Call of the Sea — Comfort in Challenge
When it comes to puzzle games, I’m a bit of an enigma. I love them: I love their design, I love their various aesthetics, I love the soundscape, I love how the puzzles themselves are made and presented, I love the thrill of solving a puzzle and progressing. Myst, Quern, The Room, The Guest, I love them all. But, on the flip side, I am a flaming, raging fool, like, 98% of my waking hours. So, naturally, these two truths come into conflict quite a bit.
It’s been a minute since I haven’t been eviscerated by my beloved puzzle genre. It’s been a minute more since I haven’t felt the constant need to spam a help button, or have a walkthrough pulled upon another device. Call of the Sea, developed by Out of the Blue, helps me ride along those extremes: challenging me with its conundrums, but giving me all the in-game tools I need to solve them. All the while, it hits of everything else I already love about the genre, while giving my that fleeting sense of accomplishment that eludes my smooth-brained tendencies.
Call of the Sea presents a simple mystery right off the bat: in the early 1930s, Norah, the main character, suffers from a mysterious illness, and her husband has left to go Figure It Out™ on some mysterious island. Norah gives chase to the island in question after he seemingly disappears in his efforts, and players control her efforts from then-on.
Visually, Call’s art design and entire aesthetic is beautiful; soft, vibrant, and lush in everything it presents, from the tropical beaches and forests to the rocky caves, both natural and dug-through. The animation style is far from photo-realistic (almost an expectation of other puzzle games), but it serves to its benefit. The simple beauty of a sandy beach, a blooming grove, or the remains of its inhabitants would all be lost on a more uncanny presentation. Call of the Sea shows us a space that we would more easily remember in our memories, not accurate to the last pixel, but still as beautiful as we could remember it. As more and more is uncovered, and Norah dives deeper into her quest, that beautiful art style also gives way to more unsettling vibes, magnifying the simpler elements that put us off-kilter the most. Formless silhouettes in the distances, abandoned campsites, and ephemeral dreamscapes are made all the more unnerving by the art design.
Where it can’t visually, the game evokes all the intrigue and mystery through its soundscape: musically (composed by Eduardo de la Iglesia) and through Norah’s monologuing (voiced by Cissy Jones). The music moves on a spectrum, between awe and wonder at the natural beauty, to ominous foreboding at what has transpired throughout. All the while, Norah’s inner-monologue is presented beautifully, giving us a character who, in her own coming-to-grips with things, conveys the story more directly than other games of its time. Like, I appreciate how games embrace the mechanic of lore and stuff, but sometimes, it’s nice to just be taken by the hand and told what’s going on. But aside from serving as a player-lens, Norah’s monologuing conveys her, as her own character. It’s a glimpse into her thoughts, what she’s struggled with, what she’s excited to rise to, what she’s nervous about confronting. Norah is a character, despite being a constant presence, that I never tired of hearing from.
Those are all well and good, but what hooked me hardest into Call of the Sea was its design choices: it respects the player’s skill level and their time, but still seeks to challenge them.
The conundrums are presented in a sort of puzzle box: puzzles, individual and larger-scale, are all confined to self-contained chapters. Anything that Norah overcame in a previous chapter is left in that previous chapter, no bearing on the future obstacles. Where other games might have players running back and forth to an obscure clue or location, Call of the Sea operates on a smaller, more manageable scale, and is more accessible and rewarding for it. For all the mystery puzzle games usually present, there is something inherently satisfying about the screen fading to black and fading in on an entirely new chapter. It’s concrete progress, and it feels good.
Each of these chapter-based puzzle boxes have all the information needed to solve them within their biome; once players discover and interact with the vital clues, Norah will keep track of it in her journal. Keeping with that sense of flow and forward-momentum, a chapter’s notes rarely take up more than an open-faced book’s worth of pages: two pages, side-by-side, with everything players could need to solve the puzzles before them. The sense of progress comes in as the notes and images shrink in size; more information requires a tighter page economy. Regardless, the information is still easily referenced at a glance. Call of the Sea puts a set of dots in the world, lets the player loose to find them, and tells them to find a way to connect all those dots. It works perfectly, balancing pacing and challenge in a way so rarely attained in the puzzle genre.
Of course, what keeps players coming back and pushing forward is the overarching mystery and story. There isn’t a mysterious “how did I get here, how do I get home” intro like most puzzle games lean on, Norah is here with a reason. From the get-go, we learn that 1.) Norah suffers from chronic nightmares, 2.) Norah suffers from a strange disease, and 3.) Norah’s husband has left to (hopefully) find the means to solve the latter, and Norah is now looking for him. In fact, a far worse title for Call of the Sea could’ve been What’s Up with Norah? What’s up with Norah’s nightmares? What’s up with Norah’s disease? What’s up with Norah’s husband and his expedition? It leads with these mysteries, and, in brilliant pacing, peppers insight and breadcrumbs for all of them all throughout its playthrough. There’s no digging for the truth, or poring over lore, it’s all presented like a straightforward story…and in no way does that diminish that story’s impact.
If you’re looking to start playing puzzle games, Call of the Sea is one of the best starting blocks I’ve found. If you’re more seasoned, riddle me these: do you wish Myst felt a little less lonely, and a bit more colorful? Do you wish Quern would stay in one, manageable lane for longer than it does? Do you wish you weren’t constantly taunted by the Hint button in The Room? Do you want to be told a story that’s straightforward, but no less emotional? Call of the Sea is the perfect response, just as much a feast for the eyes and ears as it is a gripping narrative, equal parts challenging and reasonable, resoundingly satisfying the whole way through. Anyone who enjoys puzzles, and the joy of solving them, could do worse than Call of the Sea’s mysterious getaway.
All images captured in-game.
