My Review of Elder Sign

I've been eagerly anticipating this one for a while, and, now, after a weekend of losing my sanity to unspeakable otherworldly beings, here's my mostly favorable solo-centric review of Fantasy Flight Games' Lovecraftian dice-away-the-Abyss diversion, Elder Sign by Richard Launius and Kevin Wilson.

From the publisher:

It is 1926, and the museum’s extensive collection of exotic curios and occult artifacts poses a threat to the barriers between our world and the elder evils lurking between dimensions. Gates to the beyond begin to leak open, and terrifying creatures of increasing strength steal through them. Only a handful of investigators race against time to locate the eldritch symbols necessary to seal the portals forever.

Elder Sign features 48 Adventure cards representing the supernatural events and places of intrigue in and around the museum the investigators must explore to stop the Ancient One. During game setup, players build the museum with six initial Adventure cards, chosen at random. The staggering number of possible museums means that investigators will almost never pursue the same sets of clues in two separate games. Additionally, all Adventure cards feature unique requirements, and many have powerful text that radically alter gameplay. 

Each of the 16 available investigators have individual talents and resources they bring to the search for the Elder Signs. Many investigators dedicate themselves to a specific research focus, allowing players to alter dice rolls or substitute one die result for another. Some focus on acquiring more resources. Others can restore sanity or stamina to investigators who have suffered the loss of either. 

In order to resolve an Adventure, you must match dice results against the requirements for each of the Adventure card’s tasks. If you fail to complete all of an Adventure’s tasks, your investigator suffers the consequences. Often this means a loss of sanity or stamina–or both. Investigators who have their sanity or stamina reduced to zero are devoured and removed from play.

My observations after 4 solo games (2 wins, 2 losses):

Physical Engagement: Fair
• A quick set-up is important to a solo player, and Elder Sign succeeds here. FFG included handy little plastic zipper bags for storage, so the cards get on the table in no time. The multitude of tiny counters takes a bit longer to sort out, but getting a game underway as soon as free time and the right mood align is not a problem.
• About a 3' x 2' area of table surface is all that's required to lay out all the components of the game, and that's ideal for my solo comfort.
• Playing the game requires reading teeny-tiny, dainty fonts on large- and (much worse) small-sized cards. Not fun. It's as if FFG put together a lovely product and then fired a shrink ray at it. Even with 20/20 eyesight, I was straining at times to make out the pertinent information, and nothing I did was "at a glance." Big disappointment.

The (very) fine print of damnation...

Solo Mechanics: Excellent
• Thanks to the game's turn structure, solo play is no different from cooperative multiplayer play, so very few significant cards and elements go without use when playing alone. Soloists get their money's worth.
• Randomized combos and irregular variables make predicting the twists and turns of Elder Sign completely impossible as the risk-to-reward ratio intensifies. This practically guarantees that the strategic profile of the second half of a game is never the same twice. [Great feature: monsters - in reality, they're Adventure Card plug-ins that make a site more challenging to resolve. I already hate the Witch.]
• Lots of options each turn with few obvious choices + the ever-present pressure of impending doom = many moments of steely-eyed brooding, something soloists crave.
• Everything comes down to the roll of the dice. The designers have included several ways to adjust, ammend, and do-over bad rolls. Yet, no matter how many safeguards your character puts into play, nothing makes success certain.
• In the four games I played thus far, victory and defeat ran neck-and-neck all the way to the very end. I hope that trend continues.

Good roll? Bad roll? It's different every time...

Immersive Aesthetic: Good
• Do I feel like my character is exploring the mysteries of a museum? Not quite. The random six-card layout might have been better served as an abstraction of a Lovecraftian New England. Still, each "location" does develop its own character, and that's cool.
• Elements of cheeky humor - especially the silly characters like "Monterey Jack" who is forever banned from my table - diminish the atmosphere of Lovecraftian dread.
• Characters can be played to their thematic strengths, and each (so far) has felt different in action. When one gets devoured, you WILL panic for a moment.
• The albeit recycled artwork on the cards would lend so much more to the weird horror experience of the game's major themes if a player didn't need a magnifying glass to see most of it.
• That clock...nice.

It didn't help that Yog is evil and hated The Sound of Music...

Replay Value: Good
• The dynamics between what a player SHOULD do and what a player COULD do in Elder Sign are strong enough to support new emergent strategies with every game. Launius and Wilson deserve high marks for making a game that gives a player every opportunity to win while making one feel eager to try again after a loss.
• Customization is important to solo players, but you won't find obvious opportunities for that in Elder Sign, nor would I bother to tinker with any of the elements to put my own touch on it. Instructions for creating your own balanced character could have been cool, but are far from necessary.

Get this if you dig Lovecraftian themes and dice and all the good I mentioned above.

Don't get this if your eyesight might be strained by teeny images and text. Seriously.