Review Detail

Stuff to do before world ends:

√ Party at Hearst Castle
√ Party at Alcatraz
√ Strangle a wizard

This is my favorite kind of game, a choose-your-own-adventure book cut up and pasted onto cards.*

*For best effect, have the left-hand player draw and read the card for the active player—in dramatic fashion—while keeping the pass/fail results secret. Only tell them the choices, and then once made and rolled-for, the resulting outcome—don't give away any results they didn't get. This keeps things mysterious. (It's best for the left-hand player to do this as the right-hand player may still be doing bookkeeping while finishing up their turn, and it gives everyone a rotating slot as storyteller.)

Now that we've played enough to get the rhythm of the thing I quite like it, especially the feeling of putting your own team together, via allies, and taking on different aspects of the mega-plot while coordinating with other globe-trotting groups. You can almost see the red arrows gliding from place to place while the adventure-travel music beats a tattoo of ominous progress.

The mechanical stuff's fine, I guess—I don't really notice it, which says a lot—but so far the emergent narratives have been fantastic. Which is all I really care about.

So, does this replace Arkham Horror? Not really. They're two different beasts. Arkham is a mechanically quirky and convoluted thing (facets I find charming) about three-fisted Mythos adventures in New England, while Eldritch is the cleaner, tighter, "more modern" global version. They're different enough to be distinct and enjoyed for the unique experiences they provide.