Available at Amazon.com ^[1]

Imagine sitting down at a diner and breaking out…CTHULHU! Well, to play this game that’s exactly what we did. Produced by Steve Jackson Games, Cthulhu Dice ^[1] is a rapid descent into madness. You can literally lose your mind during this game or, as our waiter put it: your lunch.

We played with three people. To set up, each player gets three tokens which are included with the dice. Those beads represent your sanity. Then, the owner of the game (Moi, in fact) gets to choose who casts the first curse. Player A rolls to curse Player B and gets a tentacle. Player B loses one point of sanity to Player A and gets to roll a response. Player B rolls a Cthulhu. Now everyone loses a point of sanity. The turn has thus ended and the next player gets to go.

The game’s winner is either Cthulhu (e.g. Everyone has gone mad and has lost all their sanity points) or the last player is left with all their faculties and has not run screaming in terror. This is determined by whether or not you have any tokens left.

I had a lot of fun with this game because I can take Cthulhu Dice anywhere and it’s a fast game. We blew through four rounds before our meal popped up and were laughing at the table. The set comes pre-packaged with a ziploc bag and the twelve-sided die is really well-designed. I had no trouble reading the symbols and was happy it was a little bigger than a regular d12.

If you follow my board game and card game reviews, you know that one of my main requirements is to ensure that all the pieces fit back in the box after I take them out. I’m also happy to report that even the instructions fold up nicely here and I have no problem carting the game around in my purse. For me, that’s a huge bonus because it’s nice to whip out a game like this on-the-go that multiple people can play. My only sticking point, if I had to have one, would be to have a smaller, more durable instruction sheet. Even if I don’t need to read them every time I play, I like to keep all the pieces to my games in their original packaging. Call me anal-retentive I know, but it’s also the collector in me talking.

Still don’t get how Cthulhu Dice works? I did a little homework and found a cute (I mean, really scary) Cthulhu Dice demo ^[2] where you can play through a sample round.

If you’re looking for something fun, short and family-friendly, then this game has a lot of long-term playing power. It’s not overly complicated and it’s so easy, even a cultist could play it.