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My family and I have always enjoyed playing board games. In the past, when My wife and I have visited my parents, who are both now in their sixties, we have often enjoyed a game of Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, or Cluedo. Last Christmas, that all changed. We almost blew my parents’ minds with a complex, elaborate, horror-themed game called Elder Sign.
My Father is one of the most reluctant gamers you could ever meet, seemingly content with a simple game of noughts and crosses or draughts. Elder Sign rocked my Father’s world. On no less than four nights, across that single Christmas period, I bore witness to him asking, with surprising intensity, if there was any way for him to get an extra dice roll, or if anyone else around the table had any special abilities to replenish his stamina. In playing Elder Sign, I had created a monster, by introducing My Father to a game filled with monsters.
Overview
It doesn’t get more epic than an intense showdown, with the ultimate Evil that is the monsters conjured by the mind of HP Lovecraft. The sense of foreboding doom grows in intensity, as you and your investigative colleagues get closer to either banishing the Ancient One or having to face off against them, in an almost unwinnable battle. Elder Sign is a great introduction to the world of modern gaming, as it is relatively straightforward, at every turn, whilst engaging even the most reluctant of player, with a solid story and a relatable horror theme.
With Elder Sign, newcomers will get an enlightening introduction to the notion of cooperative gaming too. If you are accustomed to the more familiar notion of fleecing your gaming companions of their hard-earned cash, when they land on a square that you’ve essentially been obliged to buy, simply because you landed on it first, then cooperative gameplay of Elder Sign will be a refreshing change.
Set Up & Pack Down
Some might say that the setting up of Elder Sign isn’t too harrowing. However, if like me and many others I’m sure, you glean some sort of sick satisfaction from setting up and then packing down a game, then I will instead say that set up isn’t too time consuming. It also only takes an average amount of time learning to play Elder Sign, unlike some other games. Let’s face it, it’s not really game night when three hours are spent trying to figure out the rules, before it’s time for your guests to depart in exhaustion.
Packing Elder Sign down is a totally different story. I’m not entirely sure what the Elder Sign’s developers expect you to do with player markers, sanity tokens, stamina tokens, Elder Sign tokens, Doom track tokens, clue tokens, monster markers, all the cards and all the dice, when the box has no partitions or slots. Of course, it’s not enough to put me off Elder Sign. I purchased some small zip lock bags to separate the vast range of different tokens before effectively chucking them into an empty cardboard box. Some semblance of storage organisation, would be a welcome addition.
Gameplay
Gameplay is fast-paced, which can be exciting as well as frustrating, when you accidentally make a hasty choice to play an Adventure card that you’re dismally underprepared for. Many a time I’ve found myself overly confident when placing my player marker on an Adventure card, only to find that I’m actually very low on sanity or stamina tokens, possess no extra dice rolls and one of the dice is locked, meaning I had a vastly reduced chance of resolving that specific Adventure card. This is often accompanied by combined disappointment and hilarity from my teammates.
I think one of the best things about Elder Sign is the variation in gameplay. It seems that every game is different, due to the vast combinations of Adventure cards, characters, and item and spell cards. I’ve played Elder Sign on my own and experienced deep despair, at my rotten luck with the dice rolls and my poor fortune with Item and Spell cards. In stark contrast, I’ve played with friends and family members, when absolutely everything has been going our way and we’ve felt invincible, in the face of the darkest demonic creatures the underworld can throw at us.
The pull of this Elder Sign is that, whichever of these outcomes you find yourself experiencing, it’s still thoroughly enjoyable. You never feel like giving up or sweeping everything off the table and on to the floor in a fit of rage, because the Elder Sign is designed in such a way that your fortunes can change literally on a dice roll or a card draw, and regularly does.
Summary
In essence, Elder Sign feels like an epic, without as much faff to set up or to learn. It’s engaging, even for your elderly Dad, who would normally rather fall asleep in front of a crime thriller. And it has a thrilling story, which gives you a sense of affinity to the characters and a very real urgency to save all of humanity from the unthinkable Evil of dark dimensions. A great game, Elder Sign is definitely one to have in the collection.