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Publisher's blurb:
Something terrible is happening in the seaside town of Innsmouth, a sinister and decaying place where terrible, ancient secrets are concealed. Unfortunately, your search for your origins leads you directly to its deserted and gloomy streets. What are the abhorrent denizens of Innsmouth hiding? What’s buried in the deep waters of the Devil Reef? Are you willing to put everything at risk just to know the truth about your origins? Choose Cthulhu: The shadow over Innsmouth is more than just a gamebook based on Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s work. Take over the role of the main characters in the original stories by Providence’s Master and face the cosmic horror of THE CTHULHU MYTHOS.
Publisher Blurb, Steve Jackson Games:
In search of your origins, you travel to the decaying streets of a seaside town full of terrible, ancient mysteries. What are the abhorrent denizens of Innsmouth hiding?
What’s buried in the deep waters of the Devil Reef? Are you willing to risk your own sanity just to know the truth?
- The game has a fun deck for Silas Marsh with recursion and draw.
- The cooperative nature of the playthrough and shared problem-solving.
- Engaging narrative elements revealed through the scenario book.
- Drawing curse tokens can be punishing.
- The difficulty of certain skill tests, especially with negative modifiers.
- Investigating the Order of Dagen, uncovering secrets of Inmouth, dealing with cultists and deep ones, a ritual disrupting humanity, and the awakening of Dagen.
- The interior of the old Masonic Hall, a flooded location, the grand entryway, the caves, the Hall of Blood, the Order of Dagen Hall, the caverns beneath the Order of Dagen's headquarters, a stone cell, a sacrificial pit.
- The game unfolds through scenario books with flavor text describing the investigators' experiences, setting the scene, and guiding the narrative progression.
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Asset and Ally Play — Players can play asset cards and allies to gain advantages and abilities.
- chaos bag — Tokens are drawn from a chaos bag to determine the outcome of skill tests. This bag is modified throughout the game by adding curse tokens and bless tokens.
- clue collection — Investigators need to collect clues from locations to progress the narrative and unlock objectives.
- Doom — Doom tokens are placed on act cards and enemies, advancing the game towards a potential loss condition if too much doom accumulates.
- Enemy Management — Investigators encounter and must deal with various enemies, including cultists and unique monsters, through combat or evasion.
- Flooded Locations — Some locations become flooded, introducing negative effects like taking damage or struggling for air.
- Hand Management — Players manage their hand of cards, deciding when to play them for maximum benefit.
- Key collection — Specific colored keys are required to unlock certain locations or advance in the scenario.
- recursion — The game involves effects that allow players to retrieve cards from their discard pile.
- Skill Tests — Investigators perform skill tests using their investigator's skills and the chaos bag. Successes are often compared to target numbers, with various outcomes based on the degree of success or failure.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- We're just discount marsh.
- It's the mechanic of this one is curse tokens.
- Just don't draw curse tokens.
- The train has stopped at the station.
- This is a really fun deck.
- All of Insmouth is consumed by this conspiracy.
- The terror of Devil Reef is dead.