by: Michael Barnes

Mansions of Madness, the new Arkham Horror-branded game from designer Corey Konieszcka, is one of the most fragile, uneven, and unreliable board games I have ever played. Anything from an easily flubbed setup to a single player at the table that doesn’t grasp the game’s intensely story-driven concept threatens to capsize the entire experience. Mansions of Madness runs blisteringly hot or shockingly cold and it's difficult to determine going in which version you're going to get.

A Keeper (that’s what the rules call its version of a dungeon master) that plays competitively could ruin everyone’s fun by simply brutalizing investigators or by not acceding to the intrinsic narrative function the role demands. The stories that are included with the game are not consistent and some are definitely more interesting than others. Anyone playing this game like they would either Arkham Horror or Descent—its most direct mechanical antecedents—simply won’t find what they might be looking for and those looking for a more serious RPG-styled game might be flummoxed by the rigidity of its board game format. Even the product itself is wildly mixed, with great miniatures and artwork counterbalanced by poorly planned production design, terrible organization of content and inexcusable errors in the rulebooks and component texts.

My first game was a complete and abject disaster, my second was one of the most amazingly detailed and narrative experiences I’ve ever had sitting around a board game. My third was rather ho-hum and ended prematurely when it was clear halfway through that the Keeper had no way of winning. But then my fourth had one of the most heart stopping, skin-of-the-teeth finales I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing through. The fifth game was entertaining but too long and poorly paced. This is a volatile, instable game, no doubt about it. But it is also frequently brilliant, sometimes suggests a daring new future for the board games medium, and it occasionally might very well be the best horror board game published to date.

Set squarely in the same exaggerated Lovecraftian milieu of the wildly popular Arkham Horror, Mansions of Madness casts the players as familiar investigators from that game attempting to locate clues in order to prevent a negative outcome in one of five very specific stories that each feature some limited variation. Setup is fairly complex, requiring the placement of modular tiles along with story-specific stacks of exploration cards and room features. Hidden among the exploration cards are clue cards that serve as waypoints to move the story forward. The Keeper also has a timer deck that will force the story along to a conclusion should the investigators tarry too long.

The Keeper player is charged with marshalling the Mythos beasties and baddies as well as providing friction by way of card play and abilities powered by a simple threat token resource mechanic. Each story requires a specific set of Keeper ability and Mythos cards to maintain theme and setting. Before each game, the Keeper crafts the scenario based on a couple of multiple choice questions that identify where items and clues are on the map as well as indicating objectives and agendas. There are just a few monsters and adversaries included, so it is definitely not a monster-bashing, combat-focused game. The monsters are incredibly dangerous, resilient, and threatening from the lowest axe-wielding maniac to the big boss Shoggoth.

There isn’t much to the core gameplay, particularly compared to the over-complication that has plagued many of Fantasy Flight’s recent releases. Investigators can move twice and take an action or a third move. If they encounter an exploration card, it’s turned over and resolved. Investigators have a battery of stats and the game uses a single ten-sided die for all resolutions. Roll low.

Mechanically, the game isn’t very impressive and it doesn’t represent much of an evolution over other adventure games. Taken as a set of rules and mechanics alone, Mansions of Madness is dull and uninteresting. Simple resource management, item cards, skill checks, blah blah blah. At its worst, it could very easily and defensibly be argued that it is systematically uninspired and indicative of homogenous in-house design at Fantasy Flight. It isn’t hard to pick the game apart and identify its constituent analogues in previous games released by the firm. It feels cannibalistic to the extreme.

However, something magical might happen while you’re playing it. If that happens or not is largely dependent on whether you are playing with (or are) a good Keeper that understands that creating a shared, narrative experience is more important than ‘winning’ the game. Keepers also need to use the flavor text on all of the cards as a jump-off point to illuminate unmentioned detail or to enhance atmosphere. If the players understand that what they are playing is essentially a tightly structured, carefully metered light role-playing game that isn’t so much about strategy or tactics, then you might find that Mansions of Madness is an incredibly vivid, exhilarating experience.