Ah, it’s been a wee while since we’ve had a Lovecraft game worth looking at, and today’s demo, Dyer Expedition, is based on the classic At the Mountains of Madness. After a group of scientists/explorers set off on an expedition into the unknown, never to return, you’re the one-man-army search party that pulls the short straw in locating them. Where have they gone, Benidorm? The Algarve? They went out to get milk? No, they’ve gone to bloody Antarctica.
After freezing one’s bollocks off, you arrive at camp in its abandoned, low-poly presentation and on the hunt for any clues to where everyone is. As one might surmise, as a Lovecraft reader, the ship that the crew arrived on was called the Arkham. No, nothing to do with Bats, but a running theme for Howard, and we’re all doomed.
With nowt much to look at, it becomes clear you need to get through a locked gate, but where is the key? It’s kind of obvious, but there’s no option to see an inventory or any tool tips on how to interact. Ah, you can’t dig at the snow willy-nilly – you need a tool. With that solved, we enter an ominous cave, and rather than saying sod it, getting back on the boat and going home, you dive deeper into an unquantifiable structure underground. What the devil is going on?!
The puzzles in Dyer Expedition are limited, but equally baffling. I winged the first two and then was able to solve the next. There isn’t much going on in the demo, but it creates a decent presence and has as much potential as Cold Abyss: Director’s Cut, only with much less narrative or cutscenes. How do you get to play this? Hop on over to Steam to play the demo.
