I recently found myself in a spooky mood and began seeking out iPhone apps that reflected that sensibility. I knew that this particular moment in history called for forgotten evils cast down in antiquity to rise again as a consequence of humanity's weakness and hubris. It called for failure, a world gone mad, and, of course, tentacles. And so I entered the forbidden runes into my iPhone and, after waking from fevered dreams in which the pitch-black stars hung in a dead sky over a decayed city, I discovered I had spent an entire week playing the excellent Lovecraftian mobile board game Elder Sign: Omens.
Alone in the Dark
The game is available on the iTunes App Store and the Google Play store for $3.99. The iPad-specific version costs $5.99. That increase in price feels unnecessary, especially considering that the Android version played fine on both a small screen and the larger Pixel C ( at Amazon) I used in testing. Still, even at $5.99 this title is a horrifically good bargain. Although the app warned me that it might run slowly on my iPhone 6 ( at Amazon) , I am impressed with how snappy and responsive it feels. That makes navigating a crowded, but not cramped, user interface much easier.
The app only offers pass-and-play-type interaction, with no option for online multiplayer. This is a bit unusual, but I don't hold it against Elder Sign. Considering that the game is cooperative and requires four players, I don't think it would do well online. Pass-and-play is actually my preference, since many top-notch games struggle to support an adequately sized community for online pick-up games. When playing San Juan ($3.99 at Apple.com) , for example, I spent more than an hour waiting for opponents and found nary a soul.
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For most of my testing, I played the game alone and was pleasantly surprised with the experience. It almost seems as if the publisher, Fantasy Flight Games, has accidentally created a first-rate solitaire version of its game—so much so that I was skeptical that a multi-person game would be worth playing. When I teamed up with a fellow board game nerd, however, I was pleasantly surprised that the game not only played well, but was fun in a uniquely different way. Definitely consider bringing this app to your next board game night or Walpurgisnacht.
The Game, In Brief
Elder Sign: Omens is part of same universe as the notoriously long and difficult board game Arkham Horror, which in turn is based closely on the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. Fantasy Flight has built up an impressive roster of board and card games based around this dark, weird-fiction setting, in which players invariably face off against sundry horrors and elder gods such as Hastur, Cthulhu, and the like. Elder Sign: Omens offers the core game along with expansions (like those of the physical version) available via in-app payments.
In Elder Sign: Omens, you and up to three other players play four investigators in a museum, working to stop an ancient, probably tentacle-laden menace from being unleashed on the world. You and your compatriots must collaborate to overcome your opponent by gathering a certain number of Elder Sign tokens. Do so, and you all win together. The monstrous horror is unleashed when it gathers the requisite number of opposing Doom tokens, which it receives during game events and when you fail certain challenges. If the long-contained enemy is successful, you all lose together and the game, quite glibly, says, "You have been devoured."
Despite your winning and losing as a team, Elder Sign is not strictly speaking what most board gamers would consider cooperative. In most cooperative titles, players cannot be eliminated without everyone losing. In Elder Sign, the rest of your team continues playing after you've died or gone insane. Normally I don't like games that force eliminated people to sit and wait until the game ends, but in Elder Sign there's nothing preventing you from continuing to contribute by advising your friends after you've been booted from the game. Also, dying horribly or descending into madness is a key feature in Lovecraft's stories, so it feels appropriate here, too.
Within the museum are various events with certain challenges that the investigators must face, such as traversing other dimensions or deciphering lost tomes. Each challenge has a certain number of symbols (called glyphs) that match those on the investigators' dice. Match the glyphs from each roll and you complete the challenge; run out of rolls and you fail. Failing, or sometimes even succeeding, a mission deducts points from an Investigator's health or sanity. Lose too much of either and your Investigator dies or goes mad. The penalties definitely influence decision-making, and are occasionally amusing. Losing a challenge set at a charity gala lowers your sanity, which seems fitting.
It sounds completely random, and there is a degree of that, but that's just the tip of this long dormant monstrosity asleep at the bottom of the ocean. Each investigator has a special ability to bring to bear, and special items let you make more rolls or use different dice with more favorable outcomes than the basic set. You have the option to set aside one die result during a turn, and a collaborative element lets you reserve an additional die for each investigator attempting a particular challenge. There's plenty of room for strategy, but that doesn't change the fact that this game is incredibly challenging—as any Cthulhu-based game should be.
An Eldritch App
Fantasy Flight is known for producing games with outstanding art and innumerable little widgets. I happen to like fiddly games like this because I am some kind of grotesque masochist, but they can seem intimidating and unnecessary to new players. I haven't played the physical version of Elder Sign, but I'm impressed with how the game preserves the feeling of a board game without oversimplifying it. In that way, it's very similar to D&D Lords of Waterdeep ($6.99 at Apple.com) , which deftly translates a massive game with oodles of moving pieces into something that's manageable on a small screen.
Balancing devotion to the original and innovation on a new platform is rarely easy. Star Realms, for example, painfully recreates every aspect of the card game, which doesn't really make sense on a phone. Lost Cities , on the other hand, completely reimagines the game into something that works on the phone but is very different from the original. Elder Sign gives players just enough to do while managing all the really complicated bits.
The app version of Elder Sign also uses all the board game's art, which looks fantastic and is seamlessly integrated. Retaining the original art is one of the reasons I really enjoyed Carcassonne ($9.99 at Apple.com) . The distinctive imagery of the challenges and characters makes it easier to tell what's happening in the game (with a little practice). It also adds to the replayability and the overall atmosphere. I relish looking at the bizarre and creepy images, and each game brings new horrors. Animated cut-scenes for the beginning, winning, and losing of games are small flourishes, but not something I usually see in digital board games. It certainly gives the game more of a high-end feel. The game also sounds terrific. It comes with a five-song original soundtrack that's moody, creepy, and entirely appropriate. A continuous flow of squeaks, growls, distant thunder, and sloshing tentacles makes turns more lively.
I should stress again that the game is very, very hard to win. Much of this is by design. Elder Sign, like Arkham Horror, is part of a growing trend of punishingly tough cooperative board games. If you've played Pandemic or Forbidden Island ($4.99 at Apple.com) , you know what I'm talking about. The challenges posed by the eldritch horrors in Elder Sign can be off-putting, but starting a new game in an app is far easier than resetting a physical board game after a real-life campaign.
One problem is that without the physical components, critical elements of Omens are much harder to follow. The in-game tutorial does a good job of explaining the game to first-time players—although it it's annoying that it doesn't include any subtitles and instead requires you to listen to the voiceover. What the tutorial doesn't do is explain that the act of "summoning glyphs" is analogous to rolling dice, and that each color die has a different distribution of glyphs. Learning the distribution for each die requires digging through the Help section. If real dice were included, discerning this kind of strategic information would be a snap.
Also, the game doesn't show you on the board where other investigators are; you have to highlight a challenge to see if it's occupied. And while a screen provides an overview of each investigator and their inventory, I struggled to keep track of who had what spells and items. That's particularly important in a cooperative game like this one, where coordination between players is key.
Embrace the Sleeping King
I must admit to being initially skeptical of Elder Sign: Omens. The comparatively high price and the notorious difficulty of Fantasy Flight's Arkham games made me wary. I worried that it would be all atmosphere, with no actual game beneath all the tentacles and elder gods. I was happily mistaken. While the game is heavy on visuals and general aesthetics, even razor-thin victories seem like massive accomplishments. The lack of multiplayer is a minor issue, as it plays well for a lone player and is surprisingly fun with more. While it would benefit from UI improvements to facilitate cooperation, it's another example of an excellent board game experience on mobile devices.
Elder Sign: Omens brings the weird-fiction horror board game to mobile devices, with all the tentacle-wriggling atmosphere of the original.
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