Arkham Horror

Pew pew pew

How cool is that this game served as a gateway to the whole Cthulhu mythos thing for me? Pretty cool, I tell you. Coincidentally, it was one of the first modern, more complex board games that I've played and I fell in sort of love with it. It is a lot of fun and I accept almost every chance to play it. However, that's because the offers don't really come frequently.

Arkham Horror is a game of huge scope. It takes up a lot of space and you have to have a free day to play it (we rarely finished it under 6 hours) and it does require a lot of attention and a right mindset. New players are usually surprised by its ridiculously complicated rules and some casual players just can't get into the role-playing, story-telling aspect of the game and to be honest, without it, the game boggles down to a dice rolling frenzy, but more on that later. It just is not for everyone, but it's quite rewarding to those who enjoy Lovecraft's mythos and are not afraid to lose sanity to tentacles in shadows.

It takes up a lot of space

For those who don't know what is Cthulhu and what is the big deal with it, here's a short review. Cthulhu is one of the Old Ones, monstrously huge beings that arrived to our planet a very long time ago. Some Old Ones are asleep, waiting for the time of their return to come, other walk among us and cause chaos and some are not even here, they are in different worlds, gaining power through the their cults here on Earth. These beings are so terrifying, so bizzare that those unlucky to find themselves somehow influenced by them typically lose their mind. The stories about the Elder Gods, Old Ones and stuff like that were written by H. P. Lovecraft and eventually the mythos he created was picked up by other, better writers and became pretty popular long after the author's death.

Cthulhu or one of several other Elder Gods / dreadful slimy things is the big bad in this game. They're ready to burst out into our world and the only ones who can prevent it are the players - investigators. Either on purpose or coincidentally, these characters arrive to the city of Arkham (no connection to Batman's Arkham afaik) where strange things take place. Monsters roam the streets and gates to unknown dimensions open around the town and it's clear that rather sooner than later something very bad will happen. The players play cooperatively against the game - their goal is to prevent the impending arrival of the Old One by keeping the number of monsters walking around low and closing the interdimensional gates. However, that is a time and resource consuming process and the more players there are, the more diligently they must work together to close the gates in time, dispose of horrors in the streets and get well equiped for a possible final fight with the Elder God. You see, if investigators fail to close gates in time, the angry God (or whoever) arrives but all is not lost yet, as there is a chance that the being will be defeated in a fight with all the players.

Shubb-Niggurath is a bitch

Usually it's the end though as the fight tends to be pretty hard.

What the game does very well is presenting the situation of an approaching end. Monsters start pouring out of gates as soon as the game starts and as their number grows and the panic in the city increases, shops where investigators are able to buy weapons and magic items gradually close. The players slowly (or sometimes pretty soon) lose their sanity and need to be "cured" in a local asylum, depending on what expansions you own, they may get hurt or even corrupted by the evil influence (growing tentacles, "joining the winning side" and what not). To me, these statuses are there to make the game harder and to support the story-telling aspect of the game.

The game itself takes place in locations in and around the town. Some locations are safe, you can meet allies there for example, some are more dangerous with better rewards for the courageous and lucky ones that decide to explore them. In most of the locations you have to draw a card that tells you in a short story what happened to you there. Somewhere you may find a dark gentleman offering you unlimited knowledge in exchange for something, elsewhere you may infiltrate a secret cult to find its secrets. Reading these cards and resolving the conflicts they present (through die rolling) is where the game is most fun. Furthermore, before being able to close a gate that leads to another dimension, one must explore that world. The sheer craziness of what is happening there is extremely satisfying and stands as the high point of the gameplay. I remember once finding a statue of my character that suggested that in another world, I was a highly influential person which filled me with resolve and I was ready to fight whatever was to come next. Other time, exploring the lost city of Carcosa, I realized that the moon on the night sky was nearer to me than the spires of the city, the realization of that plunged me into madness and I became lost in time and space.

a lot of stuff for a simple character sheet

The descent into madness is one of the main features of the game. Every character has several states, two of them being stamina (health) and sanity. While you lose stamina in combat, as one usually does, sanity is gradually lost when encountering otherworld entities. Before every fight with a monster, the investigator must roll for horror check to see if he/she did not go insane just from seeing the impossible monsters.

While the game is very enjoyable, it is not exactly easy to win. Not only the investigators must cooperate but they have to solve problems (i.e. close the gates) as soon as possible. The next issue comes with every game where chance determines its progress - there's a card drawn each turn saying what monster moves where, which location a gate opens at and what event is affecting the gameplay for the turn. So sometime the game lacks tempo and sometimes you might be overwhelmed by horrors in couple turns after starting it. Nevertheless, what I mind the most (and I've already mentioned in the post about A Touch of Evil) is the dice rolling frenzy that ALWAYS comes sooner or later in the game. Soon you find yourself rolling numbers of dice for every occasion, which in my opinion is easy but not the best way to raise a player's chance of success. But then again, I guess it does add to the "making you crazy" theme the game builds upon :)

So to wrap this up, why should be Arkham Horror played? It is a lot of fun. A lot of crazy, mad, bizzare fun. The cooperative aspect of the gameplay combined with the pretty high difficulty set by the game's system poses an enjoyable challenge for the group of players. The only problem is to get through the rulebook but after that, it really depends on the players if they enjoy the tentacles-and-teeth atmosphere or if they prefer something less weird and less ameri-trash... like Carcassonne for example.