Often in this genre, you’ll hunt for clues, disrupt rituals, gather evidence and then stop the Elder God’s plans. If you’re looking for the investigation and clue side of Lovecraftian horror, go for Mansions of Madness.

Cthulhu: Death May Die Is the Perfect Blend of Action, Strategy Review: Cthulhu: Death May Die Is the Perfect Blend of Action,

But the idea of celestial horrors, unspeakable curses, psychological torment and beings with unfathomable power is a tricky one to replicate. Knowing we can’t understand is the scariest element and should be what drives us to want to know more, inevitably making us go mad too. The issue you have with being on a timer is that you won’t have enough time to do everything you need to and come out untouched.Having this new speed coupled with the theme, lore, and weight it presents makes for a brilliant experience. The models are designed with horror in mind and look incredible, and they’re of brilliant quality too! You start the game insane, and while your long-term goal is to shoot Cthulhu in the face, so to speak, at some point during the game you'll probably fail to mitigate your dice rolls properly and your insanity will cause you to do something terrible — or maybe advantageous. It suits the theme beautifully but also makes you realise why these characters are taking on these tasks. Each investigator is unique in their set abilities and can level up throughout the course of the game.

Cthulhu: Death May Die by CMON — Kickstarter Cthulhu: Death May Die by CMON — Kickstarter

Finally, all necessary tokens are placed in reach of all players and players choose investigators and are dealt a random insanity. But if they can collect enough clues to find a weakness, or alter the ritual just enough to cause one, they can blast the god to death before it gets a foothold. However, this is nice enough for the cultists who you’ll punch to death with a few dice rolls, but no so much with the fire vampires, shoggoths, hunting horrors and such. They can be forced to be helpful outside of that, but generally speaking, they’ll fit into a plan of action. The episodes can be run with any Elder God, making the game repayable based on the number of Gods you have.

You now need to take action, and if that means punching Cthulhu right in his squid face, then so be it!

Cthulhu: Death May Die | Board Game | BoardGameGeek Cthulhu: Death May Die | Board Game | BoardGameGeek

Lovecraft references that in his writing a lot, often stating that the geometry of the elder gods’ homes was wrong or that seeing these horrors drove men mad instantly.The starting enemies are not the finite amount available, and the episode card only determines the variants of enemies. User functionality is at the heart of this design, and it may seem minor, but it makes a difference! Then, the game will stack up in power and pain and you’ll be forced to take sanity damage or real pain.

Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown - BoardGameGeek Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown - BoardGameGeek

Players take on the roles of investigators trying to stop rituals and eventually the Elder God behind them. Despite the need to go insane to get stronger, it only takes a few bad rolls with lots of horror results for things to go sideways! In one game, one player’s ability was to keep a mythos card and replay it when they went mad, which helped at some points and was unhelpful at others.But he saw people as broken from the off, and this is reflected in the characters and their abilities. Also, each investigator is afflicted with an insanity of sorts which will trigger when their sanity decreases.