Arkham Horror

The first game we'll be looking at is Fantasy Flight Games' Arkham Horror. A lady at Paradigm Infinity recommended it to us quite some time back, and Key-jie-jie is a big fan of horror games. Zim-kor-kor was tracking the game and it just got reprinted, so he went ahead and bought the game. (Zim's note - SGD 85 at PI).

You can see from the picture, Ah Ping is pointing to some people driving an old car and shooting tommy guns at some monster, and that reflects the story. It is set in 1928 in the town of Arkham where an extra-dimensional being is about to enter Earth and destroy everyone and everything. It's a cooperative game with a gothic-ish horror theme that is shown in the mechanics. Your character can "die" from being injured physically (losing stamina), or going insane (losing sanity), and most monsters can damage your sanity even before you get to fight it... As for the cooperation part, all the human players are working together to save the world. The boardgame itself is the main opponent and each turn you draw a card to simulate the forces of the Mythos creeping ever closer to earth. This is kind of like another cooperative game, Shadows over Camelot.


The game itself has a lot of really nice parts, as you can see from this picture. A very nice, colorful board, and many many components. The lady at PI said that setting up was one of the things that detracted from the game, but so far it's been fine. Key-jie-jie is a bit worried that the cards will spoil easily since the material doesn't feel very long-lasting, so we're planning to laminate, maybe. Zim-kor-kor is worried that will make it difficult to combine with the other expansions...

In the game, we take on the role of investigators, trying to find out what is happening and then stop it. It's very cool, each of the 16 investigators has a little background story and many different ways to differentiate themselves. There are also stand-up chits for each investigator, quite cool! A bit less spectacular than the plastic figures from games like Fury of Dracula and Descent, though. What is very cool is that each character must trade off his stats between "Speed" and "Sneak", "Fight" and "Will", and "Lore" and "Luck", and can dynamically adjust this a little every turn to cater to changing situations. Makes for some very interesting decisions.

Here are some of the investigators exploring French Hill in the game. The green row of circles in the back represent other worlds - as the game goes on gates are opening to other dimensions in Arkham, spawning monsters and bringing the Ancient One (the big awful monster) closer to waking up and destroying the world. Investigators are supposed to explore the other worlds, and then close the gates to prevent the Ancient One from waking up. If you observe the little blue marker at the foot of the two explorers, that's a seal which one of the investigators has placed, preventing any gates from opening there.


Of course, everything would be much easier if not for the monsters which are running around trying to kill the characters. Some are fairly "usual" monsters like Zombies or Ghouls. Some, I've never heard of, but I guess they must be from this guy Lovecraft's books.

We can choose to hide from the monsters or fight them. Hiding is safe, but it's not good to let the monsters build up either. Eventually, even if the monsters don't get you, they'll slowly fill up Arkham and then all the normal civilians will get scared. This is shown in the "Terror Track" which steadily advances if too many monsters show up. Which is why eventually we'll try to kill them - at least the ones which are easier.. Closing gates and killing monsters gives you trophies anyway, which you can trade for goodies. In this case, Ah Ping traded some trophies to become the policeman in Arkham. You can see the three cards he's holding... Deputy of Arkham, Revolver, and Patrol Wagon, all very useful things.



These were my favorite items from the game -- You can see I had three gate trophies, and I had a magic sword and a shotgun, and many other things.

I think the game was quite fun. On the one hand, we can "level up" by picking up items, skills, and magic spells to help us fight the evil monsters. On the other hand, if we spend too much time "leveling" instead of actually fighting monsters and closing gates, then we can very quickly get into a position where we can't win, no matter what.

So there's a fair amount of tension, forcing us to move quickly to make sure we finish the game, rather than allowing us to take our time to make sure we're fully equipped.

Also, the encounters and events are very atmospheric and even a little creepy... I know I'm going to have trouble sleeping tonight. At least Key-jie-jie will hug me to sleep...

The rules are kind of complicated though. Zim-kor-kor spent a lot of time reading the rules and still got some wrong. But we'll get better as we get more experienced lah. Hopefully it won't get boring with familiarity. In the meantime, I'm giving it a rating of four oinks!