The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu is out now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S — a four-player co-op horror game from ACE Team, the studio behind Zeno Clash and Rock of Ages, published by Nacon. It launched July 15 with full cross-play between all three platforms and a free demo already available if you want to try before you buy.
What It Costs and Where to Get It
The Standard Edition runs $29.99 (€29.99), with a Deluxe Edition at $39.99 that bundles in extra cosmetic and bonus content. Right now it’s discounted 20% on Steam, bringing the base price down to roughly $23.99 for launch week. It’s also available through Epic Games Store on PC, alongside the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S storefronts.
What You’re Actually Playing
The premise: up to four explorers venture into a cursed jungle chasing treasure, and the deeper they go, the more reality itself starts to warp around them. The game’s core mechanic is a madness system that distorts perception between teammates — hallucinate long enough and a friendly player can start looking hostile, turning “who do I trust” into a gameplay problem rather than just a horror-movie trope. It’s a clever twist on co-op horror’s usual formula of “monsters chase you,” swapping in “your own squad might not be reliable” as the real threat.
ACE Team has a track record of building weird, mechanically inventive games rather than chasing trends, and The Mound leans into that reputation. Rather than another survival-crafting horror clone, it’s positioned as a tighter, more focused co-op experience — closer in spirit to Ace Team’s earlier cult titles than to the open-world horror games currently crowding Steam’s new-release page.
The studio built its reputation on games that don’t play it safe mechanically — Zeno Clash’s brawler-meets-surreal-art-direction approach and Rock of Ages’ physics-driven boulder-rolling chaos both earned cult followings precisely because they didn’t copy whatever genre was trending at the time. The Mound continues that pattern: instead of leaning on jump scares alone, the perception-warping madness system is doing the actual design work, turning every co-op session into a trust exercise that can fall apart in real time.
Why It’s Getting Attention Before Launch
The game reportedly crossed 800,000 wishlists on Steam ahead of release — a strong number for a mid-budget co-op title without a blockbuster marketing push behind it, and a signal that ACE Team’s name recognition plus the current appetite for co-op horror (a genre that’s been quietly dominating indie charts all year) did a lot of the heavy lifting. July’s release calendar is otherwise light on major titles, which gives The Mound a clearer runway than it might have gotten dropped into a busier month.
How It Fits Into July’s Gaming Lineup
The Mound isn’t launching in a vacuum. It’s part of a July slate that also includes Palworld’s full 1.0 release and two high-profile remakes — Assassin’s Creed Black Flag: Resynced and Halo: Campaign Evolved — both of which are pulling more mainstream attention. If you’ve already sunk time into Palworld’s 1.0 launch and you’re looking for something with a completely different tone, The Mound’s horror-first, co-op-focused design is about as far from Palworld’s creature-collecting as this month’s releases get.
For co-op horror fans specifically, The Mound arrives at a good moment — it’s a smaller, sharper alternative to the survival-crafting horror games that have dominated the genre’s recent releases, betting on a tight four-person premise instead of an open world stuffed with systems.
What’s Next
ACE Team hasn’t announced post-launch content plans yet, which isn’t unusual for a day-one release — expect more detail once initial player feedback and Steam reviews settle in over the first week. Early Steam Community discussion is already comparing the madness mechanic favorably to co-op staples like Phasmophobia and Lethal Company, though it’s worth treating launch-day chatter as a first impression rather than a verdict — reviews and player counts over the next few days will tell the real story of whether this one has staying power or fades fast, the fate that meets most mid-budget co-op horror titles within a month of release.
If co-op horror with a genuinely different hook is what you’re after, the free demo is the lowest-risk way to see if the madness mechanic clicks before committing to the full $29.99 (or $23.99 at the current launch discount). And if horror isn’t really your genre but you’re still looking for something to play with friends this month, GTA 6’s third trailer is expected soon — worth keeping an eye on if you’d rather wait for the next big co-op-adjacent release than commit to a jungle full of monsters tonight.
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