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The Mound: Omen is one of the more effective horror games we've played recently, and it doesn't lean on jump scares to get there. From the first few minutes, ACE Team's co-op horror outing starts strong and builds an eerie atmosphere that gets under your skin in a nastier way - it makes you doubt your own eyes, and eventually your own teammates. We went in as a three-person crew for most of our time with it, occasionally rounding out to a full four with randoms, and by the end of our first few expeditions we couldn't tell if we could trust anything we were looking at, including each other. The first few matches were genuinely what the developers intended this experience to be - mystifying, unclear and terrifying.
Inspired by Lovecraft's novella The Mound, with the setting shifted to a jungle in 1652, the game doesn't hold your hand getting there. We went in wondering how well this kind of dread would hold up in co-op, since you know how co-op games go, especially with goofball friends who can't stop laughing when they get jumpscared (those moments were there too), but The Mound holds up remarkably well. What the game excels at are those quiet stretches when you're cutting through dense jungle towards the next misty passage while something you can't quite place keeps moving and making noise nearby, and it captures exactly the feeling of venturing into the unknown.
The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu screenshots (PC, max settings)
Nothing is quite what it seems
Right at the start, on our first island, one of us saw what looked like a pit trap with bones and animal remains inside it. Another of us was looking at the exact same spot and saw what looked like a stand with something worth investigating on it. Walking toward it ended in a fall straight into the hole the other had seen all along. We weren't interpreting the same thing differently - we were looking at two different things, and the game never told us which one of us was right.
Underneath that, it's a loot-and-extract game. You start at the Galleon hub, gear up, and choose an expedition, then push into the jungle escorting an ox wagon, looting relics and resources along the way, before returning to see whether you met the contract. There are four playable characters total, and whoever isn't picked for a given run waits back on the ship, but you're free to switch who you play from one expedition to the next. The character design is distinct and nails the 1600s aesthetic, and Carlito, the guy who drives the ox wagon, quickly became a favourite of ours - hearing him recite the Bible while we're already knee-deep in trouble adds a strange kind of comic relief to the tension.
That core loot-and-extract formula isn't new, but the not-trusting-your-own-eyes part carries into everything else. Tools brought into the jungle come from a shared pool, so every expedition starts with an actual conversation before you even leave the hub about who carries what, which becomes a strategic decision in itself. This also means two players can walk away from the same expedition with completely different experiences depending on what role they were given.
Movement matches the tone. It's slow and heavy, and actions like reloading your crossbow or gun are realistic enough that you can't fire mindlessly, and every bit of ammo is something you learn to appreciate. There's no jumping, either, so if you drop down somewhere to grab an item, and you can't just leap back up the way you came, you have to find your way around instead. The jungle isn't one set path though; there are multiple routes worked into the terrain, and figuring them out is part of getting through an expedition.
Sanity is your greatest enemy
Every trip runs on a Captain-issued contract, and there are two basic flavours: either bring back a specific item, or hit a total value threshold, like 1700 gold. That number isn't always easy to hit, and we've come back to the Galleon short more than once, only to have the Captain make it very clear he's not happy about it. Successful runs earn XP and Tokens, which buy artifacts for future expeditions - we unlocked the Medallion fairly quickly, and it earns its place immediately.
The sanity system is what pulls all of this together, and it's the strongest idea in the game. Once it's low, you start hallucinating, comms get scrambled, and allies can start looking like monsters. The distrust the environment builds up turns into distrust of your own team, and you end up constantly checking in with each other just to confirm you're still looking at the real thing. The proximity chat makes this even more effective, since hearing a teammate's actual voice waver or cut out nearby is a different kind of unsettling than a UI prompt would be.
The minimal UI plays into this too. There's no health bar or status indicator for anyone else in your group - the only way you know how someone's doing is by talking to them. Die, and you're cut off from that chat completely, and if someone else dies later, they end up joining you in whatever you'd call the dead people's own little chat room.
Surviving the jungle
Every tool you bring into The Mound trades power for risk. The matchlock arquebus hits like a truck, but between the slow reload and the fact that it's dead weight in the rain unless you're sheltered, we learned pretty quickly not to rely on it alone. Even the useful Medallion you strike to reveal hidden treasure basically announces exactly where you are to anything nearby. The Mask of Nyarlathotep is probably the clearest example - it lets you walk right past Y'm-bhi without a fight, but it eats away at your sanity, and mid-combat it can make you look like a monster to your own teammates.
The jungle doesn't make things easier either. Thick vegetation slows you down, and while cutting through it clears the path, the noise brings company you didn't ask for. Fog and rain cut your visibility and can leave gunpowder weapons useless, so caves and structures end up doubling as dry shelter just to keep your gear working.
Y'm-bhi are the most common enemy in The Mound, but calling them "one enemy type" undersells them. They show up in different forms and behaviours - some lunge at you, some carry guns (presumably looted off previous, less fortunate expeditions), some self-immolate to charge at players, or they'll fake an attack to bait a reaction, then punish you for it. Beyond them, the jungle throws vine creatures at you, centipedes that seem to materialise out of your vomit (you'll probably be getting a lot of that), and trees with bulbous red growths that burst if you get too close.
The Y'm-bhi are smart enough that button-mashing doesn't get you far. You learn their patterns over time and figure out the best way to handle each variant, and that becomes its own skill curve.
Even on islands we'd already visited, no two runs felt the same. You're unlikely to cover an entire island in a single expedition, so there's always more waiting on the next trip - and hallucinations kicking in as your sanity drops mean the same stretch of jungle can look completely different from one run to the next.
A typical expedition runs 15-20 minutes. There's no hard timer pushing you out, but in practice, by the 20-minute mark we were usually barely alive and calling it anyway.
Solo play is viable, though clearly built with a team in mind. Two-player co-op felt like a nicely balanced sweet spot for us, and full four-player runs, including a few with randoms, worked well too - the experience just shifts depending on how many of you there are.
One thing about the jungle and general gameplay design that we've found to be disappointing is the lack of puzzles and activities on the map that would emphasise co-op play. We couldn't find anything that required the cooperation of the entire group, which is a missed opportunity for a game of this concept. Imagine having a puzzle that requires the team to separate, adding tension and even more discomfort and gameplay variety to the expedition.
Performance and presentation
We ran The Mound across three different machines and encountered no crashes or technical issues throughout (most of the time). On a mid-range PC (Ryzen 5 7600X, RTX 3070 Ti, 16 GB RAM) it ran smoothly with no complaints or any performance concerns. The PS5 version was just as solid - no stuttering, no weird hitches.
However, when we cranked the game up to max settings and 4K on a high-end rig (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4080, 32 GB RAM), the performance started to get a bit underwhelming. We couldn't hit 60+ FPS without using frame generation and DLSS set to Balanced. Even then, the game wasn't smooth and constantly had stuttering, something we've seen in many other Unreal Engine games.
Keep in mind this is on the absolute max settings with everything pushed to very high. The game ran fine on lower settings, even on a mid-range PC.
The environment itself is detailed and realistic, all lush jungle and convincing water, with a dark, eerie mood carried by fog and mist. The sound design pulls its weight too - the music is creepy throughout, and small touches like a loud heartbeat kicking in as your sanity starts to slip do a lot to keep you on edge. There are also lore books scattered throughout the jungle, for anyone willing to slow down and dig into the world instead of rushing the objective - assuming you've got the nerve to slow down at all in a jungle that's actively trying to kill you.
Conclusion
The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu is a positive surprise. It takes a familiar loot-and-extract formula and makes it feel fresh by building distrust into every system, from what you see to who you can rely on. The atmosphere is unsettling, and the co-op dynamic, especially with the minimal UI and proximity chat, adds a layer of tension that few horror games manage.
It's not perfect. The lack of puzzles requiring full team cooperation feels like a massive missed opportunity, and performance still needs some polish. But none of that undermines a great game that's already here.
The bigger question now is longevity. ACE Team has built a strong foundation, but how well this holds up long-term will come down to content support: new islands, new threats, new reasons to head back into the jungle. Get that right, and The Mound could be one of this year's standout co-op horror games.
The Good
Brilliant psychological horror atmosphere- Great sanity system
- Varied enemy encounters
- Excellent graphics and environmental design
- Smooth performance across PC and PlayStation 5
The Bad
Lack of puzzles and things to do on the islands- Poor performance on max settings
