Gibbous: A Cthulhu Adventure Review

It is hard to imagine a world without the influence of H.P. Lovecraft. Even as his xenophobia makes it tough to revisit his stories, the mind-bending nature of cosmic horror would be drastically different without him. It’s why Cthulhu is so common in games. Hell, The Sinking City came out this year and that’s also inspired by the author’s most popular works. While that was more of a clean-cut approach to Lovecraft’s style, today’s game goes for the comedic route with Gibbous - A Cthulhu Adventure. Whether or not that comedy hits is a different story.

Gibbous, like many of the stories it references, involves cultists attempting to summon a chaotic deity to the world. The only people that can stop them are a librarian named Buzz Kerwan in possession of the Necronomicon, a stereotypical private eye (literally) named Don R. Ketype, and Kerwan’s pet cat (creatively named Kitteh) who can now talk thanks to the dreaded tome. This leads the three on an adventure from America to Transvlvania and beyond as the world gets closer and closer to destruction whilst various cults butt heads. It’s fine as a narrative, but it flounders with its main tones of comedy and horror. It’s neither funny enough to be a skilled comedy nor scary enough to be a skilled horror. That doesn’t mean it’s horrendous at what it does, it’s just okay in a market full of okay games.

It’s at its funniest when it shows the contrast of the old-fashioned approach to Lovecraft stories with modern tech. This is best shown in its portrayal of Transylvania, being both traditional and with incredibly fast wifi. It’s also one of the few games that has levels in Romania without egregious stereotypes. Since Gibbous is made by Romanian company Stuck in Attic, any jokes made about the country are more playful than what you’d usually see.

Where Gibbous is most unstable is its voice acting. While some performers know their way around a mic, such as Lindsay Peck as Kitteh or that guest appearance by The Witcher’s Doug Cockle, others aren’t as skilled. Some actors get into character fine, others feel a bit forced. The audio can also get too hot, making it clear they’re a bit too close to the mic or the volume was edited to be louder post production. It’s not always there, but it’s common enough to be noticeable.

This is a game clearly inspired by the Monkey Island series, so much so that their voodoo character is modeled after Tim Schafer. That love is more often distracting rather than charming. It does make efforts to differentiate from the titles that inspired it, but it makes the game feel derivative rather than an homage. It lessens later in the game, but that first impression lingers. I love “Never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game” as much as the next guy, but the nature of mentioning such classic lines reminds you of the game’s problems.

As an old-school adventure game, Gibbous follows the formula to a T. You point, you click, and you solve puzzles to progress the narrative. That isn’t to say it adds nothing whatsoever. Like the Monkey Island remake, you can highlight interactable objects in a level and remove the need to go on a pixel hunt. This level of accessibility is heightened by two additional mechanics: your cat’s ability to use her cat-like reflexes and a later ability to hear the past from objects in the world. Both of these are useful for puzzles and world-building, so they aren’t extraneous.

The accessibility of these mechanics do raise another issue, namely the game’s lack of difficulty. While an easy game isn’t necessarily a problem, it is when it makes puzzle-solving unengaging. Most puzzles are remarkably straightforward. If you know your way around point-and-click games, Gibbous will be a cakewalk compared to its forefathers. It leaves the game in a weird place where it’s for people fond of old adventure games that are also inexperienced with them. There was one puzzle that appropriately wracked my brain, but a single puzzle doesn’t make an adventure game exceptional.

Performance & Graphics

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Minimum System Requirements:

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system

• OS: Microsoft Windows XP(SP2+)/Vista/7/8/8.1 (64-bit)

• Processor: 2,5 GHz Intel Core i3 or AMD Athlon

• Memory: 4 GB RAM

• Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB

• DirectX: Version 9.0c

• Storage: 20 GB available space

• Additional Notes: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system

Recommended System Requirements:

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system

• OS: Microsoft Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit)

• Processor: Intel Core i5-3470, 3.20GHz or AMD FX-6300, 3.5Ghz

• Memory: 8 GB RAM

• Graphics: nVIDIA GeForce GTX 660, 2 GB or AMD Radeon HD 7870, 2 GB

• DirectX: Version 11

• Storage: 20 GB available space

• Additional Notes: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system

The one thing people will talk about most with Gibbous is its art style. Having an aesthetic akin to games like Discworld II, Full Throttle or Curse of Monkey Island, Gibbous has a cartoony world that’s vibrant even with its darker palette. There’s a real fluidity to the animation. So fluid that it’s probably the only game that looks better in-game compared to its cutscenes. That fluidity also translates to the game proper. There’s a crispness to the UI that properly modernizes the genre. It also runs smoothly, making for a game without crashes and stutters in my experience. Even with my concerns with the game’s design, I was definitely charmed by how Gibbous looked.