Elder Sign

A lot of games I’ve been playing recently have been somewhat depressing. I’ve killed a lot of random monsters, battled zombies and run around demon-infested dimensions. With that in mind, I decided to buy something more light-hearted and uplifting. So Elder Sign was, of course, my first choice, as it’s full of fluffy bunnies and rainbows. It bills itself as a ‘game of suspense and supernatural investigation’ by which I assume it means ‘like Cluedo with hysterical and/or maniacal laughter’. It’s not, but more on that later.

It comes with over three hundred pieces (including cards, various counters and tokens) and the rulebook is almost twenty pages long so it’s not exactly the most simplistic of games. But if you can deal with spending some time to learn the game play, it’s remarkably straightforward. Most turns will consist of similar actions as you attempt to defeat the various monsters, ghouls and fluffy bunnies that pop up so you’ll find you learn the core game play quite quickly. What’s more tricky is keeping track of the other things in play that will affect what you can and can’t do.
The game revolves around one of the ancient evils from the Cthulhu mythos preparing a visit to his, hers or, in most cases, its favourite local museum. This impending visit is so exciting that lots of other terrifying creatures make haste to the museum and proceed to make a bit of a mess. The players, as people investigating the mess, must attempt not only to glue the priceless ming vase back together but stop the visiting ancient evil from getting past the front door (not that they need to – all ancient evils are bigger than the average elephant and are likely to get stuck in the turnstyle on the way in). And thus begins a fight against time as, at the stroke of midnight, each night, the ancient evil gets closer. The players need to collect ‘elder signs’ which, like a preserved shark to any sane human being, makes the ancient evil think twice about visiting. They do this by fulfilling tasks around the museum, which are randomly selected from a deck of cards. The harder the tasks, the bigger the reward if you complete it and the penalties if you fail. After each turn, the play advances the time by three hours, which changes certain cards and refreshes player abilities. Various instances advance the coming of the ancient evil. In my first game, these instances mainly came in the form of complete and utter failure coupled with a certain amount of pig-headedness that I was going to going to conquer the task, regardless of how long it took me and how many characters I killed in the process. Because death is not particularly a problem. I mean, ok, it’s a bit of a set back as you lose everything your previous character had. But you do get to come back with a new face, ability and items so I was quite happy to dive into a fight I couldn’t possibly win. Sometimes I’d come back as someone with a hat, which is always a plus in these situations.
Unfortunately, on my first play through, I did fail to win. Yig waltzed through the door, killed me before I had time to scream inarticulately and set about rearranging the world to his specifications, i.e. on fire.

But I still enjoyed myself immensely and I’m definitely going to bothering other people into playing it.
That said, I don’t actually have to. Elder Sign is quite flexible, as it can be played on your own or with seven other minions…I mean friends. That and everyone wins or everyone loses – it’s a co-operative game, all of you against the lumbering horror stuck in the turnstyle. It does eliminate the chance of people getting annoyed at each other for backstabbing so you can focus on getting annoyed because someone failed a roll and allowed the ancient evil to send the entire world insane. But at least you can be annoyed co-operatively.
One last point to make is that the game is absolutely beautiful. Out of all the games I own, this is definitely the nicest. There haven’t been any corners cut and it makes it a real pleasure to play.

Anyway, Elder Sign is brilliant and definitely worth the investment. Go, get.