The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu – Launch Issues, Trophy Bugs, and Is It Worth $35?

The anticipation leading up to the release of this underground horror adventure was palpable. We have spent months analyzing the release date and platforms, preparing our loadouts, and reading up on the dense Lovecraftian lore that inspired the setting. Now that the game is out in the wild and the OpenCritic pages are actively aggregating reviews, the reality of the launch build is settling in. While the core foundation of the game shows immense promise, the launch window has been incredibly rocky.

If you are currently playing or considering picking it up, you need to be aware of the technical hurdles. From devastating progress wipes to highly frustrating trophy glitches, the current state of the game is testing the patience of its player base. Let's break down exactly what is happening, how you can protect your save files, and whether the current asking price is justified.

The Honeymoon Phase: The First 15 Hours

The tragedy of the current technical faults is that there is a genuinely fantastic experience buried underneath the bugs. Early impressions highlight exactly why the community was so excited about this title in the first place. The opening hours are an absolute masterclass in atmospheric tension. When you first step into the subterranean world of K'n-yan and realize the sheer, oppressive scale of the ancient ruins, the game sinks its hooks into you.

Managing your light sources, navigating the crushing darkness, and reacting to the terrifying sound design creates an incredibly immersive survival loop. For the first 10 to 15 hours, everything feels fresh, dangerous, and engaging. You and your friends are constantly communicating, terrified of what might be lurking just outside the radius of your lanterns. The mechanics introduced in the early game demand tight cooperation and strategic thinking. If the game simply ended at the 15-hour mark, it might be hailed as one of the best surprise hits of the year.

However, a survival game relies on long-term progression—upgrading your gear, unlocking deeper biomes, and building your character. When that long-term progression is threatened by technical instability, the entire house of cards collapses, and the initial charm evaporates rapidly.

The Dealbreaker: Progress Wipes and Save Data Loss

The most severe issue currently plaguing the player base is a community-reported progress wipe bug. Imagine putting a dozen hours into a challenging co-op survival game, finally getting a handle on the punishing sanity mechanics, only to boot up the application the next day and find your character entirely wiped.

While the exact trigger is not officially confirmed by the developers yet, community testing suggests that sudden network disconnects, host migration failures, or crashing while the game is attempting to write to the autosave file can corrupt the data completely. Because the game relies heavily on cloud syncing and automatic saving to prevent "save scumming," a corrupted file often overwrites your good file immediately.

How to Protect Your Save File

Until a hotfix is deployed, you must take matters into your own hands.

For PlayStation 5 users, the auto-sync feature for PlayStation Plus cloud storage can actually be your worst enemy. If your local save gets corrupted and the console immediately uploads that broken file to the cloud, you lose your only backup. To prevent this, you should manually disable auto-sync for this specific title. Go to your PS5 Settings, navigate to Saved Data and Game/App Settings, select Saved Data (PS5), and then choose Sync Saved Data. Find the game on the list and toggle off the auto-sync option. From now on, make it a habit to manually upload your save to the cloud after every successful run where your progress remained intact. It is a tedious extra step, but it is the only reliable safety net right now.

If you are playing on PC, you have a bit more control over your local files, but you still need to be proactive. The community has reported that the game stores its local save data in the standard AppData directory. You can usually find this by pressing the Windows Key + R, typing %localappdata%, and looking for the folder associated with the game or the publisher. Once you locate the save file directory, you should manually copy the entire folder and paste it somewhere safe, like your desktop or a dedicated backup folder, after every major session. If you encounter the wipe bug during your next session, simply close the application completely, delete the corrupted folder in AppData, and replace it with your backed-up copy. It takes less than a minute to do this, and it will save you hours of frustration.

The Platinum Nightmare: Buggy Trophies and Achievements

Trophy hunters and achievement completionists are a dedicated bunch, but the current state of the achievement system is testing even the most patient players. Earning the Platinum right now is technically possible—we have seen a few dedicated players manage to secure it on Reddit—but it requires jumping through bizarre, frustrating technical hoops.

The root cause of the issue seems to be a severe desynchronization between the host of the multiplayer session and the joining clients. In most co-op titles, certain progression milestones trigger for everyone in the lobby simultaneously. However, findings indicate that the triggers here are completely scrambled based on your network status.

For instance, you might kill a specific boss or reach a new underground biome, and only the person hosting the game will receive the corresponding trophy. The players who joined the lobby get nothing, despite participating in the fight and spending their hard-earned resources. Conversely, and rather bafflingly, there are other specific action-oriented trophies that currently only register for the clients, leaving the host entirely empty-handed.

To secure all the trophies, a group of friends is forced to replay the entire campaign multiple times, intentionally swapping who hosts the lobby so that everyone gets a turn at unlocking the host-exclusive and client-exclusive achievements. It turns what should be a fun, organic playthrough into a tedious spreadsheet exercise. If you are a trophy hunter, our best advice is to simply play for fun right now and wait for a networking patch before attempting a serious 100% completion run.

Pricing and Value: Is $35 Justified?

Let’s talk about the price tag. At launch, the game is sitting at a $35 asking price. In the current gaming landscape, this places it squarely in the AA bracket—cheaper than a blockbuster release, but more expensive than most indie experimental titles.

Under normal circumstances, $35 for a robust co-op horror experience with a meaty campaign would be a very fair deal. But given the severe bugs and the very real risk of losing dozens of hours of progress, paying $35 right now feels incredibly steep to early adopters. Community sentiment heavily suggests that the value simply isn't there in the current build. Many players who pre-ordered have expressed regret, stating that $20 would be a much fairer price point for what essentially feels like an Early Access release.

If you compare it to picking up other massive co-op hits, you can often find highly polished, stable experiences for under $30. Until the developers patch out the progress-wiping bugs and fix the synchronization issues, that $35 price tag acts as a massive barrier to entry. If you are on the fence, the wisest move is to keep it on your wishlist and wait for a substantial sale.

Developer Communication and Future Patches

The silver lining in all of this is that the developers are not abandoning ship. They are actively monitoring the subreddits, Discord channels, and Steam forums, and they are acutely aware of the frustration. Community managers have confirmed that the team is actively trying to fix the progression wipes and network desynchronization.

While we do not have an exact timeline for the first major stability patch, the active communication is a good sign. The foundation of a phenomenal co-op horror game is sitting right there, waiting to be polished. Once the threat of losing your save data is removed and the co-op and crossplay mechanics are functioning as intended, this will easily be an easy recommendation for weekend gaming sessions.

For now, approach with caution, back up your saves constantly, and maybe hold off on grinding for those final few achievements until the dust settles.

Sources

• Reddit Search - The Mound
• Google News - The Mound Omen of Cthulhu Critic Reviews