When this game first came out, I didn’t pay much attention to it. It’s not normally the kind of thing I play, and I’m coming to feel like games based on the Cthulhu mythos have just lost their magic. There’s a solid market for mythos inspired games, and it seems like everyone’s angling for a piece of that market. Sometimes, the games are excellent. But the bad ones are really bad. If you combine that with me being more or less an indy snob, this game just wasn’t really on my radar.

After having met the brains behind the game at a private horror gaming event, I added the book to “The List Of Games I Need To Look At Closer.” When I was offered a review copy of the main book, I jumped at the chance.

Obvious things first. The book is 50 bucks (with PDF it’s $60). It’s gorgeous, and it’s full of stuff. The setting is a mixture of Cthulhu Mythos and Giant Mecha Anime. There’s more than enough here for you to start running your game or writing a campaign. If you’re already on the fence, then I’ll say it now: You Want This Book.

The system used is called Framewerk, a custom job that will probably remind you of White Wolf’s Storyteller system. They mix up the dice rolling a little by letting you pick different combos of dice from your dice pool for success, which is cool but may seem a little too fiddly for some. There’s some structure in place to spend points to affect die rolls, a mechanic I always like. And they stress pretty heavily throughout the book that telling a good story is the most important thing.

Which brings me to the setting. As far as the Cthulhu Mythos goes, if you’re looking for something that sticks closely to what Lovecraft wrote, this game isn’t for you. I’ll go further, and say if you are looking for something that sticks to what people traditionally think of as the Cthulhu Mythos, this game isn’t for you. The game takes great liberties with the source material and the Mythos – indeed, there would be no way to write this game if it didn’t. The question is, is the end product worth it. In this case, I have to say yes. The book lays out a rich history and background for the setting, and a judicious use of fiction in the book helps bring the setting to life. There’s a lot of meat there, and it’s clear that a lot of thought has gone into it. The setting alone can suck you in.

As for the Mecha, when you’re dealing with any game with giant robots, there is only one question to answer: Are The Giant Robots Awesome? In CthulhuTech, I can pilot a Mecha that has a plasma cannon, a tentacle sheath, and a tongue I can use as a weapon. The Mecha are also partially organic, and they heal on their own. In other words – yes. Yes, the Mecha are awesome. But as with the Cthulhu Mythos, if you have particular ideas about what Mecha are and how they work, you may not like how these Mecha work.

You can also play what they call a Tager – a human merged with a creature from beyond time and space in a kind of symbioses. Shifting between human and alien forms, Tagers are strong, but horrific. It’s a nice touch to the game, and I could see a lot of great story coming from dealing with being a Tager.

I’m not so into the idea of running CthulhuTech. I’d much rather play it. And I haven’t had a chance to do either yet. I don’t think it’d make a good game for a brand new player. As a game it just feels a little too involved to use as someone’s introduction to gaming. But if you dismissed it off hand, like I did, then I’d encourage you to give it a chance. It’s a great looking game, with a lot of meat to it, and conceptually it just works.

Clearly, at 50 bucks, the game is not aimed at people who want to run a one-off. I think it would take a couple sessions to get into the swing of thing. Buy this book to set up and play a campaign. If you want more detail than that, you’ll need to do some more reading:

• WildFire: CthulhuTech Quick-Start Rules
• Atomic Array: Episode 013: CthulhuTech RPG
• Mad Brew Labs: CthulhuTech: The Game That Almost Wasn’t
• Critical Hits: When Horror Meets Awesome: CthulhuTech
• Kore Dice: Interview with CthulhuTech’s Mike Vaillancourt
• Stargazer’s World: Review: CthulhuTech
• Stan!: The Stars Will Be Right
• Arcane Underground: The Saga of CthulhuTech (Updated)
• Atomic Array: Episode 040: CthulhuTech
• The Village Barbarian: Review: CthulhuTech Core Book
• Dice Monkey: Review: Vade Mecum
• Blog of a new RPGer: Review: Dark Passions
• Stargazer’s World: Review: Damnation View
• allgeektout: Review: Mortal Remains
• The Spirits of Eden: Review: Vade Mecum
• Creatively Anomalous: Review: Dark Passions

I stopped off at my friendly neighborhood game store, just to pick up a battle mat. That’s all I needed. Oh, and maybe the Paranoid Card Game. But that’s all. Just a quick browse through the used section maybe, but really nothing else. Just here for a battle ma- oh, what’s that?

“That” turned out to be Let’s Kill. Another Atlas Games card game.

Let’s Kill grabbed me for two reasons. The first was that it used stick figure art. And I have a soft spot for games that can pull off that look. The second was that it was blatantly about killing people. And I’d had a rough week.

Anyway, I like Cthulhu stuff, but I’m not so interested in racing or racing card games. Art looked kinda nifty, but in general I dismissed it.

Jokes on me, as it turns out.

First off, the art isn’t kinda nifty. It’s good. Darn good. In fact, one might go so far as to say it’s Rad. But one would be dating one’s self by doing so.

Secondly, the presentation is very clever. I’m a big fan of puns and wordplay anyway, so maybe that’s personal taste, but when you’re playing a Cthulhu based racing card game, and you come across the card “Rats In The Whitewalls,” you either chuckle, or you’re in need of repair.

But above anything, this game meets the one standard I have for all card games: Can I sit at the Sunday night game table, and use this game to irritate the guy across from me?

Yes. Yes I can.

What is not to love about a game in which the primary goal is to kill off your family in the most tragic way possible. Especially when it’s with cards like “Pestered By Poodles” or “Delighted By Ducklings”…

The game’s setting and design oozes Edward Gorey from every pore. If that’s not your style, then the game probably isn’t for you. But then, you probably didn’t read this far anyway. Which is a shame. Because while the setting makes Gloom entertaining, it’s the mechanics that make it interesting.

For starters, the turn design demonstrates a mature understanding of common card games, as well as where they fail. Specifically, you may only kill a family member at the beginning of your turn. This essentially means that you can’t drop a really powerful modifier on a character and then immediately kill them before anyone can try to do something about it.

The cards are printed on clear acrylic. The cards are designed such that as you play them on the characters, you stack the cards, sometimes obscuring (and thus overriding) elements of cards already played. This is really the payoff for the game, though it is not without its flaws. It’s an interesting mechanic in an area traditionally overstuffed with games trying to find creative ways to tell the player to turn the card 90 degrees.

As mentioned, though, the acrylic cards have their flaws. Sometimes the cards can be difficult to read. This is especially true where red ink was used on a black background. Most of the time, this text is flavor text only, but it still makes for difficult reading. Additionally, the cards show fingerprints very easily. And because the cards are transparent, you can generally tell if a person is drawing a modifier or not, and if it is positive or negative. I consider this less of an actual problem than an interesting quirk to the game – you can generally guess what type of cards a person may have, which can allow you to adjust your strategy. But the door swings both way.

The biggest problem with the acrylic cards seems to be a minor flaw in the way some of them were put together. To prevent damage to the paint used to print the cards, it appears that the cards were printed on a piece of acrylic, and then laminated. In some cases, the laminate used shows some imperfections – tiny spots where the laminate did not seal to the card, or maybe a place where the card was scratched before being laminated. I have seen it across a few different copies of the game. It’s never so bad that the card cannot be read, but it does tend to detract from the beauty of the game. Hopefully this is a design problem that can be solved in future printings.

Speaking of, if you think you want a copy, and your Friendly Local Game Store has one copy left, you’d better snag it. From what I’ve seen locally, it’s very popular and selling very well.

Overall, I love this game. I’m looking forward to expansions already, because I want to know what the Duck means. If I wear out my deck, I’ll just pick up another. Gloom plays well. It’s the light and fun way to die.

I give Gloom a rating of “Lemur”