H. P. Lovecraft's
Cthuhlu universe has been the subject of a lot of games down the
years, and Fantasy Flight's Arkham Horror a series of board games is
commonly considered to be one of the most effective interpretations.
Sadly my experience with that lineage is somewhat non-existent, so
when I picked up their spin-off game Elder Signs on iOS it was on the
basis of the strength of my affection for the mythology and board
games in general.
Having first read about
Elder Signs on Tom Chick's Quarter to Three game diary and found myself
intrigued I've put about 7 to 8 hours into the game. I've played a
couple of fantasy flight games before and they live up to a
well-deserved reputation for Thematically strong but sometimes
mechanically light games (so called Ameritrash games).
In Elder signs you control a team of paranormal in investigators
wondering through the demon infested halls of the Miskatonic
University Museum in prohibition era America. Trying to find the
ancient symbols that will allow you to seal away a Elder god
threatening to break into our reality.
In my experience the
success or failure of the translations of board games to iOS tends to
depend on how good a job the App does of teaching the game. Unlike
video games the mechanics in a board game are always close to the
surface, so it is always important for a player to be able to be able
to get to grips with them so they can begin to feel their way around
the confines of the system.
In some ways I feel FF
should be good at this by now boardgames are a social medium, so when
a developer fails at this its often painfully obvious. There is
nothing worse than a half dozen people sitting around a table,
staring at a board with blank looks on their faces and not feeling
like anyone knows what to do.
In most gaming groups
having at least one person around who can teach the other players is
considered pretty essential. What companies have struggled for years
with is how to work with a group where no one can fill this role. Its
become increasingly popular to offer video tutorials on a games
website to help walk people through their first game, which is
exactly the system that Fantasy Flight use here.
The problem is that
this is a video game not a board game, and video game players are
used to being allowed to learn through tutorials. For all the
problems a bad implementation can cause, tutorials in video games are
a far more effective and direct form of communication than a video
walk through typical is. Without a way to test the rules of the game
world first time players of Elder Signs can easily mistake its
obtuseness for cruelty. FF needs to understand that it has this
option of being able to directly tutor someone and use it better in
future releases.
This general lack of
transparency is most problematic when dealing with the Glyph
systems,one the games main elements. Glyphs are used to control
success or failure in any of the encounters your investigators have
while searching the museum. They are based on a series of what are
essentially 6 sided dice rolls.
When you hold a
physical dice in your hand and turn it over you can intuitively get a
feeling for your chances of achieving a result. Elder Signs problems
occur because FF seem to be assuming that players have the same
instant familiarity with a digital dice as they do when they handle a
physical one. Where as the truth is this is something you simply do
not get when you are just watching a row of random 'slots' show up on
screen.
Now it is true that if
you dig into the games help guide you can uncover this information,
but on a iOS release a developer just can't make the assumption that
every player will have the time or the inclination to sit down and
read a manual. The information should be available in the game not in
a separate help file.
In the end I have
enjoyed my time with Elder Signs. Initially at least it does a great
job of creating a strong resonance between the gameplay mechanics and
the uncaring universe of Lovecraftian horror stories. However after
you do get past it's obtuse luring curve it looses allot of this, and
you find yourself winning far more often than perhaps feels
appropriate for a mythology where grisly failure is the norm.
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