Long, long ago… on a computer screen in my room, I remember the early days of gaming and the heyday of the classic adventure game. While you could focus on their point-and-click style, or the humor of the well-known LucasArts titles, what comes to mind as something I don’t see much of nowadays is their approach to telling interesting stories in exotic or unknown locales. While certainly having a much more modern flair, and feeling almost more like an island escape room, there’s something to Call of the Sea and its place and more classic time that reminds me of games from yesteryear that I really did appreciate.

In a desperate search for her husband, who was on an expedition in the South Pacific and disappeared, you’ll play as Nora, a well-dressed woman of the 30s who is determined to brave danger in the name of her love. Arriving on the island, alone, you’ll begin your search on a somewhat ominous shore, finding clues and remnants of the party your husband was with, but no clear signs of any survivors. In order to proceed through this adventure you’ll be tested with a variety of environmental puzzles that will require a mix of keen observation, some problem solving, and admittedly quite a bit of patience in some cases.

Where the game lives and dies is likely with its puzzles. While the story has some twists and odd turns, at least proving not to be a run-of-the-mill affair, if you’re not down with working through the clues you’ll typically find all around you to discover the solutions to, the problems you’ll face the experience falls apart. I’d say it feels like an escape room in terms of the variety of ways you’ll be tested, but given the area you’ll sometimes cover to compile your clues that isn’t an entirely accurate comparison either. I think if it weren’t for the fact that your character tends to put everything of note she sees in her journal I would have been more frustrated, but that ends up being a great tool for filtering out what you observe that may be more extraneous from what’s worth paying attention to, at a minimum.

While it may not have the length and breadth of some of its more complete brethren, I did at least appreciate how well this title manages to stand out from the crowd. Its mix of a different time, an unfamiliar place, and plenty of strange themes help it to differentiate itself narratively. Back that up with puzzles that may be overwhelming for some, but do a good job of testing your problem-solving in a variety of ways, and you’ve got a pretty great adventure, even if not quite a grand one.