The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu Xbox Review

Extraction shooters have exploded over the past couple of years and these days it feels like everyone is making one. With the genre becoming oversaturated, new releases need a unique premise to stand out. That is why I was so excited for The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu.

This new co-op extraction survival game from Nacon is incredibly different from anything else I have played. After spending over 20 hours playing solo and online with friends, I have plenty of thoughts. So, does The Mound successfully escape from Davy Jones’ Locker, or does it succumb to the madness? Well continue reading and let’s find out.

The story is pretty barebones, although you probably aren’t playing The Mound for its narrative. Two ships have disappeared, and you are part of the final expedition attempting to gather enough supplies to escape the realm.

The prologue lasts around three minutes and barely explains anything, but the overall premise is much more enticing. You must explore different locations alone or alongside up to four players, searching for riches while avoiding the creatures and corruption within the forest. You may also encounter missing travellers who have become corrupted.

The setting is one of the game’s most intriguing elements. You rarely see this style of historical expedition combined with Lovecraftian horror, and fitting it into an extraction loop shows plenty of promise.

Before departing, you select objectives from the captain’s table and receive equipment based on your choices. Once inside a location, you must collect idols, forage for supplies, recover valuable equipment or complete objectives such as finding logbooks and rescuing corrupted characters.

Loot is placed inside a caravan that follows your team throughout each expedition. It stores items, provides supplies and allows you to revive downed allies. It is a good concept, but the caravan is incredibly clunky. It can block pathways, turn endlessly on the spot and make accessing its storage unnecessarily frustrating.

Every expedition also has a time limit. The forest initially remains dormant, but if you outstay your welcome, it comes alive and releases all manner of creatures.

Sound plays an important role in survival. Snapping branches, sprinting while wearing heavy armour and firing loud muskets can attract enemies. This creates plenty of tension and forces your team to think strategically while moving through each environment.

The hallucination system is easily one of The Mound’s best features. As the madness takes hold, you begin seeing things that may not actually be there.

Your teammates may suddenly look like enemies, doppelgängers can infiltrate the group, trees appear to move and ghostly figures watch from the distance. You may even vomit up a centipede that subsequently hunts you down.

Friendly fire makes these situations even more intense because attacking what appears to be an enemy could result in you killing a teammate. The fact that different players experience different hallucinations makes communication essential.

If a fallen player isn’t carried back to the caravan, the forest corrupts them. They will then return to hunt their former teammates. I experienced this with random players who didn’t realise I had died, only for my corrupted character to stab them in the back. It is hilarious, gruesome and one of the game’s strongest ideas.

The combat is straightforward but extremely clunky. Weapons include crossbows, muskets, swords and halberds, each with different strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, awkward controls and inconsistent hit detection make fighting more frustrating than it should be.

Aiming with bows and muskets is particularly difficult on a controller. Inventory management also feels designed around a mouse and keyboard, which is even more noticeable when comparing the Xbox version with PC through Xbox Play Anywhere.

Completing objectives rewards you with XP and tokens. Levelling up unlocks perks such as additional inventory slots, while tokens can be used to purchase items and improve equipment. Upgrading equipment is particularly useful because durability can become crucial during longer missions.

Corrupted survivors can also be rescued and unlocked as playable characters. The ultimate objective is to reach the Mound at the centre of the map, where lost ships, treasure and potentially something much more terrifying await.

The Mound supports solo play and four-player crossplay through open, private and solo lobbies. However, this is unquestionably a game designed to be played with other people.

Communication makes navigating the forest, managing hallucinations and dealing with enemies much easier. It also makes the horror more entertaining, especially when a teammate starts screaming because something has jumped out at them.

I would avoid playing solo altogether. You can bring an AI companion, but it is terrible. Your companion regularly gets stuck, becomes separated from you and refuses to help with objectives. Any attempt at stealth is also ruined when the AI automatically attacks an enemy.

This is one of the worst AI teammates I have encountered in recent years. The Mound can be great fun with friends, but playing it alone highlights nearly all of its weaknesses.

Performance on Xbox is extremely rough. Both consoles use an uncapped frame rate without any graphics toggles, but the game rarely maintains anything close to 60 FPS.

The frame rate can suddenly fall into the low teens while exploring fairly basic environments, only to jump back towards 60 FPS in larger areas. Poor textures, severe pop-in and inconsistent performance make the Xbox Series X version feel like a rushed PC port.

However, the Xbox Series S version is significantly worse. The image is extremely blurry and covered in distracting shimmering, while textures frequently lack detail. Despite the severe reduction in visual quality, it still doesn’t achieve consistent performance.

We have seen visually impressive games such as DOOM: The Dark Ages running on the Series S, so the console itself isn’t the problem. The Mound is simply poorly optimised, and I cannot recommend buying it on Series S in its current state.

Unfortunately, the performance problems are joined by a huge collection of bugs. AI characters and teammates can fall through the ground, controls suffer from severe delays, climbing regularly becomes unresponsive and collision issues appear throughout the environments.

I also experienced crashes and low-resolution textures during my time with the game. It is a shame because the extraction loop, hallucination system and Lovecraftian setting provide a fantastic foundation. With friends, there are moments when everything comes together and The Mound feels genuinely unique.

However, those moments are constantly undermined by technical issues, terrible AI and controls that do not feel properly designed for consoles.

The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu has an entertaining gameplay loop, fantastic hallucinations and an impressive amount of tension. Its unusual setting helps it stand apart from other extraction games, and playing with friends can produce some hilarious and terrifying moments.

Unfortunately, it needs significantly more polish. The Xbox performance is poor, the Series S version is particularly bad, solo play is miserable and the sheer number of bugs makes the experience feel unfinished.

There is a great game buried somewhere inside The Mound, but at £35/$40, I cannot recommend it in its current condition.