A fast-paced, cooperative dice game of supernatural intrigue.
This Lovecraft-themed cooperative dice game came out quite some time ago, but it was only recently I picked up a copy of the base game and a few expansions second-hand. I’d actually played the game quite a lot in its iPad incarnation and enjoyed it as a solo diversion.
It all comes down to chucking dice and matching symbols with a bit of push-your-luck thrown in, basically. There’s nothing particularly thematic about this process – the artwork and background text does the heavy lifting in that regard – but it’s an amusing-enough, though long, filler that fans of Arkham Horror will probably enjoy, and they’ll recognise elements such as choosing a character, gaining clue tokens, and going up against an Ancient One. And the game accommodates anything from one to eight players.
It seems to be the consensus that the many expansions generally add more enjoyment, though I haven’t yet had the time to explore them. Of course, in true Fantasy Flight Fashion they bolt on a lot of extra rules and many, many more cards. You can tell by the length of this comprehensive rules summary that eventually there’s a lot going on for such an ostensibly straightforward game.
There’s nothing revolutionary here and the choices are bit limited, but Elder Sign succeeds in being a light semi-atmospheric dice game with a light Mythos theme and decent gameplay.
