Chronicle of Innsmouth: Mountains of Madness Reviews

I, like most of the other players of this game, was unable to continue playing as I could only hear audio near the beginning of the same, while seeing a black screen. Three years after the release of this game, and the developer still has not fixed the issue. I have uninstalled the game and will want a refund.

I would love to give this game a better review, but it is not playable as it is. There are certain sections of the game that seem to transfer to a more drawn picture rather than pixel bit, however on my computer all I get is a black screen. Looking at the community hub for the game there has been calls for this to be addressed for YEARS and the devs have done nothing. I cannot play a game where I cannot see half the content. Its a real pity

I generally don't give reviews after 20 minutes, but here we are... Graphical/UI issues that have been prevalent for certain users for years are still here. Within the first 20 minutes I had to ctr/alt/tab to get out of the game when it just went to a black background with the music still going. Also, my PC mouse cursor is still in the middle of the screen and can't be moved when the game starts, and is replaced by the game cursor. HUGELY distracting. The robotic voice acting was a major turn off as well. These issues are really disappointing based on how good the first game was in the series. Maybe in the future if these issues are fixed I'll re-purchase the game. As of now, I'm waiting for a refund. (Glad I submitted it within Steam's ridiculous 14 day refund policy)

Game does not work on AMD. Broken for 3 years devs ignored it. A shame the first game was good Lovecraft.

I hate to say it, but I did not enjoy this. I'm a fairly diehard Lovecraft fan, and even then I was pretty bored. Story was meh, puzzles were meh to infuriating (with one taking ~40 nearly identical phone calls to complete), the art was on the low end of good, voice acting with ok to poor. About half way through the game it switches gears into really exposition heavy text scrawls that shatter the show-don't-tell rule and kind of abandons the whole purpose of playing a game. It's not a "bad game" per se, but I just didn't enjoy it at all.

I was drawn to this game by its visuals and retro charm. I expected an intriguing detective story with supernatural elements. However, the game is pretty much a complete letdown. The story is dull, as are the characters and the dialogue. I didn't grow to care about any of the characters, and sometimes they would yammer on for what seemed like ages. The scenes, although beautifully drawn, are desolate with very little to do. Plenty of objects can be clicked on, giving only boring responses in the vein of 'I can't do that.'. Such wasted potential. This is, at best, an amateurish effort. I'm sure a certain amount of time and effort went into making it and I don't want to diminish that, but to be honest, I would only be somewhat impressed by the game if this were a free title. If you can manage to get it in a sale for a couple of euros, and you are drawn to Lovecraftian themes, then sure, try it. Yikes.

While it can be rough in places (voice acting being the most egregious), I thoroughly enjoyed the journey. The P&C gameplay was perfectly serviceable, and I personally really liked the comic style art and cutscenes. Its obviously made by a very small team but the fact that its also a labor of love is just as obvious. Its also a huge step forward from the previous game, which I also liked but Mountains of Madness is so much better in just about every way. It also takes a great deal more liberty with the events of various stories than its predecessor, making for a unique work of fiction set in the same Lovecraftian universe rather than a straightforward retelling of At the Mountains of Madness. Its a perfectly good game, and I'm sure anyone with a passing interest could enjoy it. However this is where I have to go off the rails a little and say that as someone very invested in cosmic horror and R'lyehean lore, almost every detail from names, to locations, to key items is 100% deliberate. You don't need to catch every reference to enjoy this game for what it is, but its something I found absolutely delightful. It stands alone as a narrative but is also an endless basket of Easter eggs. You can tell this was made by someone who really knows and understands the reference material, and I give it an enthusiastic 8 out of... ten... tacles. I'll see myself out now.

Short review: Buy this game if you are a fan of HP Lovecraft and adventure games, and if this game is on sale. Less Short Review: I truly wanted to give a good review to this game, because Psychodev are obviously a small team with love for the Cthulhu mythos, but the underlying adventure game is just too rough around the edges. Pros: - You get to play as several interesting characters, including the classic down-on-his luck PI, HP Lovecraft himself, and Abdul Alhazred, original author of the necronomicon. - For fans of the mythos, many characters, stories and concepts are played upon quite well. Cons: - The underlying adventure game has a few good puzzles, but a lot are not satisfying to solve and a few are frustrating, tedious, and require a lot of back and forth. - Average voice acting - In my case, two game breaking bugs that made me lose all progress from the last manual save (and the autosave never actually saved my game...) So in summary: if you want your Cthulhu fix, go check out Reign of the Old Ones, and for good puzzles try out The Room.

Masterpiece? Nah. It's a good adventure game, though. The artwork is really good, the voice acting is not so good. Everyone pronounces everything differently and it really started to get annoying by the end of the game. It's like they gave the voice actors scripts without any pronunciation notes and they all recorded independently. The storytelling was good, solid Lovecraft fare. Took me about 4 hours to finish. The price point might be asking too much for the content that's there. Wait for a sale unless you're a die-hard Lovecraft fan.

[h1][b][u]BottomLine at the Top:[/u][/b][/h1] One of the better attempts at brining the world of Lovecraft to P&C gaming. Excellent graphics but can feel light on gameplay and relies heavily on exposition at times. [h1][b][u]Intro:[/u][/b][/h1] I think I'll start by asking a philosophical question to you my dear reader: can any idea be brought to all forms of media? We know that [i]some[/i] can. Star Wars for instance has pretty much all of 'em: movies, tv, books, games, painting, sculpture, music, etc. I'm sure you can think of more than a few other franchises yourself. But my original question is can [i]any[/i] ? The reason I ask is that the Cthulhu mythos seems to do best in the world of literature but most attempts at bringing a true representation to any other contemporary media has faced difficulty. At best, bits and pieces of its themes and ideas have certainly been used in various movies/tv shows/video games. I have played pretty much all of the big Cthulhu mythos P&C games (including this developers original title Chronicle of Innsmouth which was great), spanning some 30+ years. This is one of the better ones, however at the end of the day I think a true title that really hits the nail on the squid-faced monsters head still eludes us. ------------------------------------- [h1][b][u]Pros:[/u][/b][/h1] ------------------------------------- -Impressive mastery of retro P&C style. Excellent artwork and backgrounds. Sprite design is mostly fantastic. -Also has some nicely drawn comic book style cutscenes. -Fully Voiced -Good background music with original score. (Credit sequence has a rockin’ metal ending!) -Interactivity highlight function -Has some 90 odd save slots, greatly appreciated and nice to see for once in a 21st century P&C game! -Tutorial for those new to the genre. ------------------------------------- [h1][b][u]Meh...:[/u][/b][/h1] ------------------------------------- -Nice to see an option for a classic text style, however the scaling is too large and it takes up too much of the screen during long dialogues. -Voice audio could use some volume balancing. Recording quality varies slightly at times. -Voice acting itself is also mostly good but can be hit or miss at times as well. -Double click scene exit sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. -Near ending elevator puzzle brought back memories of Star Trek: Final Unity. If you've played that game and have fond memories of doing so but also remember the puzzle I am referring too here, then you know why this is in the Meh category. -Dialogue is stiff at times. Couldn't tell if this was to emulate early 20th century speaking prose or was due to a once over by a rigid proofreader. -After reaching the ending in about 4.5 hours I only got about 66% of the Steam achievements. I'm not a big achievement guy so I most likely won't be going back for full completion. For some this might be tedious issue. ------------------------------------- [h1][b][u]Cons:[/u][/b][/h1] ------------------------------------- -So my main con can be summed up with a question: is this a game or an audiobook? This game feels like one exposition dump after another, starting with a rather long intro. To me, this is a no-no in making a good P&C game. Good P&C's should feel immersive and require constant interaction between the game and the player. Every time a game pauses for an overly long cutscene or dialogue sequence, forcing the player to just sit back and listen, breaks that immersion. You'll notice in my question I said game or [i]audiobook[/i]. If you have these long expositional transitions but there is still some action going on screen (i.e. actual animation) then it turns into something more like watching a movie or an interactive fiction game. But if you literally are just reading text that is being displayed on screen with a black background, now your just an audiobook. Like most modern P&C's from independent studios this is a Kickstarter game which means limited budget. I still don't give it a pass on this faux pas, but I at least understand why they went that route (assuming it was due to budgetary constraints). At the end of the day they did release a finished game which is more than a lot of Kickstarters can say. -I've said it before and I'll say it again, I understand that I as a P&C afficionado owe a debt of gratitude to the Adventure Game System (AGS) game engine. It basically is responsible for the modern P&C renaissance. But WHY OH GOD WHY after 20+ years do we still have this AGS setup screen at the beginning of some games that use it?!?! I don't know and don't care about the various scaling options, which MIDI source, or how large a sprite cache to pick. Do I want to activate the setting to use a 60hz CRT monitor? NO! How about language selection, do I want "English" or perhaps "English2" (this is an actual setting choice btw). I barely know one English (just look at my writing) and I've been speaking it my whole damn life. Just. Start. The. Game. It is 2021, there is no retro pixel P&C game in existence that will bog down even the lamest new computers out there. This is an unnecessary thing to have and every time I see it, it irks me. -I'm now exhausted from that last heading so I will make this one brief but I could easily go into a pointless diatribe about it as well. Save features should always be available at any point during any game, full stop. What if I gotta go see what the dogs barking at? Or I want something to eat? Or my boss is looking over my shoulder? Or I gotta take a S***? Now I have to exit and then re-play something I already did. Granted in this game that would only be at most a few minutes of replay in most cases, but life is short. Just have save always available plz thanks. [h1][b][u]Final Thoughts:[/u][/b][/h1] Rereading the above I feel that I am being tough on this game. I want to reiterate that it will def hit the spot for the P&C aficionado and Lovecraft enthusiast. If you want to support a developer that was passionate about their project and you have the financial means to do so, buy it at full price. This game as of writing is rarely on sale but I did manage to catch it for a 10% discount. I'm not mad at the price I paid for this, but I'd have been happier if some of the issues I listed were delt with. 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