In a late-May hands-on session, journalists described “The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu” as a co-op horror game built around H.P. Lovecraft’s madness—where loneliness and being watched are constant, and confusion can be as frightening as the enemies. Developer ACE T
When the hour and a half ended, what stayed with the people in the room wasn’t a single jump scare. It was the uneasy feeling that the game’s jungle wasn’t just watching—it was influencing how you understood what you were seeing.
That emotion came through during a late-May hands-on preview of “The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu,” hosted by Nacon. The session leaned into a kind of co-op horror that rarely gets attempted: fear of what you might hallucinate, and fear of what your teammates might see when they look at you.
Co-op horror is hardly a brand-new idea. Yet this demo set itself apart by treating the setting like a living presence. Within “The Mound. ” the world seems to communicate its own kind of pressure—warning the darkness around it of strangers moving through the trees. The effect, described by attendees, was loneliness and constant surveillance at the same time.
To get a deeper sense of what developer ACE Team was building, journalists were invited to a small Discord server where they could play with others in the wider games press community. The group they were placed in was hosted by founder and designer Andrés Bordeu.
The structure of the gameplay looked, at first glance, like a mission-based multiplayer loop. Teams of up to four players pick a loadout before going into an unforgiving jungle. Missions revolve around retrieving equipment, treasures, and more. Players follow an ox cart through the world to pick up relics and artifacts that can be brought back to the ship and appraised. When either you or the jungle decides you’re finished. the run back begins—defending the crew while also defending yourself from the forces of… whatever is waiting inside the dark.
Over roughly three missions, the demo pushed through a pattern that took time to fully understand. It wasn’t just follow-the-cart and sprint home. The randomness of what might happen was framed as part of the madness: the longer you and your crew hunt for items. the more you’re subjected to mind melds from the jungle and its entities. The result was a persistent question—whether the dangers you see are real. or whether the game is deliberately trying to pull your team apart.
In one moment described during the session, the player said they believed they’d wandered away from their group. They couldn’t hear or see teammates anymore. Then, from the corner of their eye, they spotted something they didn’t recognize and lunged at it. Only later did the voices return, and the realization landed: the attacker had hit their own group.
That didn’t end the fear—it multiplied it. When the group reconnected, teammates were described as going through their own madness, communicating with each other to figure out what was real and what was fake.
Even with the central objective loop staying relatively simple—follow the cart. get an item or person. run back. earn rewards—confusion became part of the horror engine. It also raised a practical problem: across teammates experiencing different hallucinations. it could be unclear what the “proper next steps” should be.
That tension was especially sharp around combat and death. Attendees said the demo left moments where it wasn’t clear whether the expectation was to attack enemies or escape to safety. Death, in particular, brought frustration tied to uncertainty: would a player be resurrected?. Should they keep following everyone?. Are they actually dead—or alive again?.
Bordeu, who led the crew through missions and explained how each map was developed as well as how progression systems can be shared beyond the host of a co-op session, also addressed the game’s direction. The future is still being shaped by player feedback.
At the same time, there was clear praise for what ACE Team managed to deliver visually. The demo presented the jungle as powerful and terrifying even when nothing appeared to be happening right in front of you. Breaking branches. restricted movement in denser areas. and distant animal sounds—described as potentially not even there—were part of making something mundane feel threatening.
Progression, too, was presented as a reason to keep playing rather than restarting. Each session is tied to genuine progression. If a mission asks players to find someone, they earn a new character to play as. If a mission asks for an item, it can likely be used as an entry into the last level.
There was also an emphasis on why co-op might stay practical over time: because the games are player-hosted, keeping servers alive was described as less of an issue than it is in live-service titles, helping support co-op long after the game’s initial support window.
During play, Bordeu also teased additional content for “The Mound,” if the game builds a significant enough audience. For those who find the genre oversaturated, the pitch is that it brings a fresh breath of air.
Lovecraft’s beings aren’t presented as brand-new, but the framing is different. The demo positions the madness and the perception it distorts as a shift in how the stories are experienced—approaching familiar horrors with new lenses.
“The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu” launches on July 15 on PC via Steam, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
The Mound Omen of Cthulhu ACE Team Andrés Bordeu Nacon co-op horror Lovecraft Steam PS5 Xbox Series X/S July 15