Nightmares from the Deep 2: The Siren’s Call is the follow-up to the very popular search and click game, Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart. The story is set in the same universe as its predecessor, but upon a different path where a young woman must help a fish-man recover a golden Kraken from a band of fish-pirates. While this may sound insane, this is all part of the lore created by Artifex Mundi for the world of The Siren’s Call.
I have now played every single game that Artifex Mundi has released on the Xbox One. If you are not familiar with their studio, they create point and click adventure games that fall into the category of picture searching. Basically, the game boils down to finding items by completing item searches in order to progress from scene to scene. This is in no way a bash on the genre, merely a fact of what this studio is known for.
Artifex Mundi is usually superb at the creation of these particular games. However, I found Nightmares of the Deep 2: The Siren’s Call to be the most disappointing release so far.
The glaring positive of Nightmares 2, is that it is incredibly beautiful. The art style and colors used create a vivid world that is a pleasure to look at. Each scene and set piece is very unique and this keeps the game feeling fresh during the 3 hour campaign. The game took me on a journey through a dying pirate town, the wreckage of sunk ships, and the underground caverns of a deserted island. The game knew exactly what aesthetic is was going for and nailed it with every brush stroke on the immaculately painted canvas.
The sound design is also worth noting. The story line takes some dark (well PG-dark) twists and the soundtrack mimics these plot points effortlessly. The change between the natural sounds of waves crashing on the shore and gulls screeching overhead to the eerie cacophony of string instruments impressed a feeling of great peril at every turn. While there were no grand orchestral measures that would put Mozart to shame, the music and sound work complemented the art to create a spooky and interesting world.
But for everything the art and sound design did to put me into the world, the technical limitations fought to drag me right back out. Every cut scene began with an awkward pause that was just a moment too long. This was jarring enough to immediately rip me away from getting too enveloped in the story. These same cut scenes would also chug at a significant loss of frames, where I eventually started skipping them in order to ensure the Xbox did not crash.
Gameplay within a scene would run smooth with no loss of frame rate or screen tearing. However, when I chose to move from one scene to the next, the screen would tear wildly and cause a very significant visual distortion. The controller would take a second to register my inputs before allowing me to progress to the following scene, and so on.
I found these problems to be incredibly frustrating as none of these problems persisted in any of the other games from this development company. While the game had a lackluster story and no new special mechanics to speak of, I am completely fine with overlooking those flaws as Artifex Mundi games are played for the gameplay, not the story. But when the gameplay is also lackluster, I cannot help but feel disappointment at this addition to the Xbox library.
Another example of gameplay failing to deliver is in the vibration mechanic. Halfway through the game, my controller began to vibrate 3 times as long as before when selecting an incorrect area. The game is solely played by clicking in the environment to search for clues and items, and an improper click is acknowledged with a short vibration of the controller. However, these vibrations were so long that it was actually distracting beyond measure. I tried my other two controllers, and restarting my Xbox, and no cure was to be found. Each time I clicked on an area that was not able to help me progress, I had to sit through 2.5 seconds of vibration. Multiply that by the hundreds of missed clicks in a campaign, and you can see why my buzzing hands were aggravated.
Summary
There is always the question that if this sequel was released first, would it have been better than the first outing, and I can definitely say no. With 4 other games in the same genre, Artifex Mundi is well aware of how to optimize a point and click adventure for the Xbox system. This is only exasperated by the fact it is a sequel to a game that I thought was really well done. I can only hope that Nightmares from the Deep 2 is not a sign of what is to come, and only lasts as a single misstep from a developer that I quite like.
Joshua was a regular ICXM contributor between 2016–2017, publishing 42 articles across game reviews, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative.