Adventure Corner ~ Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss
Welcome to Adventure Corner, a column where members of the RPGamer staff can give their thoughts, impressions, and pseudo-reviews for various adventure titles that don't come under our usual coverage. Adventure Corner is aimed at delivering opinions on a wide range of titles, including visual novels, point-and-click adventures, investigative mysteries, and so forth.
In this edition of the column, we take a look at Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss, a Lovecraftian horror-themed investigative mystery that sees Noah Williams descend into the abyssal depths of the ocean to investigate occult activity and the cyclopean ruins of R'lyeh.
Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Release Date: 04.16.2026
Publisher: NACON
Developer: Big Bad Wolf
Official Site
Lovecraftian horror has a storied century-long history, with a deep and unique mythos centered on stark raving madness on a cosmic scale, a bleak view of humanity, skepticism of technological progress, and forbidden knowledge. Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss looks to capture all these elements and does so quite adeptly. Its presentation, narrative, and gameplay evoke terror and unease, offering an array of puzzles that, for the most part, are very well-designed. Unfortunately, widespread performance issues and bugs hamper an otherwise intriguing spiral of cosmic insanity.
Cthulhu opens with protagonist Noah Williams and his colleague Elsa floating down a flooded river to a dilapidated house, where they’re looking for their missing partner, Mei, who has mysteriously gone off the grid and suddenly abandoned her post at Miskatonic University. Noah, Elsa, and Mei are all agents of a group called Ancile, which investigates occult activity, and upon exploration of the house, it’s obvious that Mei has become severely obsessed with some truly odd and dangerous occult elements. After Noah finds alienlike tentacles in the basement, he opens a portal to a strange cosmic dimension and gets sucked in, with Elsa following shortly thereafter. There, they find Mei, who has become insane and violent, and she attacks both Noah and Elsa. While Noah barely escapes with his life, Elsa remains trapped inside.
After some months have passed and Noah has recovered, he and Ancile decide to investigate billionaire Andrew Marsh, the CEO of Ocean-I, a deep-sea helium mining corporation. Like Mei, Marsh has also disappeared without a trace, and evidence in Mei's house strongly connects Marsh to the occult. Hoping that the connection provides a way to reunite with Elsa, Noah adventures down to the abyssal depths of the ocean to investigate the abandoned deep-sea station.
[caption id="attachment_188207" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Ocean-I's abandoned mining station, trailing into the depths.[/caption]
Cthulhu ’s story is executed quite well, with a lot of detail, mystery, and unsettling moments. There is a layered use of and clear passion for Lovecraftian staples and mythos, such as Miskatonic University and deities and creatures like Azathoth and Dagon, making it clear that the developers did their homework. Cthulhu also manages to stand out from typical Lovecraftian fare by layering in pertinent modern themes and issues, including the power and influence of billionaires as well as the looming threat of climate change and resource shortages, the latter of which is a motivating factor for Ocean-I’s efforts. While some of the late game’s mythos can feel a bit overwhelming with all that is thrown at players, it always manages to remain compelling and, more importantly, terrifying, with a real sense of dread and unease throughout the whole adventure.
Cthulhu ’s gameplay focuses on interacting with the environment, investigating objects and their associated clues, and making deductions to solve mysteries. Noah is partnered with his AI assistant, Key, who compiles information and provides an interactive interface known as the Archive, where players can organize clues on a grid. Players are also able to pin clues, connect pieces of information, and use the analyze function to reveal more information about an object’s constitution or traits. For example, batteries might be constituted of lithium and potassium hydroxide or helium and potassium hydroxide. Each of these elements has an associated frequency, which Noah can assign to his sonar, allowing him to ping the environment to reveal objects with the same frequency. Some objects have multiple frequencies, and Noah’s sonar serves as the basis for environmental exploration.
To keep things balanced and encourage prudent, thoughtful gameplay, Cthulhu uses a currency called Energy, with each analyzed object costing one unit. Glowing lichen in the environment allows Noah to refill his Energy, but players must carefully choose which items to analyze, as running out of Energy and continuing to analyze haphazardly causes Noah’s corruption to grow. Corruption degrades and eventually destroys Noah’s Evolutions, assignable traits that expand his investigative abilities, either by increasing Energy gain or augmenting his sonar. Corruption can increase or decrease depending on the player’s story choices, which offer low- and high-corruption routes in most chapters, further shaping how the plot and ending unfold.
[caption id="attachment_188208" align="aligncenter" width="640"] The Archive makes connecting clues and deducing information seamless.[/caption]
Cthulhu ’s design does an outstanding job of providing a well-designed user interface. The Archive makes clue organization and management feel seamless and rewarding, especially given the density of Cthulhu ’s mysteries and, later, their complexity . Being able to analyze previously obtained clues from the Archive’s interface is a huge plus, allowing players to weigh the importance of information and wait until their Energy is sufficient before committing to a decision. Environmental exploration is strong as well, but fares a bit weaker, as interfacing with some objects in the environment can be a bit tricky, and Noah can only hold onto four objects at a time, which occasionally necessitates extra backtracking. While the game does an adequate job at rewarding exploration by increasing Noah’s abilities, Evolutions can only be altered when obtaining a new one, making it difficult to experiment very often with this feature and leaving it feeling somewhat redundant.
While the narrative and gameplay underpinnings of Cthulhu are incredibly solid and fascinating, unfortunately, the review build offered is unstable and rife with glitches, bugs, and crashes, which severely detracts from the experience. Often, when using the sonar in the environment, the frame rate absolutely craters, especially if there are many objects with identical frequencies on the screen at once or if there are too many clues in the Archive. This is worse in chapters with more interactables, sometimes causing crashes. Other issues include audio degrading or cutting out, visual oddities, brief freezing, and objects becoming non-interactable, including once before the game’s final cutscene, which absolutely kills momentum and tension when a reset becomes necessary.
Performance issues aside, Cthulhu ’s visual presentation, especially its art direction, is fantastic, particularly in environmental design. The undersea Ocean-I outpost and underwater areas feel oppressive, suffocating, and lonely, and the cosmic city of R’lyeh Noah finds himself within has some harrowing, terrifying, and spectacular architectural design. There’s an otherworldly cosmic atmosphere throughout, with plenty of star and space motifs and visceral slime, tentacles, and other gooey substances laced across the buildings and monuments. While some of the game’s human models, facial capture, and lip synching look a bit rough, the visual presentation is, minus a handful of rough textures here and there, excellent and distinct, making great use of Unreal Engine 5’s capabilities.
[caption id="attachment_188209" align="aligncenter" width="640"] The bizarre, mythical city of R'lyeh, where Cthulhu looms...[/caption]
The music is another standout feature, with a full, robust orchestral score that amplifies the dread and cosmic terror. Environmental music rumbles with eerie, oppressive strings and woodwinds, building unease and tension very well. The voice cast is mostly okay, although Jua Amir Tutein turns in a solid performance as Noah, and Émilie Rault shines strongly as Key, giving a very firm and reassuring performance that soothes the game’s otherwise constant and heavy anxiety. Unfortunately, this is one of the elements most affected by performance issues, and the audio implementation leaves much to be desired, with music often cueing at the wrong time or voice acting cutting out during key story segments.
As a full package, Cthulhu offers a well-presented and engaging mystery thriller that fans of Lovecraftian mythos or horror are sure to enjoy, though it also caters well to adventure game fans with its solid gameplay systems and well-designed mysteries. Unfortunately, the performance issues in the review build make it somewhat tough to recommend unless they are ironed out. With a little more polish, this could be a standout adventure title, but RPGamers should ideally wait for potential fixes before considering diving into the cosmic abyss.
Disclosure: This article is based on a free copy of the game provided by the publisher.
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