User:Torchiest/Drowned God Reception

Reception
Drowned God received mixed to positive reviews, with most critics complimenting the ideas and imagery while giving a more lukewarm response to the game's audio, puzzles, and execution.

GameSpot reviewer Vince Boardy said the game initially sounded like it would not only be "incredible", but that it might also "raise awareness" about supposed ancient worldwide conspiracies. Steve Ramsey of Quandary said Drowned God presented its massive assortment of conspiracy theories in an entertaining way. Ray Ivey of Just Adventure called Drowned God "the strangest, creepiest, most psychedelic adventure game I've yet to come across." Although Ivey did not understand much of the game, he still enjoyed it because "it made sense to the game's characters and creators." In 2012, Andy Hughes of Topless Robot put the game at the top of his list of "9 Surprising Literary References In Videogames". Hughes wrote that the game was one that could be played from start to finish "without having any idea what the hell's going on", noting its references to a wide variety of subjects, including Egyptian mythology, The Man in the Iron Mask, and the Bermuda Triangle. T. Liam McDonald of PC Gamer wrote that he was "fascinated by the strong sense of style and the intellectual approach to terrific subject matter". Steven Levy and Patricia King of Newsweek found the game to be "richly detailed and original".

Boardy praised the graphics, writing, "Drowned God is loaded with freaky animations and unexpected visual twists". Ramsey praised the visuals and the audio, considering both to contribute to the game's "shadowy and secretive feelings". His one significant complaint was that dialogue was tough to hear, and that there was no option to display text for it. Boardy said the primary problem with the audio was that some of it was overused, with "background effects" that "drone on mercilessly", and spoken dialog, that, while well written and well acted, "must be listened to over and over again".

The puzzles, according to Boardy, were of uneven quality. He called some "hopelessly difficult" and others extremely derivative. He called the Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton dialogue puzzle "brilliant", but also said, "Ideas as original as Horse's call for puzzles to match, not rehashes of things we've seen far too many times already." Ramsey thought the puzzles were challenging but not overly difficult, arguing "on almost every occasion I felt that I was making progress, and I never felt bogged down and hopelessly lost." He considered the puzzles to be mostly well-integrated, and found that even those that were not did not detract from his enjoyment. Ivey also praised the puzzles, calling the game a "treasure trove" of "challenging and frequently innovative" puzzles. He also referred to the Einstein and Newton dialogue puzzle as "brilliant".

Boardy panned the navigation for being confusing and counter-intuitive, and also for requiring the player to revisit locations multiple times. He concluded his review by saying, "The net effect is that the story—which made this game so intriguing in the first place—is almost totally lost, and that is a shame." GameSpot considered the game one of the most disappointing of 1996 in their annual recap, writing "the great premise is buried like the mysteries of the ages themselves under a mediocre Myst clone". Bob Strauss of Entertainment Weekly complained that the game tried to be too many things, calling it a "mishmash" and quipping that "the result is a game so obscure, you'd be better off perusing something more comprehensible—like the collected works of Zoroaster." Mark Reece and Brooke Adams of Deseret News also had mixed feelings about the game, calling it both "clever and deep" and "frustrating and difficult". McDonald of wrote that he was "frustrated by the lack of good game play." Hughes called the pace of the game and its puzzles both "tedious" and "ponderous", but said it "had ambition out the genetically modified ears".