Tag: lovecraft

Top 10 Cooperative Cthulhu Mythos Games!

Welcome to the end … of Cooperative Cthulhu month! We’ve seen three brand new cooperative Cthulhu games in the last month! How do these stack up against old favorites? It seems fitting to end Cooperative Cthulhu month with a Top 10!

This list is a composite of about 20 different people’s opinions! It was compiled over the last month to try and capture what a community of board gamers think of cooperative Cthulhu games! The data wasn’t clear in some cases, so I made the best judgment I could based on all the ratings I saw! In the end, my preferences tended to shape the final list!

10. Elder Sign

At its core, Elder Sign is really just a dice game, kinda like Yahtzee. But it’s the expansions that keep Elder Sign alive and thematic! Players explore someplace creepy, a museum, an ice flow, the oceans, … and uses dice to help resolve things!


This one may have made the list for nostalgic reasons, but there are so many expansions that keep this game fresh and alive through the years!

A lot of people put this on their list, even if it wasn’t their favorite Cthulhu-esque game! This is a favorite that still comes out from time to time!

9. Cthulhu Rift

I was surprised how much my friends who have played Cthulhu Rift liked it! Not many have played this, but those who had liked it and its roll-and-write simplicity!

Like any good Cthulhu game, players must fight cultists, navigate Arkham, find clues, and plug portals! It’s surprising how well this works in a roll-and-write (kind of) games.

Take a look at our review of Cthulhu Rift to see if you might be interested in this! This is a bit of hidden gem, but all my friends who played this have liked it!

8. Roll For Great Old Ones

Roll For Great Old Ones was one of our favorite cooperative roll-and-write games from the Top 10 Cooperative Roll-And-Write Games! It’s actually quite thematic for a roll-and-write game in this universe!

Every turn, players roll the dice and “COPY TWICE” and mark things off their sheet! Summon creatures! Perform rituals! This is a fairly complicated roll-and-write with lots of stuff going on. See one of the the great laminated sheets above! Everyone has their own sheet as well with different powers!

Even though this is a little more complicated that Cthulhu Rift (previously mentioned at #9), I generally think Roll For Great Old Ones is the better game. See our review of Roll for Great Old Ones here to see if this is something you might like.

7. Eldritch Horror

Although I have never played Eldritch Horror, a lot of my friends spoke up and gave Eldritch Horror a nod! For some of them, it replaces Arkham Horror 2nd Edition! It’s nominally a little shorter and less dense!

It’s also a little different theme! Rather than wandering the streets of Arkham looking for Cthulhoid type creatures, you are more like Indiana Jones wandering the earth! This is an adventure game in the Cthulhu-esque universe with epic combats and thematic treks across the globe!

Some people still prefer Arkham Horror 2nd edition, arguing that Eldritch Horror is not THAT much shorter or THAT much simpler. But, some people prefer Eldritch Horror for that epic sprawling adventure! Either way, it deserved a space!

6. Mansions of Madness: 2nd Edition

I have a complicated relationship with Mansion of Madness. The first time I played the 1st edition of Mansions of Madness, I absolutely hated it! The 1st edition is a one-vs-many game as one player runs the mansion, and the other players play against him! This antagonistic atmosphere really put me off the game.

I did pick up the 2nd Edition of Mansions of Madness on a whim, and I am glad I did! In the 2nd Edition, an app plays the role of the Mansion and the players all work together fully cooperatively to survive! Some people may not love the idea of an app running the bad guys, but I it does work.

Over the years, I have played some fun games of Mansions of Madness, usually on Halloween! The game is creepy and thematic as the app boths runs the game and plays creepy music! There’s a ton of content for the game and I have come to have some really good creepy times playing in this creepy Mansion! Also, a lot of my friends also gave the same props to Mansions of Madness, 2nd Edition.

5. Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Arkham Horror: The Card Game is probably the most divisive game on this list, which is why it is only #5! Some people loved it, and claimed it as their #1 game, and some people said how much they didn’t like it, and other people said that Marvel Champions has completely replaced The Arkham Horror Card Game for them! It’s very similar to Marvel Champions in terms of gameplay, but arguably the Arkham game has a lot more story!?

Still, a small group of my friends in Las Cruces get together and play this regularly! They LOVE it! There’s a ton of story! There is SO MUCH content with new adventures for this game! If you find yourself drawn to this, you will have plenty of content to choose from! Just be careful, as there is a 1st edition and 2nd edition (and newer one which is still compatible with 2nd).

4. Horror on the Orient Express

For a newer game, Horror on the Orient Express went over quite well with my groups! This is basically Cooperative Cthulhu Clue as players work together to solve a mystery while traveling on the Orient Express!

Players have to uncover facts to find out who are the Cultists in your group, with a kind of Clue-like vibe!

At the same time, players must fight Cthulhoid type creatures racing along with the train in the Dreamlands! It doesn’t matter if you solve the mystery if you can’t keep the train and its passengers safe!

There’s an awful lot to this game: it will require a substantial time investment. And there’s a ton of content and expansions! But, like some of us, if you love the idea of an Agatha Christie mystery novel taking place in a Cthulhu-esque world, this is a perfect game for you! See our review here of Horror on the Orient Express to see if this might be a game for you and your group!

3. Death May Die

Death May Die is not the most popular game in my gaming circles, but the people who love it, love it! This was far and away the favorite Cthulhu game of a number of people, which is why it’s so far up the list!

This was far and away Adrian’s favorite game! And I am pretty sure it is one of Mike Heller’s favorite Cthulhu games too!

2. Mythos Tales

This one might surprise you … some of you have probably never even heard of this! Mythos Tales is basically Sherlock Homes: Consulting Detective themed with Cthulhu Mythos! Of course, there’s a very good chance you’ll go insane solving the mystery, but that’s par for the course for most Cthulhu games!

Part of the reason this game ranks so highly is that it hit some of us so hard … in a good way! My friend Joe, at his job as a teacher, was able to engage at-risk readers with this game! The idea of reading stories, looking at maps, and investigating this world was so much fun! It turns out, if you gives someone a reason to read (investigating horror), then they want to read!

This is, unfortunately, long out-of-print, but it’s pretty easy to get a used copy. If you like the idea of being a detective in the Cthulhu world, using Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective mechanics, this is the perfect game for you! (Make sure you get the 2nd edition if you can; if not, make sure you get the errata).

1. Arkham Horror: 2nd Edition

Arkham Horror: 2nd edition has a special place among me and my friends! That’s why it’s #1! It was arguably the first cooperative board game many of us have played, and we embraced all the content for it! I think I personally have all the expansions for it! You’ll notice Arkham Horror: 3rd Edition is nowhere on this list … frankly, most of us saw no reason for investing in the 3rd edition since we still had and loved the 2nd edition!

At the time of this writing, a newer revised 2nd edition called Arkham Horror: Remastered will be coming to Gamefound. It will curious to see how well this does in our hearts and minds!

At the end of the day, Arkham Horror: 2nd edition is one of me and my friends favorite games of all time. Sure, it’s long. Sure, it’s overly thematic. Sure, it’s complex. But me and my friends have had so many fun hours playing Arkham Horror: 2nd edition, it had to be in the #1 spot!

Abyss Echo: A Game (?) in a H.P. Lovecraft-esque Universe. Part I: Unboxing and Initial Playthrough Thoughts

Welcome back to Cooperative Cthulhu Month! We’ve seen some new games in the past few weeks: Horror on the Orient Express (cooperative Cthulhu Clue) and Cthulhu Rift (a simple roll-and-write). This week, we head to the opposite end of the spectrum and take a look at a big, massive game in an H.P. Lovecraft-esque Universe called Abyss Echo: The Forbidden Rite!

Abyss Echo is a cooperative Escape Room type game …. well, maybe it’s more of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Game. Or something else? Well, it was on Kickstarter back in July 2025. It promised delivery in April 2026 and it was basically on time (it might have been a month or two late).

The reason it took me so long to get to this game: I had the hardest time getting a group of people together! This is a BIG game! And it requires a bit of commitment!

From the box (above): you can see an estimated 25h+ playthrough! Zoinks! I wanted to try to get a dedicated group together to play this so we could commit to the game (if we liked it).

Abyss Echo was on my Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2026 at the #2 position!!! Did we like it enough to continue playing?

Unboxing

I went ahead and backed at the ALL-IN level, which game me three boxes of stuff!

The Stretch Goals box (see above) was pretty much just “extraneous”.

It was mostly just “thematic” stuff which added to the vibe of the universe, but really did nothing for gameplay. If I had to do it over again, I would NOT have gotten all this. This box in particular really wasn’t useful. It looked cool.

The second box was a “Miskatonic Archive Box”: see above. It was a little more useful, but I’m still not sure I would have picked it up either.

The most useful thing was a notebook extender. But even that wasn’t that useful. The thing we LIKED the most was the thematic CD of music!

I don’t know; if you can get this box for a reasonable price, it might be worth getting.

The main box was the Abyss Echo: The Forbidden Rite box! See above!

This is a pretty big box of stuff.

There is a lot in here but it’s all really nice! A lot of it STILL seems extraneous!

The most important part of the game are the 4 parts of a story: see above.

Because this is a Cthulhu game, you must track you Sanity! See the San Tracker!

As you unlock things in the game, you will read from the Redacted Archive. When you “finish” the game, you will read from the 13 Echos … there are 13 endings, depending on where you get and your SANITY!!! If you ever die early, because you know, NO SANITY, you reading ending 0!

There’s also a little notebook that you will hold all your papers as you investigate: It is the centerpiece of the game.

Gameplay

I hesitate to call this a game: it has a few “Choose-Your-Own-Adventure” moments, and a few dice rolls, and some combat. But the majority of the game is reading text out loud for everyone. This feels like you are in a Lovecraft-based book club, where everyone takes turns reading from the book!

As you read, characters will be introduced. See above. It’s cool! The characters have story and depth and they are interesting: the little pop-ups help you see them in your mind’s eye!

The book is the most important part of this game: it’s the story. You start off in Chapter One. Based on what we’ve seen so far, it looks like each Chapter will take “about 6 hours”, so in a 3-hour game session will finish half a chapter. This does jive with the expected playtime: 25 hours+ of content! (8 sessions of 3 hours each?)

Over the course of the night, you pass the book around and people read from it and tell the very thematic story of students at Miskatonic University. It’s VERY thematic; it feels like the style of H.P. Lovecraft, but maybe the text flows a little more easily.

Let’s be clear: we read the story for a 3 hours and made a few dice rolls and a few Choose-Your-Own Adventure decisions. And that was 3 hours! It feels more like a “shared narrative” and less like a game.

Reactions

A group of me and 4 friends took one crazy evening to take this for a test run; our first session was abut 3.5 hours (.5 hours setting up, 3 hours playing). We made it about halfway through Chapter 1 (we think).

We have decided we will continue to the end of Chapter 1 and see if we want to continue from there. We liked it enough to continue moving forward for now.

I bought Abyss Echo as an expectation of an Escape Room game with elements of a Mystery in a Cthulhu universe … and I was completely wrong what this was. I was right about the theme, but the “game” is much much much more about reading. Much much more about reading!

Worries or Thematic Elements?

We did encounter some inconsistencies in the game as we read. Olga’s hair was first described as blonde then very black? And she drank Vodka but then it was Bourbon? We hope this is the game messing with us and not a translation issue (the game came from Hong Kong). After all, as our grip on reality loosens, you could see the game “thematically” being inconsistent so as to screw with you …

We just hope it’s not translation errors, but thematic immersion. We hope?

Legacy?

Is this a legacy game? There are stickers you put on a map. There are things to open. There are actually spaces to scratch-off (see Rodrigo has one space scratched).

So far, it sounds like it is will be a Legacy game, with the stickers and scratch-off, but it feels (from what we’ve seen) that it could be reset with just a little effort? Not sure. I think “nominally” this a is a Legacy game for the moment, but it’s not clear it has to be. I need to see more.

Conclusion

Abyss Echo was not at all what I expected. I thought it was going to be an Escape Room with Mystery/Detective elements; it’s really not. Abyss Echo is really an interactive novel with just a few points of “game” interactions (roll dice, make decisions, fight monsters), but generally you spend the vast majority of your time reading the text aloud to become part of a story set in the Miskatonic University.

Stepping back away from the disappointment of initial expectation, this was a wonderfully thematic group novel. My friends and I had fun reading aloud the text and immersing ourselves in an H.P. Lovecraft-esque world of Misakatonic University. The text was pretty good (it was thematic) and the characters were pretty interesting. And it was creepy … just like you expect in this world.

Be aware: H.P. Lovecraft has a stye that can be a little wordy/turgid and it really turns some people off. This H.P. Lovecraft writing style influences the text in Abyss Echo, but it is a little more modern. Still, if you hate H.P. Lovecraft’s writing style, this style and text might really turn you off.

We still have plenty of material to get through, and so far, my friends seem willing to continue playing. Will we make all the way through all 25 hours? Or will we stop after Chapter 1?

If you find yourself interested in this, just be aware of what it is and isn’t. There’s a lot of reading! And I think I recommend ONLY getting the base game: all the other boxes were almost useless.

Be on the lookout for Part II for our final summary. It may be a while if we play through the entire thing, or it may be over quickly if we decide this isn’t for us! Only time will tell!