The essence of The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu as a co-op survival horror game is best captured by a moment where I was yelling at my friend repeatedly asking what the hell he was laughing about before being brutally murdered. You see, this was not my friend at all, but a Faceless One using his character model and repeatedly playing back his recorded laughter from earlier in the match. But when it comes to making me feel like I've lost my mind, The Mound’s clever madness effects sometimes take a backseat to ruthless difficulty that doesn't always respect my time or make it easy to bring in new allies.

It took more than 50 expeditions and around 50 hours of scouring the beautiful Chilean wilderness to unbury all the secrets of The Mound's rich, mid-1600s setting. You and your friends take on the role of conquistadors ignoring every possible warning of danger to enrich themselves and the Spanish crown while avoiding the restless dead and trespassing on strange tombs to alien gods. As far as capturing the vibes of the Cthulhu mythos, developer ACE Team has done a fantastic job.

Of course, when I hear "Lovecraft" and "Conquistadors" in the same sentence, I immediately see the potential for a twisted kind of synergy between them we could maybe call "Advanced Racism." And for the most part, Omen of Cthulhu threads this needle pretty well, as many of the more recent adaptations of Lovecraft's work have also sought to do. The Mapuche indigenous to this region in real life are mentioned multiple times in the story, and very clearly aren't conflated with the strange cultists of the Elder Gods who live deeper in the jungle.

I would have liked to see a bit more of the Mapuche, and there's still the implication that the New World is an untamed wilderness of nightmares and dark magic, which plays into some colonial tropes. But it's certainly better than the original Lovecraft version of the story. The tale of The Mound and the secrets that lie beneath it are told in effective journal entries with great voice acting, too. I very much enjoyed discovering what was going on little-by-little, and the late game reveals are dramatic and satisfying.

Mortal Peril

Across 18 detailed maps that interconnect into a single large world (though you can only access one section at a time), you go forth on contracts that come with a goal, a potential reward, and a set amount of gear based on how many players are coming along, up to a max of four. I think this way of handling equipment is quite clever. Often there aren't enough weapons for everyone, for example, so you have to decide who in the party is going to be responsible for combat, who's going to hold the lantern in dark areas, and who might simply leave their inventory slots empty to carry more loot. It also makes you try out different equipment and not fall into the rut of bringing the same gear every time.

I ran into an issue with the way contracts work after about 20 hours, though, in that the random assortment offered seems to scale with the character level of the server host. That meant that if I wanted to bring a new friend in who hadn't played before, I might be totally out of Basic and even Medium-difficulty contracts to ease them into things. I appreciate that, in similar co-op horror games like Phasmophobia, I can farm the newbie missions over and over for resources and pick difficulty settings friendly to the allies I've invited along. Especially considering The Mound can be incredibly punishing even on Basic expeditions.

The group I've been playing with is an experienced co-op crew too, with hundreds of hours together in games like Phasmophobia, Lethal Company, Abiotic Factor, and Valheim. We're no greenhorns. And we all came to the conclusion pretty quickly that, to put it bluntly, The Mound is really freaking hard. Some of this can be mitigated by learning how specific mechanics work. For example, there's a timer on most expeditions that we found doesn't really matter at all, and it's much more important to move quietly so as not to upset the deadlier creatures of the forest.
But even when we felt we were doing everything right, sometimes the number and deadliness of enemies simply scales way too quickly to provide a satisfying challenge without feeling overwhelming. When it's four of us against a dozen zombies and there's no room to sneak past or go around, even on the lowest difficulty, what exactly are we supposed to do? And that's assuming you even have Basic contracts left in the ledger to attempt.

The absolute worst are portal missions, which leave you without the usual ox cart to carry your stuff and require you to navigate a modified version of the map covered in purple goo that will kill you instantly if you stand in it for what feels like about three seconds, which then also prevents your friends from getting close enough to revive you. I can't recall ever having a good time on one of these missions, and eventually tried to avoid them whenever possible. We often found ourselves asking after seven or eight failed expeditions if this was really the intended experience or if we were missing some key mechanic that would make it feel fair, and it seems like the answer is the former.

The problem is not so much that Advanced and Legendary missions are really difficult. They should be! I want to have something to strive for. But more that there aren't enough options to tailor the difficulty to your group or mood. The floor is too high. That said, I should mention that there was a fairly big patch about a day before this review went live that tweaked the difficulty, among other things, but it arrived so late that I haven't been able to put that through extensive testing yet. However, it doesn’t seem to be wildly different after a couple expeditions.

Army of Darkness

There is some meta progression between contracts to ease the pressure, but most character levels simply unlock new knife skins that are purely cosmetic. Buying or upgrading gear ahead of a tough map is a nice option, but since you lose all those extras and upgrades on death, it's very easy to fail an Advanced or Legendary contract a few times, wind up broke, and not really have any way to go scrounge up some quick cash in calmer waters before trying again.

It's a shame, because when The Mound isn't being overly oppressive, the tense combat and horror elements work really well together. The variety of enemies is impressive, drawing from the deep corners of the Cthulhu mythos and going all the way from the simplest creepy possessed humans up to some very weird, reality-bending horrors that might not even be possible to kill, making your party navigate around them in specific and clever ways. Resource management is key, and the variable value of treasure leads to thrilling decisions in cases where you're not sure if you've picked up enough to meet your quota yet, but the jungle is getting angry.

It's also difficult to recommend The Mound if you want to play solo. It will spawn an NPC companion to help you out somewhat, but they're not as competent as a human ally, and trying to complete contracts on your own can be a serious trial even though the number of enemies is scaled down a bit. “The co-op game is better in co-op” isn’t exactly a shock, but since they give you the option to fly solo, it’s worth noting all the same.