Cthulhu Pub

Genre: Management Simulation

Players: 1

.

Review:

Cthulhu Pub is a Management Simulation released on PC and Nintendo Switch in 2022. In this game, players build and manage a pub for monsters while also creating defenses and soldiers to fend off attacking humans and building altars to dissuade Lovecraftian elder gods from destroying everything.

While the theme of this game offers a lot of potential for a fun presentation, Cthulhu Pub’s presentation is subdued, lifeless, and dull. This game makes use of 2D pixel art visuals that aren’t detailed enough to clearly indicate what everything is at a glance, and much of it uses muted colors that blend together. Even worse, these visuals are backed by a soundtrack consisting of a low droning chant that, while thematically appropriate, is nevertheless a pretty poor choice when it comes to delivering a fun and inviting experience for the player.

Another poor element of the presentation that negatively affects the gameplay is that this game’s 2D visuals are presented from an isometric view that doesn’t rotate, and often leads to places you’ll want to build on that are blocked by other objects. This can make it awkward to try to build in a spot behind a wall, as that spot may or may not have the flooring you need in place before building upon it, and there’s no easy way of checking that.

Similarly frustrating is this game’s control layout, which is somewhat unintuitive, and the tutorial, which often doesn’t explain the value of different things you’re building, but instead only tells you what to build.

If you can get past all of these flaws, you may find a decent Management Simulation underneath it all… but that’s a lot to get past. Between the poor controls, ugly presentation that’s not conducive to the gameplay, and lacking tutorial, Cthulhu Pub largely fails to deliver on the fun of its premise. Stick with one of the other Management Simulations on Nintendo Switch instead.

tl;dr – Cthulhu Pub is a Management Simulation that has you building and managing a pub for monsters while fending off attacking humans and Lovecraftian elder gods. It’s a great premise, but it’s brought down by a poor presentation that’s not conducive to the gameplay, lacking controls, and a poor tutorial. You have better options than this on Nintendo Switch.

Grade: C-

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Ben, Andy Miller, Exlene, Homer Simpin, Johannes, Francis Obst, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Ilya Zverev, Jared Wark, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}