Few video games do “the setting itself is a character and wants to kill you” well. We’re accustomed to lethal environments, deadly traps, and spooky locales across a number of genres, yet few developers can crack the literary beauty of a place that feels as relentlessly hostile as the tangible and ethereal horrors it houses. Building such a thing on top of a multiplayer framework becomes even more difficult. It’s not an impossible feat, however, and ACE Team might have found a way to make it work with The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu.
A late May hands-on preview session hosted by Nacon allowed me to experience roughly 90 minutes of online co-op gameplay with other press folks and ACE Team co-founder and designer Andrés Bordeu. A ragtag crew of Spanish conquistadors and people of God assembles aboard a galleon, selecting different contracts and equipment before embarking on fairly simple missions that can go wrong fast. In this game, danger comes in many forms, and physical menaces are the least of your worries.
There’s a refreshing directness to The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu that’s been missing from most co-op horror experiences and shooters since the Left 4 Dead and the first Warhammer: Vermintide days, at least on paper. Progression is apparently a thing, but even when Bordeu teased customisable unlocks and new trinkets and weapons, the entire game seemed built around a rewarding experience over raising ranks and finding all sorts of loot. It’s the sort of approach that’s made massive indie darlings like Phasmophobia possible, yet there’s more happening under the surface here.
Ironically, The Mound is actually about searching for loot in most scenarios, even if you won’t be benefitting from grabbing those riches and only a few lootable items help with survival. H.P. Lovecraft’s novella of the same name – which he penned as a ghostwriter – doesn’t paint the same picture as the game, yet there are common threads that helped shape the game. I’ve always enjoyed a good horror story within a horror story, and The Mound stuck with me when I first read it a few years ago. I wished to learn more about the underground world discovered by Pánfilo de Zamacona y Núñez, and ACE Team’s game might give me exactly that… but not yet.
Our three expeditions – which had varying degrees of success – limited us to the jungly surface, but that doesn’t mean things didn’t get spooky pronto. Tasked with finding gold or any other valuables that helped us reach a very reasonable goal, we limited ourselves to the (already unnerving) shores of the Valdivian forest. Undead conquistador corpses roam the beach littered with chunks of lost galleons, and quick treks into a dense UE5-rendered jungle revealed more distressing remnants of struggles and daring adventurers lost to the wilds. Bordeu underlined the team’s goal was to make ‘the Forest’ our main enemy, and after experiencing several visual and psychological tricks, the developers’ chances of success on that front seem quite high.
“The landscape and territory change depending on the area that you’re visiting,” Bordeu explained. It seems procedural elements, at least for level-generation, aren’t a thing, but looking at how small the part of the map we got to fully explore across three expeditions was, I’d say there’s enough handcrafted level design crammed into what’s going to release in mid-July. The trick here might be the variance enabled by contracts (there’s tens of them, or maybe more than a hundred, according to our casual chat with Bordeu), which range from quick “gold rushes” to more involved expeditions with a set of different objectives.
But of course, The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu’s main strength is how it toys with players like a devious dungeon master. Marketing materials had already teased this, but it’s very different to experience it yourself, especially with one of the devs on your team. For the most part, Bordeu looked out for us – though a games media pal with mic problems was getting lost at times – while explaining many ways in which things can go south even if nothing looks “wrong” at first glance. This is why open mics are the way to go if you’re venturing into the jungle; the in-game proximity chat not just adds to the immersion, it’s how you’re meant to keep track of who’s near you and your surroundings.
In a way, talking through Discord or other VoIP alternatives will be “cheating” in this game. You’re meant to get turned around, lose track of your partners, and be banished from the voice chat if you’re (literally) consumed by the wilderness. It makes for quite memorable moments, such as the aforementioned mic-less team member disappearing and later “returning” as Bordeu warned us not to trust anything that comes out of the forest. After making sure he made gestures an NPC couldn’t, he rejoined the team, but the corner of my eye often caught fleeting glimpses of people just standing there after disappearing for a bit… even if they were still alive, as their real counterparts told me moments later.
Isolation has direct effects on your sanity, and such events ramp up the longer you stay away from the team, which is sometimes necessary in order to cover enough ground quickly. When the night – and something worse – comes, there’s also the option to ring a bell to summon an NPC-driven ox cart which slowly follows the players across open areas. This is a moving “base of operations” of sorts where you can store valuable loot and relics, but it’s also a source of light and relative safety in hostile territory. There’s a particularly smart thing about the “ox cart system”, which is that it also leaves a trail behind that not only indicates the path it’s followed, but can also be traced back to the start of the level. Maps are scarce items and incomplete, and when God knows what is messing with what everyone sees, all help is good.
Perhaps the least convincing element of The Mound so far is its combat system, which might be old-fashioned and button-mashy to a fault. Even if the game isn’t concerned with matters of typical combat progression, skills, and whatnot, it’s 2026 and smacking foes with whatever we could find until they were dead felt primitive considering the devs’ previous work on the Zeno Clash series, if fitting for the intended vibes. Things got particularly confusing when a “boss” entity of sorts ruined our trips twice. It was hard to know whether we were damaging it or we should just leg it, and even when we did, I never understood why and how the chase had ended. Seeing Bordeu just yell and go “I’ll distract it” heroically before vanishing into the night was fun though.
Thankfully, The Mound isn’t meant to be combat-heavy. You’re meant to learn from the environments, try to discern what isn’t real, and make good use of support items, such as salts that can resurrect allies (before the forest uses their bodies) or crucifixes that stun some of the horrors. The enemy AI also seems to support the overarching design, with some of the undead just circling the groups or stalking from afar before running into bushes instead of charging mindlessly into the Spanish invaders. During one of the most stressful situations of the preview, I also got jumped on by a four-legged monster that quickly vanished, and just decided not to even speak of it after I rejoined my comrades. Was it real? Was it not? I’d rather not know, at least at this stage, though I warned everyone about the statue that looked out of place and was actually a spike pit trap my mind had obscured.
A quick Q&A after the session revealed the first details about the planned “endgame”, which will be all about exploring the underworld of K’n-yan teased by the trailers and the novella. There are cylinders which can be kept and “act as keys to unlock the last level,” which, to me, suggests ACE Team has approached it as a raid of sorts you have to really work for and can’t just jump into. Thankfully, progression is shared and not just limited to the host of a co-op session.
Solo play is also supported, but not encouraged, as it makes the game “far more challenging” due to the isolation system I brought up before. However, Bordeu confirmed the team is still tinkering with difficulty ahead of launch, and feedback might push things in different directions. Player-hosted games – with cross-play but no cross-progression – also means The Mound won’t depend on keeping servers alive in the long run like a live service title; theoretically, you’ll be able to just grab a group of friends a few years from now and continue to experience it at your own pace. That said, it was teased there are ideas for additional content if there’s a big enough audience for it.
I must also underline the outstanding Unreal Engine 5-powered work done the visual presentation, which isn’t just detailed, but also dense and reactive in a way that many bigger titles fail to capture. The lighting does a lot of heavy lifting here and stands out instantly, but I was personally enchanted by the smaller touches, like the plants and thick tree branches that bend as you walk through them, often restricting movement. That’s not something that you see very often in video games, and it adds to the immersion in this specific setting. Similarly, facial animations that match the in-game voice chat are another nice touch completely ignored by more expensive endeavours.
Though it’s hard to predict how all these (really interesting) mechanics, systems, and ideas will come together when the full game launches next month, I was impressed by the confidence The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu exudes. Amid all sorts of online games fighting for player attention (and retention), this is the rare “relic” that appears to be content with just doing its own, very specific thing and capturing those who are all about breezy horror experiences that can produce hilarious viral clips. The sombre atmosphere and oppressive tone are there, but the potential for comedy is huge and could give it a major push. Regardless, the pitch is solid and its traditional nature means we shouldn’t pay too much attention to concurrent player counts. We need more of that.
The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu launches on PC (Steam), PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on July 15. You can get all the key release details about it here.
For the latest gaming news, follow GameWatcher on BlueSky, check out our videos on YouTube. We sometimes include affiliate links in our posts, which grants us a small commission, thank you. Please support independent Games Media. ❤️
