3 min read

Challenging, fun, and thematic! It's Eldritch Horror!

Written by Die Rollin' - Oct 18 2022

There are evil forces at work, trying to bring forth the end of the world as we know it, luckily for us, there are a few brave(mad?) souls who will attempt to fend off the darkness before it’s too late, but with the odds stacked against them they’ll have to work well together or we’ll all suffer the consequences.

Let me start this off by saying the base game for Eldritch Horror is both easy to learn and challenging to win.

Cooperative games need to be harder to win than competitive games imho, especially when you have a horror theme pasted over the top of it and Eldritch Horror is harder to win, but not impossible. I feel it hits the right balance out of the gate, but there are options to increase and decrease the difficulty to suit the group.

In Eldritch horror you’ll be playing as an investigator against one of 4 elder beings. Each investigator plays differently with different abilities and attributes and each elder being comes with their own special rules and up to 2 decks of research and encounter cards so there’s plenty of variety.

To win, you’ll need to solve 3 (out of 4) mysteries which are specific to the Elder being you’ve chosen to pit yourself against. Each mystery has a different objective and you’ll need to work together to figure out how to achieve it in as quick a time as possible.

The game can be lost in a few different ways including when a Doom track reaches the 0 space and this can be sped up if there are multiple gates on the board (which spawn monsters and generally make your life difficult).

Of course you can close those gates, fight the monsters and also go on various adventures which vary depending on your location in the world, but you need to balance these out so that you don’t waste precious time and resources that could be spent on solving the mysteries.

There’s some luck in the game as you’ll be rolling dice and hoping to get a 5 or a 6. Some allies and items you can pick up along the way can mitigate some of that luck, but the odds can be against you some time.

The components and artwork are fantastic and all the flavour text really immerses you in the overall horror and mystery of the game.

The game can be played between 1-3 hours depending on your player count and can also be played solo which is a great option as it’s a good way to learn the game before playing with others.