Call of the Sea: Game Pass first impressions

By Heidi Nicholas,

Call of the Sea is just lovely to look at. That’s likely the first thing you’ll notice: vivid greens, vibrant blues; a medley of colours on a beautiful tropical island filled with the sound of waves and birdsong. Technically, you’re meant to be looking for your missing husband and searching for a cure to your own mysterious illness, but you may very well forget all of that as you stroll through flowers and across sandy beaches. We do have a great wave of titles arriving on Xbox Game Pass throughout December, but you should definitely make some room for Call of the Sea: a first-person puzzle and adventure game, set somewhere in the South Pacific in the early 1930s.

Call of the Sea feels fluid and polished. It’s a mellow game, focusing on that one clear and simple goal: find out what happened to Harry Everheart, the husband of your character, Norah. That one goal translates into neat puzzles to solve and interactive areas for Norah to explore, picking up clues and examining items as she goes. Call of the Sea will likely fit in with whatever gaming mood you’re in: it’s a more chilled experience if you’re completely immersed in a weighty RPG (looking at you, Cyberpunk 2077) but it also offers some challenging puzzles and a deepening mystery which will keep you pushing onwards, determined to solve it. The art style and soundtrack are mesmerising, with pools of flickering light and brightly coloured birds, but for all its loveliness, Call of the Sea soon starts to take on some creepier undertones. Whether it’s the occasional ominous piece of music, the discovery of an ancient secret, or the continuing question of what happened to Harry and his crew, Call of the Sea soon has you second-guessing that idyllic island paradise.

For all its creepiness, however, Call of the Sea still feels like a nice break to play. I’m a few chapters in and everything feels well paced, with the game keeping you moving forward to new areas before you grow too tired of the last one. You’re saved any open-world worries about what treasures you might have missed by the knowledge that you’ll stay in that one area until you’ve solved its puzzles, but despite that, the game doesn’t feel closed in or limited. The icons showing which items you can interact with are small enough that you need to go looking for them, making sure the clues aren’t too obvious, but that does also mean you might miss one or two clues at first and find yourself stuck on one frustrating puzzle. Meanwhile, despite the understandable urgency Norah might feel to find her husband, the puzzles themselves don’t need to be rushed. You can take your time, checking for every clue and taking in the scenery. Norah often chats away to herself as she goes, throwing in some helpful insights and recollections for the player. The voice acting itself is enjoyable to listen to — Norah is voiced by Firewatch’s Cissy Jones — but the dialogue can sometimes feel a little stilted: it’s a bit odd to have Norah telling herself things about her own life that she should probably already know.

The achievements seem nice and generous so far, and you should get most of them as you play through the story. There are a few secret achievements that might be missed without a guide, but the game has a handy chapter select option to ensure you can scoop those up later (as well as a separate achievement for using it.)

Summary

Call of the Sea is a gorgeous adventure game. It might not blow all other entries in the genre out of the water, but a beautiful art style and challenging puzzles will, together with the slowly unfolding mystery and otherworldly spookiness, keep you entertained throughout your playthrough. In other words, if you're feeling undecided on what next to queue up on Xbox Game Pass, we recommend you try out Call of the Sea.

Heidi spent a few hours solving puzzles and investigating a mysterious island, earning seven achievements as she went.

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Xbox Game Pass First Impressions

Written by Heidi Nicholas

Heidi tends to lean towards indie games, RPGs, and open-world games on Xbox, and when not playing Disney Dreamlight Valley, happily installs every new wholesome game that appears on Xbox Game Pass, before diving back into favorites like The Witcher 3. She's looking forward to Age of Mythology Retold, Everwild, Fable, and Avowed on the Xbox horizon. Heidi graduated with an MA in English Literature before joining the TrueAchievements team.