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The addiction for the month is, without a doubt, Arkham Horror. Set in the 20’s era and using H.P. Lovecraft’s “Call of Cthulhu” setting, players take the role of a person who has gotten wind of the Ancient One who is trying to cause havok and decided to put a stop to it.

Win Conditions:

1-
There are gates to other worlds opening almost every turn. If you can close all of the gates at the same time, you chase the Ancient One away and he returns to his slumber.

2-
When closing a gate, there are methods in which you can “seal” it so that no gate may open in that location again. If you can seal six gates, the Ancient One does not wake up and the world is safe again.

3-
If the Ancient one wakes up, the final battle (epic boss fight) begins. If you kill The Ancient One, you have saved the world.

Loss Conditions:

1-
The Ancient One wakes up, you lose the final battle, and he devours your whole party.

That’s the gist, and what you get is an intense game on high-quality materials that’s likely to end with your party being eaten by the Ancient One… but at least it’s fun getting there.

Arkham Horror is my first truly cooperative board game. In the past I’ve played games where all but one player work together for victory and the other guy is a game master. I’ve also played a few “cooperative” games where it’s a team effort to win, but you want to win better than your mates.

This time around, there is no need for a Game Master, as all Non-player actions are directed through random draw of cards. Each player takes turns being “first player” and manipulates the board as directed during the appropriate phases.

These mechanics mean there is also no secrecy in the game. All players play with their cards face up on the table and discuss exact plans for each turn with everyone else, as coordination is essential if you hope to have a chance of keeping the world safe.

OK! Things to know before running out and picking up the Arkham Game…

There are a lot of rules:
This was the big ‘warning’ given to us multiple times while talking with the store employees. We were told that the rules are fairly complicated to learn and that it would take a few games before you didn’t need to play with the instruction book in front of you.

Me being me, that warning was less of a deterrent than a challenge. To be safe however, my wife and I slept a few days on the purchase. During that time, I found out that ALL Fantasy Flight games have their rulebook PDFs available for download so I got a chance to check out this ‘complicated rule set’ early.

The verdict is… If you’re a seasoned gamer, especially one with pen-and-paper experience, don’t be afraid. The rulebook is written beautifully. Currently I’m not sure which revision it’s on, but the work that has gone into explaining the rules and covering those “but what if” questions is obvious.

It’s difficult to win:
Again, not so much a deterrent as a challenge in my opinion… but they weren’t kidding. Arkham Horror plays with one goal in mind, and that’s TPK.

With no single player handling the adjudication, don’t expect and fudged dice rolls or difficulty adjustments when things get tough. The Arkham Game plays according to the cards that are drawn and if you’re not near perfect in your play, the world will die… good luck.

Thus far, I have played three two-player games, one three-player, and one five-player. All of them were difficult, but we have won more than we’ve lost at this point. I should point out that we’ve only successfully kept the Ancient One from waking up one time. The other victories were gained in the final battle.

A single game takes hours:
This was our final ‘warning’ before purchasing. We were told that a game can take upwards of four to five hours. At this point, our longest game was our first or second one (two-player games) where we were still learning. They took somewhere between three and four hours.

Once we had the rules down, games started ranging from two to three hours if we had new players in the party and no more than two if it’s just the two of us.

——

My recommendation? This isn’t a game to miss. Go to the Fantasy Flight Games website and download the rulebook, then go buy the game. Did I mention you can play it single-player? I haven’t yet, but I can only imagine it’s pretty intense.

We plan to pick up an expansion within two weeks.

Welllllll – My new game interest, as late as it is, is Hold’em Poker. In fact, I’m about to play in a Pokerstars Tournament this month.

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: 002938

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After questioning my friends who had purchased the game already, I went out and picked up Borderlands as a “Happy Birthday to me” present.

Immediately, my decision to make the purchase for PS3 instead of PC was met with ridicule by a few of my friends, but considering my 3 year old machine, lack of employment, and the fact that it looks amazing on my bigass HD television… I maintain that I have made the correct choice. Although I do wish they would start supporting wireless keyboard and mouse controls for console shooters.

The game itself has me hooked. There are one or two others that I can’t wait to get to (Demon Souls for one) but I can’t make myself consider anything other than Borderlands right now and considering that this is (supposed to be) a blog about making video games, I thought I would mention some of the mechanics that make this game work for me.

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To supplement our income while I’m unemployed, I’ve been watching a second grade girl for her mom between 3 and 6 pm…

This little girl doesn’t really like video games, or much of anything to be honest, but she’s been playing Noby Noby Boy for the past two hours.

Just proof that young kids are in a perpetual acid-trip state of mind I guess.

By “these” I mean the “yeah I disappeared for a while” posts – because typically when I disappear it’s due to stress and I feel the need to recount those things when I come back. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve decided to shift the Project Playerquest schedule – instead of running Thursday to Thursday, we’ll go Monday to Monday like a normal person… weird right? This way, the weekend activity can come after a full week of the player attraction efforts.

So, the graphs for the past week will go up today, and I’ll also be announcing this week’s scheme to capture innocent players and make them try our game.