X, I have to admit that I am very happy with the graphics that Out of the Blue has developed. Spending a couple of hours on this title after a long weekend with Cyberpunk 2077 has been a pleasure, and I would say it almost became a spiritual retreat for my eyes thanks to the gentle brushstrokes and relaxed atmosphere the studio created is.

In the section related to the puzzles, I really wanted to solve them as quickly as possible to advance further in the story, so I jumped lightning fast to the parts related to the instructions with the same illusion as a kid in the bar area of ​​Mallorca in August, and most of the time I loved these puzzles. The level of difficulty obviously increases gradually, and the truth is that sometimes my brain almost melts when asked to tune an organ or put strange symbols together to create new words, for example. When you get stuck in any part of the game, when you are completely disconnected from the game in total frustration and try again the next day, when the batteries are charged and ready to destroy those puzzles, this is a wonderful feeling I can remember without Doubt remember those days in the 90s and 2000s when he was nothing more than a child who was stuck in the riddles of Prince of Persia and Final Fantasy X for weeks, among other things. I have to say that I don’t really like the fact that the main Call of Seas challenges are organized in such a way that you keep going back to the different parts of the tracks (and all of it slowly, remember). In general, however, the puzzles in Call of the Sea are well-made, fun, and sometimes very challenging.

After playing 8 hours, most of which disappeared in a couple of lengthy puzzles, I was able to complete the story with Norah and see the credits for a very good ending. and full of emotions. Lovecraft’s literature was a great source of inspiration for this title, but yes, aside from the more melancholy and tense parts as the study carried out a more animated interpretation that fits perfectly with the mystery of the life that lived with the protagonist. There are times when you feel that communication between the members of the expedition whose trail Norah is following is through lost notes she finds, and sometimes it also happens that the voice actress’ tone does not match that Despair, fear, and insecurity that obviously surrounds Norah because of the situation she is in.

All of this cut me off a bit, but it doesn’t mean it’s a bad quality title as it is a very, very good job. You can perfectly see the body telling you to keep moving forward in the game, so as soon as I left my job at Gothenburg Shipyard, I almost ran home to play and finally find out what’s around Harry’s Head to Tahiti this week and finally write this analysis.