Last Updated on Aug 4, 2026 @ 17:34:33 PM.
The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu is a unique experience. I say this knowing full well it’s a co-op ‘looter shooter’ in the same vein as bigger games like Arc Raiders, Destiny and so on, but it’s set in a medieval, 16th century time period, and you’re a pirate that is pillaging an island from the safety of your ship. It has resemblanes to the genre without fully being of that genre, and it both helps and hinders it.
Hot off the heels of another pirate adventure in Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, I was happy to continue on in that vein with this, even if it was in a new genre with a much lower budget and team. For what it’s worth, I love myself an extraction looter shooter, and the premise of The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu interested me no end. Did it land for me? Sort of?
The idea of a game where you and your friends interpret the same environment, items, areas and even one another differently is so incredibly different and unique to the general idea of a looter shooter that I was sold as soon as I heard about it. See an enemy walking up to you? Well that’s not actually an enemy, no, that’s your friend coming to heal you. You don’t see that though, you see this corrupted, twisted, demon like thing coming towards you and naturally, you’re going to want to kill it. And that’s what happened, multiple times.
That’s not where the hallucinations stop though. And that’s exactly what’s happening. The island you’re looting is messing with you, making you see stuff that isn’t there, or is there, but differently. And your friends are all hallucinating different things, or hallucinating at different times. Sometimes they see reality, sometimes they don’t. All of this is happening while you’re trying to explore an island with no map, no real indication of where to go, or what to do, and attempting to get out alive. Spoiler, you won’t always get out alive.
Upon starting up a new mission, of which there are two types, getting a lot of items or one specific item, you’ll be transported to a new location and tasked with extracting with loot. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Before you deploy, you’ll get to pick up a selection of starting items, from healing items to weapons, and then you’ll load up and land on a beach, or in the middle of a dense jungle, ready to get going. These weapons are obviously very much of the time, with Flintlock Pistols and Muskets being front and centre, a variety of swords and knives, and even a bow and arrow. However, it must be said now, the combat in The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu is rough. It’s hard to hit your targets and honestly during my time, I found it more frustrating than I did rewarding. Maybe this is intentional, but it resulted in way too many deaths than I’d like to admit, and in a game where sometimes everything is out to get you, it’s noticeable, frustrating and in need of patching. I just couldn’t enjoy it, and it felt like an oversight by the devs.
However, the combat may be bad, but there was a lot to make up for it. Exploring each of the many locations is incredibly rewarding. While the items you’re looking for are pretty nondescript, from meat to weapons and armor, or well-hidden metal idols, you’ll have heaps of fun trying to find your way around the map, avoiding enemies, calling out instructions to your teammates, including those that actually aren’t your teammates, and trying to rush back to the boat before the timer for the island messing with you drops to zero. That’s when the hallucinations start and the difficulty ramps right up. That was endlessly fun every time, and just as the combat caused a lot of irritating deaths, the hallucinations caused a lot of fun ones. Killing, or being killed by a teammate never stopped being hilarious in a ‘this is ridiculous and I don’t know how this corpse is so damaging’ kind of way, because it always twigged too late. I cannot emphasize enough, the hallucinations are the absolute bread and butter of this game, and something the developers need to focus on (after fixing combat), and pushing it as far as they can.
Graphics and audio wise, it’s a mixed bag. The jungles are pretty immersive in the way they’ve been created, and the little touches are nice. Whether it’s something buzzing around in the distance, or the branches of a tree slowing you down as you try to rush from the dense foliage, you’ll feel like you’ve actually been transported into the horrors you’re witnessing. The weapons, which take up a chunk of the first-person experience, are quite rough, as are the carryable items, character models and some of the enemies. If I had to choose which way round I’d have it though, I’d always take an immersive environment with some (at times) genuinely unnerving and unsettling audio, than top notch character models and a terrible environment.
As with other games in the same genre, half of the battle is getting the loot, the other half is getting it out, and that could not be truer than for The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu. Once you’ve found the particular item, or hit the value threshold set by the Captain on the ship before you started this particular mission, (and be loading up the nice Priest on an Ox that follows you and stores all your loot), you’ll want to book it back to the ship. With the looting usually taking longer than the time it takes for the Island to unleash all hell on you, this can be far more problematic than you might expect, with a huge variety of enemy, and different enemy types, heading your way, hallucinations messing with you, and a slower than you’d like Ox cart that you wish you could push to speed it up. It is, and was, chaos, every time we’d try and extract. It was chaotic, fun, stressful and regularly resulted in mission failure, but it never got annoying. It’s a gameplay loop that is remarkably simple, yet very well executed.
If you manage to extract, you’ll end up on the ship again, levelled up from the experience of the loot you stole, able to purchase new items that can make your next voyage simpler, and one more pillaging trip closer to actually visiting The Mound itself. I won’t spoil anything on that, enjoy it for yourself.
So yeah, The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu is fun. It’s rough-around-the-edges and may have benefitted from a little more polish where the combat is concerned, but immersion, gameplay loop, and all-around experience are great. It’s one of 2026’s best experiences with friends, for sure, if for no other reason than the carnage that ensues from hallucinating all manner of different horrors to your friends.
The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu
Summary
The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu is a looter shooter with a difference, and one it makes work. The hallucinations mechanic is one of my favourite of the year, and playing it with friends really drives that home. Whether you get on with the combat or not is up in the air, and very much down to how forgiving you can be of the clunky, almost janky execution, but the atmosphere, immersion and all-round entire experience is definitely something you’ll want to get involved with your friends on a Friday night.
HOURS PLAYED: 14
PLAYED ON: PS5
- Immersive, with little touches that really add to the experience.
- The hallucinations are top notch. Not over the top but well implemented, you're constantly questioning what's in front of you.
- Poor combat. Clunky and hard work.
The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu is available now on PlayStation 5, XBOX Series X|S, and PC.
For your next read, check out our review of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, or our Lassen’s Loop review where you make the music.
Thumb Wars reviews every game based upon the structure of our review policy, and every review is on OpenCritic.
Luke Addison is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Thumb Wars. Having previously been a part of multiple outlets over the years, including building an entire gaming team from nothing to something, he thought it best to forge his own path and answer only to himself. As likely to be found playing the latest game as he is in the kitchen relaxing (by cooking), he always brings the same bold and brash attitude to everything he does, with a heavy leaning on sarcasm and dry wit!
