Tower of Madness

What happens when you mix KerPlunk with Yahtzee and wrap it in a Cthulhu theme? It's Tower of Madness! (Published by Smirk & Dagger Games, 2018).

Tower of Madness is a semi-cooperative game for 3-5 players. Each player takes the role of a 1920s-style Investigator in everyone's favorite doomed township, Arkham.

The players must stop the Big Bad from coming forth to lay waste to our world. This is accomplished by rolling dice and matching up the symbols and clearing each location. Each location may have some special rules to make things a bit harder, or give a bonus.

If a player cannot match the symbols, then they must pull a tentacle out of the tower, which may release some colored marbles. Not all the marbles are bad for you: Blue gives you extra points at the end of the game, White gives you a new spell card. Of course the Red Marble gives you madness. Four of those and you go irreversibly insane, which then makes you work against the sane. If all three green marbles get dropped, then the Old One has arrived and all it lost. The Insane players can win if that happens.

Setup of the game is a bit tricky the first time or two, but you quickly get a handle on setting up the Tower. (Hint: start from the bottom and work up)  The Tower is cleverly held together by the magic of magnets, but be careful once it is loaded with marbles.

Madness!

Play is fast and a lot of fun. The Spell cards add a lot to the game, and give it the not a full co-op game. The sane players win if they go through the deck of locations without all three green marbles showing up, but the player with the most points is the overall winner.

A game can run up to about an hour, but could be much quicker. It's a light fun game that is a good addition to a Cthulhu game collection. Recommended.

The Doom has been summoned!

Go Roll Some Dice

And Pull Some Tentacles While You're At It