Part-crime scene investigation, part-RPG, Call of Cthulhu is primarily concerned with detailing and emulating the writings of H.P Lovecraft upon which it is based. Over the course of our most recent showing of the game - a 20 minute guided demo - we were presented with eyeless monsters, paintings acting as doorways to alternative dimensions, murder scenes in which children seem to have been the victims and a decrepit mansion that wouldn’t feel out of place in Resident Evil or a Dracula movie.

The inspiration for the game’s rules and workings comes from the official board game of the same name, a pen-and-paper RPG in the Dungeons and Dragons ilk, first released in 1981. As a result, this is a game that prioritises reading and listening for clues just as much as it wants you to act upon them.

As detective Edward Pierce you’re sent on a job to find out the truth behind the death of a world famous artist and her family, the whole group of which resided on the isolated island that makes up Call of Cthulhu’s setting. It’s a windy, rocky place that seems to be cloaked in constant night. Lanterns barely cut through the darkness, with crows and ravens creating silhouettes against the sky, creating the sense that you’re always being watched. Visually, it has a trademark Lovecraftian identity splashed all over it.

Perhaps the most interesting of Cthulhu’s design directions is the questioning of Pierce’s sanity. As the story progress and he begins to delve deeper into the mystery behind the unexplained deaths, he, and the player, are forced to question whether or not what he sees is actually representative of reality.

Developer Cyanide, most famous for Blood Bowl and Styx: Master of Shadows, is keen to point out at every opportunity that insanity in Cthulhu isn’t about whether or not you’re losing your mind, it’s about whether what your eyes are communicating to your mind is real or not. How well the sense of not knowing if what you’re seeing is actual reality or not, and combining this with making sure the player feels as though they’re able to impact proceedings, will go a long way to determining Cthulhu’s quality and impact.

Sanity plays a part in the moment-to-moment gameplay, too. One scene sees Pierce hiding from a monster, his comparatively feeble physical standing giving him no chance of survival in a direct encounter. Stealth is his best tool here, as it is in every other encounter, but the matter of hiding is complicated by a sanity meter that decreases when he’s in the presence of monsters that he doesn’t believe should be part of his reality.

The longer you spend close to a monster, even when hidden, the further your sanity meter is going to deplete. If it exhausts itself entirely you’re hit with the game over screen.

Over the course of the story Pierce develops phobias for certain situations and things, the example demonstrated to us being claustrophobia. This makes hiding even more perilous as it further limits the number of safe spaces; those closets that were once a haven now being just as maddening as the monsters roaming between them. The system is somewhat similar to that used in Frictional Games’ Amnesia: A Dark Descent, which was itself inspired, in part, by the writing of H.P. Lovecraft.