Call of the Elder Gods is a first-person narrative puzzle adventure from Out of the Blue Games, published by Kwalee and released on May 12, 2026 for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2. It's a sequel to Call of the Sea, but I didn't know that at the time I played it. The game landed on Xbox Game Pass on day one with Play Anywhere support, and I played it on PC through Xbox PC.
Is Call of the Elder Gods a Sequel to Call of the Sea?
Yes. Call of the Elder Gods continues the story of Harry Everhart, whose wife Norah Everhart was the lead character in Call of the Sea back in 2020. Harry opens this game still living with what happened to Norah, and an early flashback puts the player back in Norah's shoes during a Christmas scavenger hunt at Everhart Manor.
The game gives enough context that the Norah thread makes sense without having played the first game, in fact I didn't even know it was a sequel at that point. I had no problem following it, even if it was supposed to tie to the first game.
Call of the Elder Gods Gameplay: Switching Between Harry and Evangeline
The core loop carries straight over from Call of the Sea. Each area is built around looking at everything, picking up objects, reading documents, and working out how the pieces connect. There's no combat, and progress comes entirely from understanding what's in front of you.
The big change is a second protagonist. The game swaps between Harry Everhart and Evangeline Drayton, and the larger puzzles are split across both of them, sometimes across different points in time. A clue Evangeline finds in one place can be the missing piece Harry needs somewhere else, which makes the bigger solutions feel like an actual investigation instead of a lock with one key sitting next to it.
Everything important gets logged in the journal, which can be pulled up at any point to recheck symbols, notes, and sketches. It was especially helpful when things I wouldn't have guessed were clues were added to the notebook automatically.
Call of the Elder Gods Puzzles and Hint Settings
Most puzzles in Call of the Elder Gods are built from the environment itself. Murals, carved symbols, artifacts, and old research notes all feed into solutions, and the multi-part puzzles often pull in information found much earlier in a chapter. Trial and error rarely gets anywhere, the game wants the player to actually read the room.
Difficulty is adjustable. Hints, interaction icons, and automatic journal entries can each be toggled on or off, so anyone who wants to keep their own notes and solve everything cold can strip the help away entirely.
This thing looks important
Call of the Elder Gods Story Summary
Spoilers for the main story follow.
Prologue: Miskatonic University
The story opens at Miskatonic University. Evangeline Drayton is a student having impossible dreams about an artifact that was dug up a decade earlier. Professor Harry Everhart keeps seeing shadows move at the edges of his vision and is going through therapy sessions with a strange old man. During one of those sessions Harry thinks back to his last Christmas with Norah, and that memory plays out as a short Norah chapter. Harry eventually invites Evangeline to meet him at Everhart Manor.
Chapter 1: Everhart Manor
Evangeline arrives at Everhart Manor and Harry is nowhere to be found. Working through the manor's puzzles leads her to Harry lying unconscious next to the remains of a statuette he destroyed, with a strange black liquid oozing out of it. Harry wakes up just in time for Evangeline to stop him from touching it. It also becomes clear that a mysterious organization is after Harry.
Chapter 2: The Virginia Caves
Harry and Evangeline head into caves in Virginia looking for more of the statuettes, which pushes the mystery well past one cursed object in a professor's house.
Chapter 3: The Starry Wisdom Society
Harry has to infiltrate the headquarters of the Starry Wisdom, the cult pulled straight from Lovecraft, to find Evangeline. Getting to her means solving a chain of riddles inside the society's own building. This was the hardest part of the game. You have to go through multiple offices and figure out everyone's names, their code names, their god, and which role they play. At first I thought I was doing good, but still was stumped so I looked it up. I was nowhere near correct, almost everything I thought was right was wrong, really wrong.
Spitzbergen and the Search for Pnakotus
The pair later reach a radio station in Spitzbergen, where they discover something far more sinister is going on. While escaping a Polyp, Evangeline makes contact with the Great Engineer and learns major secrets about herself. She then has to work out the present-day coordinates for Pnakotus, and when Harry and Evangeline set that course on a spaceship, things don't go the way either of them expects.
Who Is Evangeline Drayton in Call of the Elder Gods?
Evangeline Drayton is the new protagonist introduced in Call of the Elder Gods. She's a Miskatonic University student whose dreams about an artifact uncovered 10 years earlier pull her toward Harry Everhart. Like Harry, she's searching for the truth about a missing loved one, and the further the story goes, the more it becomes clear her dreams aren't random. Her conversation with the Great Engineer late in the game reframes who she is and why she was dragged into this in the first place.
Harry Everhart in Call of the Elder Gods
Harry Everhart was the missing husband Norah spent all of Call of the Sea trying to find. In Call of the Elder Gods he's a professor at Miskatonic, still grieving Norah, seeing things he can't explain, and trying to keep it together through therapy that's clearly not as normal as it looks. His academic background makes him the one who reads the old texts and decodes the history, while a shadowy organization hunting him keeps the pressure on from the first chapter.
The Shadow Out of Time: The Lovecraft Story Behind Call of the Elder Gods
Call of the Elder Gods is inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Out of Time. In that story, a Miskatonic University professor named Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee loses five years of his life to what looks like amnesia, only to learn his mind was swapped with a member of the Great Race of Yith, beings who send their minds across time to study other eras.
A lot of the game's biggest names come straight from that source. Pnakotus is the Great Race's ancient city, which Lovecraft buried under the Australian desert, and that explains why the game ends up in the outback. The flying polyps are the creatures the Great Race fought in the story. The Starry Wisdom cult comes from a different Lovecraft story, The Haunter of the Dark, which shows the game is drawing from the wider mythos rather than adapting one tale beat for beat.
I see your camera!
Where Call of the Elder Gods Takes Place
The game moves a lot more than Call of the Sea did, which stayed on one island. Locations include Miskatonic University, the libraries of Everhart Manor in New England, caves in Virginia, the Starry Wisdom headquarters, a radio station in Spitzbergen, frozen wastelands, the red sands of the Australian outback, and cities that exist outside normal time. Everything runs on Unreal Engine 5.
Call of the Elder Gods Voice Cast and Soundtrack
Call of the Elder Gods is fully voice acted, with Yuri Lowenthal and Cissy Jones both returning from Call of the Sea. Lowenthal is best known to most gamers as Peter Parker in Insomniac's Spider-Man games, and Jones has credits in Firewatch, Starfield, and Baldur's Gate 3. Composer Eduardo De La Iglesia also returns to score the game.
How Long Is Call of the Elder Gods?
Call of the Elder Gods takes around six hours to finish the main story, and about seven hours to wrap up everything else. A free demo called Call of the Elder Gods: The First Chapter covers the prologue and Chapter 1, and saves carry over into the full game.
Call of the Elder Gods Achievements
- Painful Memories: Completed the Prologue.
- Harry the Hermit: Completed Chapter 1.
- Unexpected Company: Completed Chapter 2.
- Escape from the Inner Sanctum: Completed Chapter 3.
- Navigation Program: Completed Chapter 4.
- Confusing Timeline: Completed Chapter 5.
- Close the Loop: Finished the game.
- Hey, Jitterbug!: Evangeline sure has a lot to deal with.
- Secret Agent: Learned how to decipher messages from the Enigma machine.
- Velh-Kan...: Recalled the Pnakotus of the distant past and found its coordinates in the present.
- Imposter Syndrome: Used a mind-swapping device to move from 2006 to your 1957 self.
- Just a Matter of Perspective: The city of the Great Race (or what's left of it) awaits you...
- Hard-Headed to the Very End: Made Harry sacrifice himself.
- Always Trust the Doctor: Let Evangeline sacrifice herself.
- Let Me Write That Down...: Filled 50% of Norah's journal.
- ...For the Sake of Clarity: Fill 100% of Norah's journal.
- The Terrible Old Man: Find the secret objects in Chapter 1.
- Peaslee's Parliament: Find the secret object in Chapter 2.
- The Man Behind the Curtain: Find the secret room in Chapter 3.
- Unspeakable Cults: Find the secret object in Chapter 4.
- The Roman Quaestor: Find the secret object in Chapter 5.
- It Belongs in a (Pnakotic) Museum!: Find the secret object in Chapter 6.
- Leave Him the F*ck Alone!: American Arcadia: the most watched media phenomenon on the planet.
- You Looked That Up in a Guide... Again!: Play a well-known tune.
- Bouquet: Bring someone flowers.
- Best Served Cold: Execute a sequence backwards.
- You Damn Brat!: Don't stop being sarcastic.
- I can hold my breath for ten minutes!: Go underwater and drown.
- This City is Afraid of Me: Find a comic book.
- Wrong Game... or Maybe Not: Does the word TIWOHAR mean anything to you?
- Meta-Reference: Find the Out of the Blue Key.
Call of the Elder Gods FAQs
Is Call of the Elder Gods on Game Pass?
Yes. Call of the Elder Gods launched on Game Pass on day one and supports Xbox Play Anywhere across Xbox Series X/S and PC.
Is it necessary to play Call of the Sea before Call of the Elder Gods?
No. Call of the Elder Gods introduces a new protagonist, Evangeline Drayton, and covers Harry and Norah Everhart's history through flashbacks within the game.
How long is Call of the Elder Gods?
The main story of Call of the Elder Gods takes around six hours, with about seven hours needed to see everything.
Who developed Call of the Elder Gods?
Call of the Elder Gods was developed by Out of the Blue Games, the studio behind Call of the Sea and American Arcadia, and published by Kwalee.
What platforms is Call of the Elder Gods on?
Call of the Elder Gods is available on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2.
What Lovecraft story is Call of the Elder Gods based on?
Call of the Elder Gods is inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Out of Time, which introduced the Great Race of Yith and their city of Pnakotus.
What is the hardest puzzle in Call of the Elder Gods?
The Starry Wisdom headquarters in Chapter 3 is the toughest stretch, with Harry working through multiple offices to match each member's name, code name, god, and role.
Is there a Call of the Elder Gods demo?
Yes. Call of the Elder Gods: The First Chapter includes the prologue and Chapter 1, and progress carries over to the full game.
