The game was originally printed several years ago by Chaosium Inc and has now been beautifully reprinted by Fantasy Flight Games. Set-up will take a while as there are many cards and markers to set-up before play, but all the components will get used at some point during the game. A large board plus all the components means that you will need a large table to play on.

The objective of the game is for each player to take on the role of an Investigator. Each Investigator has several skills which are used throughout the game and can be adjusted from turn to turn. A nice touch is that the skills are paired, so if you increase your Speed you become less Sneaky, or your Fight increases but your Will decreases. Between them they have to try to stop the monsters coming through gateways from other worlds and close the gates to stop even more coming through before the town of Arkham goes insane at the horrors around town.

For a game with so many components, the actual gameplay is relatively straight forward.
During Upkeep, players refresh their investigator cards and peform any Upkeep actions, such as checking Bless or Curse.
In the Movement Phase, Investigators can move around the board, depending on their speed, stopping if they encounter the rampaging monsters, when they can evade or fight them.
Phase 3 is the Encounter phase where Investigators in locations can either draw from the location decks for the area they are in,or if a gate is present they enter the gate and enter an Other World. Other Worlds have their own Gate deck which players use to discover what happens to them. On emerging from a gate, Investigators can attempt to close and even seal a gate, which is how the investigators can win.
The 4th Mythos Phase involves drawing a card from the Mythos deck. these cards are multi-function and determine if any gates open, if any more clues are placed, if monsters move and what event occurs.

Naturally that is the bare bones of the game. Their are other rules for using skills which often involve modifiers. Interestingly, the modifiers determine how many dice are rolled rather than how many you deduct or add to the dice rolls.
Combat is also straight forward. After making a Horror check to see if you survive going insane at the sight of the monster, you roll dice similar to skill checks. Successes are determined by rolling a 5 or 6 and the monsters toughness determines how many success rolls are needed to defeat it.

The Victory conditions can go three ways. Investigators need to close all the gates on the board and have a number of gate trophies equal to or greater than the number of players. The Investigators can also win if they manage to seal six gate locations, or they players can banish the Ancient One by defeating it in combat when it awakens.

SUMMARY:
This really is a very good game and one of the best implementations of a co-operative game I have seen. The artwork and components all add to the feel of the game and you really feel you are struggling to hold back the night horrors that are besieging the town of Arkham.

Review by Brian