The team over at Dragonis Games has recently released their Lovecraftian cooperative horror game onto Steam in Early Access. Even with their game in an early build stage, I couldn’t wait to dive into the world within Eresys. After a handful of sessions and attempts to beat the game in its current standing, there were a handful of issues that kept breaking the experience each time. Granted, when the game is being experienced as it should be, it is entertaining and unnerving, but let’s get into the full breakdown.

Gameplay

This game can be played either solo or with up to three friends. After losing our first round, my friend and I realized that this game is a form of permadeath as dying leaves you with no option other than to restart. While I am fine with this being a system in place, it should definitely be a players choice if they want a game with permadeath. The map is pretty huge and the task to beat isn’t a small one, plus you can’t even always tell what will get you killed.

That point aside, they did a great job giving us a single task that led to more task options around while exploring. You’re only really directed to collect all the pages for a book, which turns out to be 30 pages. While running through the map, you’ll come across different objectives, such as the blood alters. These aren’t directly told to you to mess with, but it is possible - if not easy to fill them up. It only takes three vials of blood and you get to keep the vials after pouring the blood out.

Once an alter is activated, a new creature will arrive in the area and remain a threat moving forward. Most of these creatures can be fought off with your lantern, so make sure you collect lantern oil everywhere you see it. As with more horror experiences, the only way to survive is to stay calm and follow the rules no matter how crazy they seem!

A cool thing about multiplayer is that when one player dies, they can be revived by taking their head to one of the few wax statues that are found around the map. Unfortunately, whatever supplies they had on them are completely lost and unable to be retrieved, which can be frustrating as vials are already rare to find as it is.

Expectations

One of the most breaking things in this game is the lack of any tools to help you find your friend if you get separated. We are on a giant island with checkpoint-looking markers that turn out to have duplicates throughout the map making them not the proper way to find someone you’ve lost. On one of our best runs (19/30 pages found and two alters activated) we got split up and after spending a full hour trying to just find each other, the game was ruined by one of our deaths and an inability to revive them. There should be a permanent tracker mark on the map to indicate where your friends are so you can always regroup.

Hopefully, they add a drop or loot system for when a player dies so that items aren’t just lost forever. I should be able to return to the spot I died in and pick up the items I lost, or let others pick up whatever I dropped on death.

Right now, the map feels a bit too big or perhaps unfilled. There is a good amount of locations to explore and their strange, cryptic eerieness persists throughout, but I would like to be able to reach these different things quicker than after two minutes, if not longer, or just running around.

Verdict

Eresys is a great cosmic horror game with strong potential to grow into a title Lovecraftian fans can all recommend! They have a few updates to add to the game and quite a few things to tighten up in order to make the experience more player-friendly (without making it easier overall). Once they get a few patches in, this will be the cooperative horror game that I expect will be on many players’ Steam libraries.

Eresys is now available on PC via Steam Early Access.