REVIEW | The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu

If you’ve read any of my previous reviews before, you’ll know I am a huge Eldritch Horror fan, with Cthulhu being one of my all time favourite genres of game. Psychological Horror is, and always will be a huge part of my life, and when The Mound came up for review, I jumped at the chance.

On the surface, The Mound looks like it will have everything I could want from a game, a game that borrows ideas from Lethal Company but adds a psychological twist to it, looks gorgeous, and allows me and my friends to get lost in its world. ACE Team have done some good things here, and Nacon is a publisher I am familiar with and whose games I enjoy, but have they done enough to innovate on the ever-growing, and increasingly crowded market that is looter extraction, survival likes?

Things I liked!

• The Music | Sound design is always one of the most important aspects of an Eldritch Horror game, especially one that features a psychosis system. Voices will seemingly come out of nowhere, utilising some very convincing 3D sound, branches will snap in the distance, leaves and wind will bellow in and out of caves altering the sound making you check your surroundings all of the time. At some point, you may even black out and wake up in a totally different area of the map, leaving your teammates wondering where you have gone.
  
  Sound also plays a very important part of the overall game mechanic as well. Holding the G key will allow you to bring up a radial wheel that can summon the cart used to store items, or even whistle to your friends if you get lost. They can respond in kind, allowing you to make your way back to them; the only issue to bear in mind is that creating too much noise draws enemies towards your location.
  
  There is a distinct lack of music, though, in The Mound, and that is okay. They focus more on atmosphere, and I think it works well.

• Psychosis System | The Mound offers a psychosis system in which all the players in the game will undergo some sort of psychosis at some point during the match, and this can have some devastating effects on how you approach the level. For instance, eating too many wild berries or mushrooms to heal yourself can result in you throwing up large centipedes that will then attack; your fellow allies can turn into monsters right in front of your eyes, go invisible, and even duplicate and look normal, letting your guard down entirely. It is a pretty cool visual approach to adding extra twists to the game.
  
  While these things are welcome and do provide some fun to be had, there is one glaring issue that I will talk about below.
  
  
• Gorgeous Graphics | The Mound is a gorgeous game. Characters look fantastic, with specular highlights on skin looking especially good. It is hard to get characters looking right, and thanks to the post processing effects and general lighting, each map looks utterly insane from a graphical standpoint. It is unusual we get these types of survival games with this level of fidelity, and it certainly helps set it apart from what is increasingly becoming a competitive market. The real star of the show is the thick jungle, with some really incredible water shaders.
  
  
• 18 Maps to choose from | There are a ton of maps to unlock, with a total of eighteen across a small series of islands. These can sometimes vary in time of day, and also various locations across already explored maps. Choosing these new areas doesn’t change too much, but it does allow you to get to the other side quicker as a result, and since you have limited time before you must depart for your main ship, it is a good way of exploring each area by focusing on a section at a time. Maps are unlocked by finding log books from previous expeditions. This also helps flesh out the story, which will be explained below.
  
  
• Story Implementation | Once you find a previous expedition’s logbook, it explains what happened to the previous crew, which plays out as a narrated cutscene as you make your way back to the ship. It can sometimes give you an idea of where specific treasures are hiding, and what to expect when heading to that island. This ties into the equipment selection to a degree, as when you select a specific contract to complete, that contract is tied to weapons that you might want to take, and taking flintlocks while it is raining is a bad idea since the wick can’t be lit for the fuse, so it is important to pay attention.
  
  Finally, throughout each map you can find additional lore that explores more around the history of the island, what has been going on and also the enemy types you will go up against. This can sometimes give you useful information so you can better prepare yourself.
  
  

Mixed & disliked!

• Upgrades | I will be the first to say that upgrades feel useless. Each run you go on gives you a different selection of weapons to choose from. This ranges from daggers, swords, lancers, axes, bows, and flintlock rifles and pistols. Each weapon can be upgraded at the anvil on the ship, but weapon upgrades only last for that run specifically and are then taken away from you. This makes upgrading weapons an absolute waste, as weapons largely aren’t much different from the base stat. Enemies can be taken down from behind in one hit, and pistols and rifles should really only be used as a last resort. What I found was spending my coins on items instead, as they offer a much more practical advantage, but this also couples in with treasure finding being easy.

• Just another friend slop game | On the surface, The Mound looks like it will be an interesting multiplayer horror experience, and while it does have some horror elements, it is largely forgotten about quickly due to the insanely short round lengths, simple core gameplay loop, and the fact that it copies almost everything from games we have seen before: Lethal Company, REPO, Content Warning, and even things like Escape the Backrooms. What we have here is a looter extraction game with survival elements.
  
  You choose a contract which says how much treasure you need to secure. You equip yourself with weapons and head out to the island. Once you get there, you search all the corners of the map looking for treasure and avoiding enemies. Each item you find, even food, contributes towards your cart’s total value. Once you have enough, you head back to the ship by extracting via the small boat you arrived on. The treasure is tallied up, and then you are rewarded coins based on how well you do. That is it. We have seen this formula far too many times now, and it is getting increasingly difficult to innovate on this as a result.
  
  
• Treasure finding is easy | As above, we have seen this style of game a lot before. But the issue that I have with The Mound is treasure locations don’t change between runs. For example, after my first run, I went back to the exact same locations as my previous run, and what did I find? Treasure. It doesn’t change, and no matter how many maps you rotate, eventually you will master each one and it will make each run even shorter. There is very little incentive to stay and find extra treasure for more coins for the simple reason of upgrades are pointless, and items will lose their effectiveness when you have enough treasure in the first ten minutes in the run. Since enemies are tied to sound, how long you’ve been on the island, and your actions, you can easily get in, get out, and almost spend no time fighting. It is an incredibly poor design choice, and simple randomisation would have fixed this.
  
  
• Very little variation in missions | As I mentioned earlier, there are eighteen maps to choose from, but many of them offer little variation in design. The biggest issue, though is how ninety-five percent of the missions are just to collect treasure, with some of the missions forcing you to look for log books to unlock those next maps. Maps quickly feel repetitive, as it combines the worst part of treasure finding and walking slowly to the next location.
  
  
• Psychosis System again | As much as I praised the psychosis system earlier, it is important to note that while it starts off being a cool feature that may catch others off guard, voices of your teammates in the game doesn’t change, so a simple “It’s me” solves a lot of the issues of wondering whether this is an enemy in disguise or not. It also doesn’t stop your teammates from emoting, which enemies can’t do, so it is easily proven who is friendly and who is not. While the system doesn’t feel half-baked, one of the best features of the game is also deeply flawed.

• How long did I play the review before publishing? 12 hours
• How long to beat the story? 4 Hours
• How many Achievements did I earn before publishing? 13/25
• How long to get 100%? | 20 hours
• You’ll love this game if you like these | Lethal Company, REPO, Escape the Backrooms

Score: 50/100

The Mound is a graphical masterpiece that is well optimised and tries to innovate in a crowded market of friend-slop games. However, it falls short with its deeply flawed psychosis system, and repetitive treasure hunting that loses all of its charm as a result. The Mound is crying out for random treasure placement that would force players to truly embrace and engage with the world they have built.

Aaron

Gaming is in my blood.  Be it handheld games, Xbox, PC, Switch or Playstation, I am all over it.
I make my own games as part of my profession and love playing co op games with friends in my spare time. Avid dog lover and camper van enthusiast.