Recent reviews by SandlewoodGames

Yeah pretty much better in every way

Love it

Interactive Musical Visual novel, yes please!

Honestly might be my favourite yet

Ya it's pretty much exactly what it looks like. Smooth simple UI and functional and cross play online. It's great, just wish you could unlock some skins instead of having to buy them all but it's pretty great all the same.

Love this game and this adaptation of it

Yea gimmie more please

Awesome adaptation of an amazing game, kinda buggy and has some QoL issues but honestly it's sick

Might come back and write a longer version of this review later but I just wanna say my quick thoughts now. It's not the game that I wanted, a lot of folks I think as well wanted basically Mansions of Madness in a video game. The old video preview for this game had talk about procedural generated mansions for re-playablity, and mentioned how that game was their inspiration. I'm certain that the folding of fantasy flight interactive caused this games radical transformation, although I haven't looked into it much. That said the game that we got....
Is kinda good actually, it's not amazing but its basically Arkham Xcom lite.

Fantasy Flight's Arkham flies franchise, is a love of mine it was actually my into to Lovecraft and I am sucker for the kinda pulpy gamified version of the mythos that it presents. I know all these investigators from my hours in the table top entries so it was very fun for me to have these characters in a video game. If you aren't already a fan of any Arkham file games then i would l say you might not enjoy the minimalism used in this game, and even I have to admit that the lack of variety in animations does make the game look kinda cheap. (All items are used in a weird 'video gamey' animation that always looks silly but works for gameplay) also the voice acting often feels 'first take' still none of this really distracts from the fun kinda campy story that feels very much like the thing other Arkham file games would do.

Game play wise, this game is a mix of exploration and combat. The exploration has you walking around and interacting with icons that sometimes offer a choice. These "complex" interactions have similar sounding options often enough but you have to read carefully inorder to figure out which to use. Wrong answers advance the mythos clock which triggers effects when full. I like this system well enough especially since complex interactions have an associated skill which if your party has that skill will tell you what choice to make, however sometimes it did feel like the hint was too vague and that is frustrating.
You also collect items to use in combat, inventory management is kinda important in this game or at least deciding what is important enough to make it into your precious few slots. Every weapon in the game will break over uses, which I dont really like in games but in this game it's kinda part of the challenge and I do think they give out the right items, you just dont always have room for them.

Combat is like a xcom lit game with action points and overwatch, it seems pretty simple and easy but as the game goes on the fights get kinda hard, combined with the inventory system and I found by mission five it was becoming a real game. Magic is really good in this game which does feel odd for Lovecraft AND for Arkham file this is BY FAR the most powerful magic has ever been. It basically always does what you want and then 50% of the time ALSO does some other effect, half of the time just doing extra damage to a enemy or healing your teammate. Of course the time you except that extra damage it suddenly blinds your guy on over watch, but I still found myself SUPER EAGER to cast magic all the time. Not sure if that'sa good or a bad but certainly different. Also I found the controls a little finicky like it was needlessly hard to get the right consumable selected in battle using controller.

Over all again I REALLY wanted and still want a MoM game but this game is a fun entry into the Arkham Horror franchise, I wish the story was less linear, I wish it was the board game, I wish it was multiplayer, but really for what it is and how it came to be, it's a good game.

Like town of Salem on steroids