With so much of the horror in Eldritch fiction stemming from trying to imagine the unimaginable and the limits of human comprehension, it’s understandably difficult to portray in film and games like Call of Cthulhu, as these mediums rely on showing the unimaginable and offering comprehensible explanations. While it still falls victim to this dilemma, The Alien Cube manages to thread the needle of keeping tension and mystery high through a mix of carefully scattered story and surreal environments, while still providing the satisfaction of gazing into the eyes of cosmic dread.
Much like its spiritual predecessor Land of Pain, The Alien Cube is a first-person Eldritch horror game by sole game developer Alessandro Guzzo. The Alien Cube tells the story of Arthur, an ordinary man who receives a letter from his missing uncle saying that he’s likely dead, and that Arthur is the receiver of his inheritance. Unknown to Arthur, that inheritance includes an unknown familial connection to a mysterious cult, unsettling notes, horrifying visions, and a strange, alien cube.
The Alien Cube plays like a mix between a first-person horror adventure game, and a point and click puzzle game. Each curated environment is free to explore, but interacting with puzzles generally maintains a loop of finding the missing key, gear, or lever, and interacting with that object’s counterparts. There are also elements of games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent, where Arthur is seemingly in some other reality entirely and, whether something is truly there or not, he begins to flee in horror. All these mechanics work well enough and keep the player’s attention, however there are two noticeable weak spots both mechanically and practically.
It’s not clear if there were plans for these to be bigger features or not, but the crouching and jumping mechanics feel really clunky and, at times, useless. The latter calls attention to itself because almost all of The Alien Cube is running or walking around, with the major exception being occasional moments of platforming that not only feel out of place, but awkward thanks to pretty significant input lag. Crouching stands out for similar reasons; in this case it’s because whenever Arthur needs to crawl under or through something, the player clicks on a prompt to begin a crawling animation, and crouching only serves the purpose of bring him down a little bit lower in order to signal that prompt to appear. Despite a deadly cult invoking deadlier Eldritch horrors, there are never moments where Arthur needs to get low to hide or jump across a gap to escape danger, so the few times these mechanics are used just feel arbitrary.
The story telling is also a bit stilted, particularly The Alien Cube‘s voice acting. Like the mechanics above, voice acting only appears in scattered places in the game, with the rest of the story being told through text. However, when the vocal performance does come in, it feels out of place, thanks to what is, at most times, a voiceless protagonist. That said, the story being told in The Alien Cube is well-executed, and the environmental design manages to portray Lovecraft in a way that feels right.
While there’s something a bit disappointing about yet another entry to the Cthulhu mythos that doesn’t quite manage to translate its best features into the video game medium, there are hints and moments of other smaller Eldritch creatures that keep things interesting. In particular, the way The Alien Cube ultimately handles its final moments is incredibly satisfying with its visuals. The story may not stick the landing for some, but the overall experience is dark, engaging, beautiful, and disgusting. The Alien Cube is a love letter to the genre and is a strong choice for the fans who are on the hunt for a non-literary medium that manages to get Lovecraft mostly right.
The Alien Cube is out now for PC via Steam. Screen Rant was provided with a Steam download code for the purpose of this review.
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