Call of the Sea

Review

Call of the Sea is a unique story-driven, puzzle-adventure experience. Call of the Sea’s world revolves around Norah Everhart and her journey to uncover the truth behind her husband’s expedition to an uncharted island.

As the Call of the Sea’s story progresses, Norah will discover more about herself, her incurable illness, the mysteries of the island, and her husband’s unfortunate expedition.

Plot: its 1934, and Norah Everhart is on a voyage to meet her husband, Henry. Norah is very excited; it has been a while since Henry left on his expedition.

Henry’s expedition was of great importance to him; Norah is unwell, and her symptoms are getting worst day by day. He is optimistic that he will find some sort of answer to cure his beloved Norah.

Shortly after the captain called, “Miss Norah, we have arrived,” Norah ventures out alone to reunite with her beloved. But to her dismay, she finds an abandoned camp, with no clue about the whereabouts of Henry and/or the crew.

Something has surely gone wrong, as a letter and a note from Henry indicate. Hoping that Henry and his team are all right, Norah decides to move inland. As she starts to move inland, she’s blown away by the island's beauty; she discovers local manmade structures, temples, puzzles, and complex mechanisms.

As Norah progresses through the island, she discovers more and more about the mysterious island and how all this is related to her illness. She discovers a black substance, which Henry is calling black OoZe.

Henry can’t really explain what this substance is.  It is surely something magical, or even evil; the doctor interacted with this black OoZe, and he soon perished, as did the others.

She starts to uncover all the mysteries and the fate of the expedition.

Norah finds notes, drawings, and letters by Henry and the other crew members, which lead her to the answer, puzzle by puzzle, piece by piece.

Henry was right all along! He knew he would find something of great importance here, something that would surely save his beloved, even if he would need to sacrifice it all.

Gameplay: The gameplay of Call of the Sea greatly compliments the amazing and creative story of the game. The gameplay is simple and effective and allows the player to take his/her time to explore the beautiful island and all its features.

The basic WASD is slow and elegant, although it felt annoyingly slow sometimes when I was done exploring a particular area, or if I was revisiting it, which you have to do often in this game.

The game also features a diary, which logs Norah’s adventure, her discoveries, and important details throughout the game.

Norah also draws down clues as she discovers or goes through new areas, which later play an important role in solving the puzzles.

Discovery and problem-solving play the most important role in this game. The game insists that the players go through every area to explore, collect clues, drawdown important details, and find notes and letters from the expedition.

However, there’s really not much to explore.  The playable area seems large (it certainly gives that impression), whereas in actuality, you play through a limited area.  Finding clues and puzzle pieces is easy, which in the case of this game, is good and done very well.

Voice acting and narration: Both voice-overs for Norah and Henry were very well done and gave the story a great flavor.  So did the narrations by Norah, which were consistently happening throughout the game, and at no point of my playthrough did I think that it was getting too repetitive or boring. Kudos to the actors who played these roles for doing a great job.

Puzzles: Now let us get to the main course, the puzzles. Call of the Sea nailed it when it comes to puzzles, in my opinion; the game features a good balance of difficulty.

Puzzles don’t have to be stupidly difficult to be enjoyable; well-balanced, well-placed and a good variety of puzzles has a far better outreach. And Call of the Sea did just that!

The game features a good number and a good variety of puzzles, and each is well-designed and well-placed. Some were easy to solve yet hard to get clues from, while some were hard to solve and needed some close attention to figure out.  What they all have in common is that they are not too difficult to solve, and are very rewarding for those who like to explore the world and discover all the details, both in the open and hidden.

What did make the puzzles a bit tedious or annoying is the fact that the movement speed is rather slow, and you have to explore and revisit multiple locations to gets clues or discover all the hidden details.

World design: Absolutely gorgeous world design, full of different elements, colors, regions, structures, and many more.

I loved it how the devs designed and divided the island into regions with minor changes at a time, rather than just throwing the player right into a unique region without any transition. The slow buildup of different elements before transitioning into a brand new area or region is much appreciated.

Music and sound effects: A very well-put-together song features at the end of in this game; I absolutely love it! And it’s performed by the same actors who play Norah and Henry; they did a great job with the performance and gave the game an excellent touch.

As did the sound effects and background ambient noises. Right from the get-go, I was stunned to hear how well they implemented all those sound effects and ambient noises without getting in the way of narrations.

Considering all aspects of the game, Call of the Sea turned out to be a great indie title with a great touching story, voiced by a couple of talented actors, set on a beautiful island, with some great sound effects work.

However, I must mention some minor issues that I faced with the performance; although the game is not that demanding, it felt quite sluggish at times, with minor lags.

Review written by BiteMexD for Zeepond.com!