Foghorns Drown PC (Final)

Play as a remote village isolated beyond a lake veiled in thick fog. Mysteries and folklore haunt your dreams in this narrative-driven psychological horror game. The chain is stubborn. The fog is restless. The air smells like tar. The foghorns wake you, violent as ever. Another passenger has come to cross the fog. In the dream you wander through the pines, and come upon a body. Innocent and young, murdered in cold blood. By your hand or another? Makes no difference now. You play as a ferryman, bringing passengers across a foggy lake to a town drenched in mystery and folklore. The old ferryman has disappeared, and a murder has been committed.

How to tell real from dream when the dead speak again? Foghorns Drown is a game where the setup is all there is. An incredibly compelling premise: the ferryman is awoken in the night by a strange woman fleeing from something—be it just a bad dream or something else. Bodies start turning up, and reality begins to slip, meaning that every investigation raises the possibility that the crimes being investigated were committed by the protagonist. What this premise suggests is a sprawling investigation where the plot is uncovered piece by piece, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

The story happens with or without the player, while a cast of both disinterested and underutilized characters (there’s a whole swathe of fellow workers whose dialogue amounts to discussing the weather whenever they’re spoken to) offers little opportunity for meaningful interaction. There’s no ability to affect outcomes or uncover the plot before it slaps the player in the face. The gameplay of Foghorns Drown lacks any real player agency, bordering on being closer to a visual novel than any other genre. The most engaging interaction is a dartboard that’s strangely compelling to spend time with, but it’s hard not to imagine how much stronger Foghorns Drown could have been if its best ideas were better integrated.

What if the dialogue branched a little, allowing clever questions to lead to a greater understanding of the surroundings, or of the many familiar faces around town? What if the fishing event was an actual minigame where the happenings around the area could be discussed with Karl while fishing? What if the darts minigame was part of a segment spent getting drunk with fellow workers? What if there were a chance to truly get to know the setting before the massive ending, which implies huge relevance for things that, frankly, feel more like fleeting moments than a coherent, singular narrative?