Steve Jackson Games Drive You Insane

July 4, 2012 by dracs

Last week I wrote up a quick review of Zombie Dice, a great dice based game from Steve Jackson Games. Well now we move from the quest for brains to the contest over sanity with their other dice game. Its time to roll like a Deep One in Cthulhu Dice!

In Cthulhu Dice you and your friends take on the role of a group of cultists competing for Cthulhu's favor. You take it in turns to roll the coveted Cthulhu Dice, the source of all worldly power in the game, gaining, losing and stealing sanity depending on what you roll.

Playing Cthulhu Dice is simple. You take your turn by rolling declaring which other player will be your target this turn and roll the dice to see what happens. Your opponent then gets the chance to retaliate, rolling the dice against you. You then move on to the next player's turn. The last person with sanity wins the game. Of course losing all your sanity doesn't mean you stop rolling. This is Cthulhu after all.

The dice has twelve sides with 5 different symbols, as shown in this still taken from the Cthulhu Dice Demo.

Yellow Signs cause the target cultist to lose one sanity. It goes to Cthulhu, in the middle of the gaming area.
The Tentacle causes you to take one sanity point from your victim. Their sanity becomes yours, mwahahaha.
The Eye allows the player who rolled it to choose which effect happens.
The Elder Sign allows the player to regain one sanity point from Cthulhu.
If Cthulhu is rolled everybody immediately loses one sanity point to the dread one.

This can be a fun and quick little game in which alliances are formed and broken in the blink of an eye. I would definitely recommend it as one to try when you and your friends have five minutes of gaming time to spare.

As with Zombie Dice, Steve Jackson Games has provided an interactive Cthulhu Dice Demo to allow you to get to grips with this game where one can reign triumphant as the supreme cultist or all can be condemned to inglorious insanity at the claws of Cthulhu.