Samantha Nelson

Call of Cthulhu

The Escapist

June 25, 2019

Unscored

There’s a portion of The Sinking City where Reed must don an old timey diving suit to follow in the footsteps of an ill-fated deep sea expedition. While walking across the ocean floor I witnessed a massive cephalopod drifting by. Reed’s declining sanity bar let me know that it was hurting him to look at the creature, but it was too beautiful to look away. I had the same response in general to playing The Sinking City. There’s so much wonderful potential in this game that its flaws are all the more maddening. I wished that it had followed Call of Cthulhu in abandoning combat altogether and just used its larger space and considerably more nuanced investigation system to tell a great story. But it seems I’ll have to keep waiting for the perfect Lovecraft game.