The dynamic at the heart of extraction shooters is so well suited to horror that it’s kind of amazing that most of the genre’s foundational works have taken either a sci-fi or militaristic bent, rather than an explicitly supernatural one.

After all, one of the main conditions imposed by these games is that you’re always left to fend for yourself in a hostile environment, with barely any resources, barely any direction, and barely any lifelines to call upon, which might as well be the storefront page description for every Resident Evil released to date.

In addition to this, the titles will also have you forging shaky alliances with strangers, who are liable to desert or outright double-cross you the second that these temporary pacts cease to be advantageous; a quintessential trope of zombie movies and many other subdivisions of horror. And then there’s the high-stakes proposition that’s inherent to the genre, whereby all the valuables you retrieve out on a mission could be lost forever if you don’t manage to exfiltrate in a safe and timely manner. Again, petrifying.

Honestly, one of the most nerve-wracking experiences you can have in multiplayer gaming these days is trying to haul ass to the cargo elevator in Arc Raiders while you’ve got an inventory full of precious loot and everything’s on the line. The way your heart races as you nervously scan the horizon for threats, try to suss out the intentions of other players who could be enviously eyeing your plunder, take calculated risks, and wait on tenterhooks for your escape route to open is identical to the biological response you have when being chased by, say, a drill-wielding lunatic in The Outlast Trials. The only thing that’s different is the cause of fear and what you’re afraid to lose. That, and the fact that enemies in Arc don’t tend to have their genitals brazenly flapping around when trying to kill you (although it can never be guaranteed with some of the weirdos that populate online lobbies).

It’s therefore mindboggling that, out of all the biggest names in the extraction shooter space right now (Escape from Tarkov, Delta Force and this year’s Marathon), only Hunt: Showdown engages with horror themes directly. Even then, it’s kind of its own thing and doesn’t quite tick all of the genre’s boxes.

Enter The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu. The latest from Chilean developers ACE Team, this new contender brings a bounty of fresh ideas to the table, but its most significant innovation to the extraction shooter formula is how it embraces horror with open arms. And it’s a match made in heaven. Or in the depths of some eldritch, unfathomable nightmare, depending on how you look at it.

Fortune and Glory

As you may be able to figure out from the subtle clues in its title, The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu is firmly situated in the H. P. Lovecraft universe. The game’s press notes adorably claim that this puts it in the company of about a hundred other releases that have similarly embedded themselves in the cult author’s public domain oeuvre. Which actually seems like a conservative estimate, unless they meant to say: “a hundred other releases from this year” (see Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss, The Sinking City 2, Cosmic Fear and The Necromancer’s Tale).

I truly believe there’s a danger that we are fast approaching the saturation point for Lovecraftian media. The appeal of these things is supposed to lie in the horror of the unknown, yet by now we’re as acquainted with Deep Ones, Shoggoths and Yith as we are with our 9-to-5 work colleagues. And they provoke a comparable feeling of ambivalent disdain. I, for one, cover Lovecraft adaptations so often that my word processor has gone from not recognising the spelling of Cthulhu to predictively writing out The Great Dreamer’s terrible name whenever my finger so much as glides over the “C” key.

At least ACE Team are taking inspiration from lesser-known and lesser-mined source material here. Loosely based on the novella of the same name (or at least the story within that story), The Mound transports you not to the well-trodden mountains of madness, the overdone sunken city of R’lyeh or the familiar streets of Arkham, but instead to the untamed wilds of the Americas.

Taking place during the so-called “Age of Discovery”, it casts you in the role of a Spanish conquistador embarking on a perilous voyage across the New World. Following the trail of an ill-fated expedition that went missing somewhere south of the equator, you’re on the search for riches that are beyond human imagining. Of course, this being the Cthulhu mythos, the only things beyond human imagining that you’re bound to find here are ancient sinister forces and ghastly abominations unfit for mortal gaze.

You see, this lost continent you’re charting is not an especially hospitable one. The further inland you go, the less inclined anyone with the vaguest of self-preservation instincts would be to hang around. Impossibly thick canopy blots out the sun, chattering whispers emanate from the treeline, the desecrated corpses of your fallen brethren litter the ground, and the forest itself starts to play tricks on your mind. Not to mention, the local fauna just keeps getting bigger and meaner.

Alas, the myriad treasures of these accursed lands are too tantalizing to abandon, and so it’s up to a few courageous (or perhaps certifiable) explorers to brave this tropical hell and bring back some booty. For God, for gold, and for Spain.

Into the Heart of Darkness

In gameplay terms, this maps rather neatly onto the standard extraction shooter format. Every day starts with you waking aboard your galleon, the Tempestad, from which you can interact with members of the crew — both NPCs and co-op partners — customise certain aspects of your loadout, trade resources, and eventually pick your next quest.

When it comes to the latter, you’ll sign a contract stipulating the required objectives you agree to complete, as well as the starting gear that you’ll get to take with you. Conditions for payment can range from you needing to bring in a certain quota of goods to rescuing survivors from other ships or acquiring logbooks that will help you edge closer to the overarching goal of finding that previous expedition.

Once you’ve signed on the dotted line, you’ll then choose a place to make landfall (effectively your map for the coming session) and head out on a skiff with your party of firebrand comrades. Upon arrival, you’ll be met with gorgeously rendered, handcrafted environments that are ripe for exploration and, with minimal direction, are then left to your own devices as you strive to meet the terms of your selected contract. Nine times out of ten, this means scavenging for loot and bringing it back to the Tempestad without falling victim to the unutterable terrors that lurk in the underbrush.

Speaking of which, threats here can take on both a physical and metaphysical form. There’s certainly no shortage of ferocious beasties that call the region home, including giant insects, betentacled freaks, strange quadrupeds that look like panthers from an alien world, and congealed knots of maggots that have lumped together into some kind of perverse mockery of human anatomy. However, the much more insidious scourge is the one that inexorably worms its way into your head, causing you to hallucinate startling images, luring you into traps with false promises of fortune, and even leaving you unable to discern friend from foe. So, lush vistas aside, it’s not really a place where you’ll want to take up a timeshare!

The equipment you’re loaned by the quartermaster can help to keep the evil at bay for a time (there are muskets, crossbows, spears, rapier swords, crucifixes, and darkness-expelling lanterns). Still, there’s only so long you can push your luck and hope to endure the innumerable attacks before you just have to call it quits.

It’s then that the agonising retreat to the rowboat begins, as you try to lug your haul back to the starting point, usually with depleted survival resources. Should you successfully navigate the labyrinthine jungle and its many perils in one piece, then you’ll be escorted to your galleon and taken to the captain’s quarters, whereupon the client will assess whether you’ve fulfilled your end of the bargain or not.

New World, New Ideas

When divorced from its theming, the basic mission structure of Omen of Cthulhu isn’t too dissimilar from what we’re used to with Arc Raiders or Escape from Tarkov. Yet the execution is impressive, particularly for such a small development studio, and there are clever touches throughout to make the whole thing feel fresh and unique.

Almost every mechanic is filtered through the prism of either cosmic horror or seventeenth-century monasticism, leading to some ingenious twists on well-worn conventions. Case in point, you’re accompanied on expeditions by a rickety ox-drawn cart that acts as both a mobile storage unit and a lifesaving waypoint (its monk driver can blow a horn to summon scattered party members back to the same location, while a pierced bag of grain at its rear leaves behind a breadcrumb-like trail that ensures you never get too lost).

Another neat period detail is how the flintlock pistol is prone to malfunctioning in the rain, making it a bit of a gamble to pack said firearm when there’s a perfectly dependable bow & arrow available. The consequences of bad weather can be abated, however, by yet another one of ACE Team’s nifty ideas. Before heading out into the bush, you have an opportunity to dedicate your expedition to one of several patron saints, each of whom will grant different boons and blessings, including one who, yes, can quell that pesky precipitation. It’s a cool bit of flavouring that adds an extra layer of strategy to proceedings, as well as replay value for when the public matchmaking inevitably has you going through certain levels again and again.

Taking a cue from Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, the game also toys with your perception in some smartly meta ways. For instance, if your character ends up succumbing to madness, then you may start seeing flies buzzing around your periphery and landing on the screen — in a way that I’m ashamed to admit had me batting at my laptop display on at least two occasions — while your auditory senses can be simultaneously deceived by misleading directional sounds piped in through the headset. Should you really lose your grip on what’s real and what’s not, then it can even escalate to the point where you begin confusing teammates for hostiles (and vice versa) thanks to fiendish hallucinations.

That last part makes for an inventive twist on the every-man-for-himself dynamic at the heart of a typical extraction shooter. You’re always encouraged to maintain a healthy level of distrust in other players when competing in these things. Normally, that’s because they have sufficient motivation to gun you down and rob your stuff, but here you’re all supposed to be on the same side, and everyone’s contributions go in the exact same pot. So, there’s no rational reason to turn on each other.

However, if you can’t be 100% sure what your teammates think is happening in their immediate vicinity, or if they even are your teammates to begin with, then it creates a scenario reminiscent of John Carpenter’s The Thing. The reassuring logic of “safety in numbers” goes entirely out the window and you’ll not want to let anybody out of your sight for too long, lest they come back crazed or, worse, are supplanted by some monstrous imposter intent on sabotaging your crusade.

Misery Loves Company

On that note, multiplayer — and to a certain extent, multiplayer with strangers — really is the best way to experience The Mound.

At its core, it is built around the unreplicable interplay between reactive, hard-to-predict meatbags. Not only does this mean that there’s palpable tension whenever suspicions do arise amongst the group, and everyone’s furtively clutching to their weapons, but it’s equally electric when you manage to strike up an effective rapport with someone and just blast through contract after contract.

If the team doesn’t click, then the run can turn into a brutal war of attrition that affords next to no breathing room, as the RNG throws dozens upon dozens of enemy mobs at you, inflicts devastating bleed damage that drains your HP at an alarming rate, and relentlessly bombards you with compounding sanity effects. When a never-ending string of calamities befalls you like this, and you’ve got no one in your corner, you start to feel like the beleaguered protagonist of Beau Is Afraid during that movie’s absurd opening sequence.

Conversely, if you’re paired up with someone who actually communicates, shares the gear fairly, pulls their weight in finding treasures, and covers you when you’ve got your hands full, you can really turn the tables on the forces of darkness here. And it’s immensely satisfying to pull off, because it’s almost like you’re standing up to a school bully who’s overdue some comeuppance.

During our review stint, we played a couple of matches with someone who didn’t have a mic and, though we never exchanged so much as a whisper, we instinctively knew how to support one another. Before long, we settled into a beautiful, wordless routine whereby one of us would throw an axe to stun a zombie and the other would sneak up behind it for a close-quarters finisher. We don’t know their name. We never heard their voice. And yet we will forever cherish our time together as a supremely efficient monster-slaying duo.

By comparison, solo play is less invigorating. It’s technically possible, as a single bot will stand in for human players if you elect to go it alone. However, they’re a very poor substitution, and you can only rely on them so far. At best, they’ll dispatch a couple of creatures and sporadically lob junk into the ox cart.

Yet as you discover new areas deeper in the jungle, where the odds are increasingly stacked against you, it becomes a frankly unsustainable way of playing. The A.I. doesn’t show any urgency when you need to get somewhere quick, it often fails to collect items (including health and ammo that it desperately needs), there’s a bizarre tendency for it to go wandering off so that it can aimlessly hack away at foliage for a bit, and it’s of no use whatsoever when you’re in that climactic mad dash to the extraction point.

We similarly found ourselves getting a little peeved at the ox cart driver NPC as well, with their annoying habit of blocking the path to key areas and absentmindedly wedging us into positions from which we were unable to break free. Again, if you’re playing with another person, there’s a chance they could potentially coax the A.I. out of these tricky spots and liberate you from the impasse. Otherwise, it’s tantamount to a game over.

Better Run Through the Jungle

In all fairness, you’re not going to have a flat-out bad time if you end up soloing in Omen of Cthulhu. Just a more punishing, drawn-out one.

Indeed, whether you’re a solitary wolf, part of a tight-knit friendship group, or a social butterfly eager to spread their wings, there’ll be thrills aplenty here. That’s because ACE Team absolutely nail the fundamentals of both genres they’re combining.

For a start, the game is a real looker, with richly detailed environments, convincingly humid weather effects and pleasingly crunchy gore (obliterating a zombie’s skull into a glorious shower of pulp and bone never loses its novelty). Furthermore, the levels are as thoughtfully designed as in any good horror game — with the developers wisely abstaining from the use of procedural generation — while the first-person combat is slick and responsive, the stealth deliberate and nail-biting, and the island atmosphere so vivid you’ll find yourself perspiring within minutes.

It all comes together for a superlative offering that’s perhaps the most pulse-pounding extraction shooter we’ve played to date. Making a beeline for the rowboat as horrendous shrieks echo through the rainforest, and stygian darkness conceals how many monstrosities are on your tail, is one of the scariest experiences we’ve had all year. When you’re out of ammo, out of health, out of friends, and clinging to cargo that only slows your gait, there’s a tangible sense of panic that very few horror titles can elicit. I don’t remember the last time a game had me breaking into a sweat, but whenever I had everything to lose and something terrible breathing down my neck here, I got legitimately anxious.

Of course, if you do manage to exfiltrate, then it’s a triumphant moment deserving of an air punch. Or so one might assume. However, The Mound has one last devious mind game up its sleeve before you can confidently kick your feet up and take pride in a job well done. A post-match debrief in the captain’s quarters will put you at the mercy of a snivelling appraiser, who looks over your bounty piece by piece and tallies up its cumulative worth to see if you’ve been able to meet the agreed quota. It’s a final bit of jeopardy at the finish line that makes a prospective victory all the sweeter, and a prospective defeat all the bitterer.

Rest assured, though, that your efforts aren’t necessarily in vain if you don’t hit the requisite value target. Sure, you forgo the XP payment (which earns character upgrades like increased inventory space), but there are still other ways to make lasting progress. Certain artifacts that you collect, for instance, will be permanently added to the stocks of the Tempestad merchant, while any deer carcasses you bring back from hunting will go towards improving the effectiveness of consumables. Should you happen across a logbook, then you’ll also unlock brand-new areas of the world to explore, with brand-new creatures, brand-new treasures, and brand-new opportunities.

It’s thus rare that you come away from an expedition completely empty-handed. There’s still a sense of peril when you’re out in the wilds, as death doesn’t lose its sting, but these small wins help you feel like you’re making meaningful headway and give you the encouragement to stick with it.

And we really do see ourselves sticking with The Mound for the long haul. With its clever innovations, intriguing world-building, finely tuned co-op mechanics, and exhilarating risk-reward stakes, we believe this one has got a promising shelf-life and could emerge as a serious rival to some of the biggest names in both the extraction shooter and cooperative horror genres. Even the stupid lemming bots can’t bring it down.

Review code provided by publisher. The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu releases on PC  via Steam, PlayStation 5, and the Xbox Series on July 15.