The Mound Omen of Cthulhu Is $29.99 and Has a Free Demo Right Now

ACE Team’s new extraction game launches on July 15, 2026, and it is not trying to be the next Escape from Tarkov or Hunt: Showdown. It is trying to make you lose your mind. The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu is a four-player co-op horror shooter set in a cursed 16th-century South American jungle, published by NACON, and it has already racked up over 600,000 Steam wishlists. A free demo is live on PC right now if you want to test it before spending a cent.

This is a game where guns break in the rain, your teammates might be figments of your imagination, and the jungle itself is treated as the main threat. If that sounds like your kind of thing, or if you are on the fence, here is what the game actually does and whether it is worth your money.

The Setup: Extraction Meets Lovecraft

The core loop will feel familiar if you have played any extraction shooter. You deploy with a squad, scavenge for loot and resources, complete objectives, and extract before something kills you. What ACE Team adds on top of that is a madness system pulled directly from H.P. Lovecraft’s 1940 novella of the same name.

The further your team pushes into the jungle, the more your perception starts to break down. You will hear footsteps that are not there. You will see items floating over spike pits. Colors shift. Sounds distort. And here is the part that actually matters for co-op: every player perceives reality differently. Your teammate can see the spike pit in front of you while you see nothing but a clear path. That asymmetry is the game’s biggest hook, and it turns normal extraction paranoia into something a lot stranger.

Your Home Base Is a Galleon, Your Boss Is Greedy

Before each run, you return to the Tempest Dot, your home galleon and base of operations. It is not just a menu screen. There is a ship cook who advises on what food to prioritize on the mainland, a musician on deck, and a dog you can pet. The atmosphere is intentionally oppressive even when you are “safe.”

The captain is the one who matters most. He hands out contracts before each expedition, asking you to find specific items, reach certain locations, or return with a minimum loot value. In exchange, he provides your starting weapons and gear. Fail to deliver and you come back empty-handed.

Loadout Strategy Starts Before You Even Deploy

This is where the game gets interesting for players who like thinking before shooting. The captain does not issue one weapon per player. Your squad shares a limited pool of gear and needs to decide collectively who carries what before setting off. Six inventory slots per player from the start. That means a flintlock, a machete, some gunpowder, a food item if you are smart, and two spare slots for whatever you find.

There is an oxcart that follows your expedition and holds overflow loot, but it is loud. The horn it makes when separated from your group can alert enemies. Every item and every noise has a cost.

Guns Are Not the Answer Here

If your instinct is to shoot everything, The Mound is going to punish you quickly. Flintlock and matchlock firearms malfunction in wet conditions, and the jungle sees frequent rain. On top of that, firing a gun draws attention. The jungle is described as dormant unless disturbed, and once you wake it, hostile enemies converge on your position fast.

It is not just guns either. Sprinting in armor clanks. Crossing rivers splashes. The environment picks up on everything. The game pushes you toward stealth and coordination over aggression, which is a genuine departure from most extraction shooters where firepower tends to solve most problems.

Proximity Voice Chat Is Built Into the Horror

The game uses proximity-based voice chat where the volume and direction of your teammates’ voices change based on where they actually are in the game world. At first glance that sounds like an immersion feature. In practice, when the madness system kicks in and you genuinely cannot tell if the figure walking toward you is a teammate or a creature, the direction of a familiar voice becomes a real lifeline.

ACE Team clearly designed the two systems to work together. The madness messes with your vision. The voice chat gives you an audio anchor. Whether you use it or not becomes its own kind of strategy.

The Jungle Looks and Sounds Like a Threat

ACE Team has leaned hard into atmosphere. Bird calls recorded from the specific region of Chile the game is set in pierce through the darkness. Mist rolls and evolves. Rotting wood creaks. Mushroom-covered structures decay visibly in the rain. Art director Edmundo Bordeu showcased this directly in the official gameplay presentation, calling the jungle’s aesthetic a form of mechanical resistance.

This is not a game where the environment is wallpaper. The jungle is designed to work against you before a single enemy appears.

Four Characters, All Cosmetic

There are four playable archetypes: Alonso de la Torre (a pacifist former soldier), Leonor (a fugitive who fled Spain after a murder), Don Rodrigo de Medina (a nobleman searching for honor), and a fourth character. Each has a backstory, but none of them have unique abilities or stats. Character choice is purely cosmetic. Your role in the squad comes down to loadout and communication, not class selection.

Story progression is shared across the full team. When one player advances the narrative, everyone advances with them. XP from completing contracts is also pooled in terms of story progress, though currency is earned individually.

Solo Play Works, But Not Long-Term

You can play The Mound solo with AI companions filling the squad. ACE Team has confirmed this, but also confirmed that the game was designed around co-op and that going in alone becomes progressively less viable as the game opens up. Contracts do scale to the number of human players, so solo runs are not pointless. The madness mechanics are also less impactful without real teammates to cross-reference your hallucinations with.

If you are planning to play mostly solo, that is worth knowing before you spend $39.99 on the Deluxe Edition.

Pricing, Platforms, and What You Get

The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu launches July 15, 2026 on PS5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC via both Steam and Epic Games Store, with full cross-play support confirmed.

Standard Edition: $29.99
Deluxe Edition: $39.99

Console players get a 10% pre-order discount running until launch. PC players can try the free demo on Steam right now, which supports up to four players in online co-op and covers the first few hours of the game.

The Deluxe Edition adds three things on top of the base game:

• The Temple of Yig Exclusive Mission Pack: a unique contract set in an exclusive area of the jungle

• The Fortune Hunters Characters Pack: two additional playable characters

• The Abyssal Gear Pack: cosmetic reskins for the knife, oil lamp, matchlock musket, and flintlock musket

That is one extra mission zone, two characters, and a set of weapon skins for a $10 premium. If the base game appeals to you, that is a reasonable ask. If you are still unsure, play the demo first.

PC Requirements at a Glance

These specs are listed as subject to change on the Steam page ahead of launch. Worth checking back closer to July 15.