Elder Sign: Omens

So, how should this start?

Even on the easiest Ancient One, you’ll still have your work cut out for you. Even if you have a great beginner load-out with your Team (Harvey, Amanda, Vincent, Carolyn) you’ll still spend a few games cursing like a sailor at how hard winning can be, as well as running away from events that require multiple actions, each having multiple lore requirements to finish. It can drive you crazy, but it’s more addicting than you could ever believe. Seriously, for as much as the rolls for glyphs may make you feel abused, once you start, you just can’t stop.

Learning the game
learning the game, if you’ve never seen the boardgame itself, seems a lot more daunting than it really is. The tutorial looks huge (it provides multiple videos, as well as a bunch of text based tabs), however the text based tabs are a repeat of the video for your reference. Do note though, that it is extremely helpful to watch the videos. This is not a game you can just pick up and think you’ll start winning. If you try to do this, you’ll most likely get frustrated quickly and wonder where all the mythos pain is coming from, and why your face wont stop hurting. Watch the videos, and the game is easy enough to pick up.

Playing the Game
This entire game, while you’re still feeling it out, is entirely about your Team setup. Pay special attention to the special abilities that each player has, as these abilities will literally save your blood pressure from climbing. This is why it’s a good idea to learn the game with Vincent and Carolyn holding up the final two spots of your line-up, because their abilities to give health and sanity during their turn means that you can essentially provide free maintenance to your team without wasting player turns at the hospital…all while watching the doom track double at midnight. After you get a feel for the game, it’s nice to try random line-ups and see if you can win.

Dealing with the Pressure
If you are prone to cursing when you don’t get your way, and you are often in places where the people around you are sensitive to this, play this game in a concrete bunker out in the middle of nowhere. Or get a squeezy stress ball.

Seriously, it’s a lot of fun.
Everyone says that the glyph rolls are really unfair and they never give you what you need. This can be true, but it’s still entirely random, just like a dice roll in real life. It’s an amazing game, and it really can satisfy a craving for some Lovecraftian addictions in a pinch. Especially if you don’t have time to set up the real boardgames. Get this game, love this game, try not to throw your phone or tablet into a wall.

It is not always easy to translate a physical game into digital format, especially in the compact size of a mobile device. Fantasy Flight Games struck gold with their app version of the Elder Sign board game, successfully capturing both the tense horror atmosphere of the original and transposing the exciting dice-rolling into a seamless touch-based experience. Hovering around $4 and available for iOS and Android, this is a great app to add to your phone to itch a board gaming scratch on the go.

The game itself is set in Lovecraftian mythos – an alternative version of the 1920’s with heavy infusion of the supernatural and the interdimensional. Great Old Ones – ancient beings of unimaginable power are lurking beyond the thin veil of reality and are struggling to break through. An old museum, filled with relevant artifacts, threatens to become a portal into our world. Should the ancient evil awaken and step into our world – destruction would surely follow so a ragtag team of investigators come to the museum to solve the mysteries it holds and prevent the Great Old One from manifesting.

The game consists of a series of adventures – at each point of time you have six to pick from. A player has six green “glyphs” – dice-like components that generate one of six random results, symbolizing the results of investigations – peril, lore, terror etc. You “conjure the glyphs” (read “roll the dice”) and then use the results to match these up to the “tasks” – required combinations to complete the adventure. If you are able to complete all the tasks of the adventure – you succeed and are rewarded, otherwise you fail and suffer the consequences.

While that may seem like an entirely luck-based exercise, the game actually has a fair bit of strategy and probability management. Certain abilities allow you to manipulate the results of your “rolls” changing one results to another or retrying an unlucky roll. Certain items allow you to either get additional glyphs/dice or save past rolls for future use.

There is a fair bit of diversity in the game – base offering comes with four Great Old Ones, each with their own challenges and difficulty level. You can challenge and you can select your team of four from a group of seventeen investigators. The adventures you will face are randomly drawn and varied. There is a lot of game here for just $4.

The game features excellent mood-setting art and the interface is intuitive and easy to learn.

If you are familiar with the board game – know that the app uses the rules almost exactly the same way with only a couple of notable exceptions. One – it completely removes the board game’s mechanics of battling the Ancient One – once they awaken. It is a welcome change as the idea of fighting Cthulhu with a tommy gun never quite seemed right to me. Second change is that glyphs “saved” using spells can only be used in current adventure, not reserved for future ones. This change unfortunately reduces spells’ efficiency and does a small disservice to the game as a whole.

One of the Elder Signs: Omens greatest strength is how easy it is to turn it on, play a couple of adventure and then leave it until later. This episodic nature really lends itself well to the hectic way you might be playing on a mobile device. At the same time if you have more time to kill – you can definitely play a more dedicated game. A full game will take about 20 minutes. At this point the game is strictly single-player with no multiplayer options.

Once you grow tired of the base game – the three excellent expansions available for $2-3 each do a magnificent job of broadening the game’s horizons. While these do add your regular “more items, investigators and adventures” – each presents a unique campaign that takes your team to different locations for unique (and very tough) challenges. These are highly recommended.

Whether you like Lovecraft, the Elder Sign board game or just looking for a cool new app on your phone – Elder Sign: Omens comes highly recommended, sure to help you kill some time in a tense and engaging way.

If you enjoyed this review please visit Altema Games website for more board game materials.

I love playing the “analogue” version of Elder Sign with friends, so Omens seemed a good option to get for my Android phone to keep me entertained on those long, winter nights, stuck inside haunted museums. It’s presentation is excellent, making good use of the artwork from the dice/cards game and the interface is good, though on a phone I sometimes find my fingers a little big for easy control. There are also some good tutorials which walk you through the various aspects of the game.

For the uninitiated, the game is about trying to prevent an ancient horror from manifesting in an old museum and, from there, going on to take over the world. There are a number of “adventures” to complete which can give you assorted rewards including bonuses and the much sought-after elder signs, which are used to win the game. You complete adventures in the original game by rolling dice and matching sigils against requirements for tasks; in the digital version, the dice are represented as magical “glyphs” which you conjure. All this time, the clock is ticking and doom tokens are amassing: if too many doom tokens are gained before the requisite number of elder signs have been found, you lose.

Omens has been streamlined a bit from the analogue version, with a few rules taken out (e.g. in Omens, glyphs locked into spells are not kept there for other characters to use) but I think this generally makes the game smoother and less likely to confuse. The game can positively zip along, but has the same problem as the original that with a run of bad luck you can easily get yourself into a situation that is almost impossible to get out of.

There is a good selection of characters to choose your team from, but only a limited set of great old ones, though more are available as expansion purchases. I haven’t tried any of the expansions, but the basic options have provided quite a lot of entertainment for me.

All in all, this is currently my most played digital game, which I pull out from time to time as a fun diversion. There is an awful lot of luck involved, but there is space for effective planning, and the tension can build very nicely. I’m very pleased with the purchase, though I must say that I’d still play the original if I can get some other folks to join me. For solo play, though, Omens wins hands-down for me.

Just a heads up, I plan on giving this the full review treatment. If you just want to see what is different between this and the board game, skip to the end.

Welcome to Arkham Yatzee, electronic edition! Alright, calling it Yatzee is a bit unfair, but you are essentially rolling dice hoping for a series of desired results, so, boiled down, that is a somewhat apt description.

Disclaimer: I own this on Android. I am guessing that the game is the same on your Apple device, but I cannot attest to that. The base game cost me $3.99. There is an expansion available for an additional $2.99. I have not purchased the expansion.

In addition, I have seen some describe Elder Sign as “Arkham Horror Lite” I have played one game of Arkham Horror in the past, and that was some time ago so I cannot make the comparison for you.

So, onto the game. Elder Sign is set in the Lovecraft universe. I am not going to go into a lot of Lovecraft lore, but suffice to say that many creatures of great and terrible power and visage have existed before time itself and want to eat and/or enslave us and just touching the surface of their realms can drive a person mad. One of these Great Old Ones is trying to enter our world with the help of degenerate cultists and the portal is the museum in which our game takes place. Figure on a game taking half an hour to an hour.

Once you get the game up and going, you need to choose a Great Old One to try and stop from entering our universe. You can choose from Yig, which is tantamount to easy mode or Azathoth, which is considered medium mode. If you have purchased the expansion, you can also choose Cthulu, which is considered hard mode.

You then choose 4 investigators from a pool of 16. The expansion appears to include and additional 6. Each investigator has varying sanity and stamina statistics, certain starting items and a special ability. Once you choose your team, an intro movie plays and then the game begins.

The game plays in landscape mode. If you have not played before, there is a decent tutorial system that offers to play every time you do something you have not before. If you were so inclined, you can reset the tutorials if you wanted to hand your device over to someone who has not played before so they can see them. You see a blueprint of the museum and there are various points of interest marked, called adventures. Your investigators start at the entrance of the museum, and return there every time their turn comes around again. You can click on an adventure or the entrance to focus on it, then on the banner on the top of the screen to see what the adventure requires to complete or what you can do at the entrance.

The ultimate goal is to score enough Elder Signs by completing adventures to seal away the Great Old One. That is 10 for Yig and 14 for Azathoth. If you take too long, or fail adventures, however, the doom track begins to fill with doom tokens. Too many of those, and the Great Old One awakes.

So, let’s go on an adventure! You activate the adventure, and a graphic tied to that adventure comes up, then the requirements appear along with the HUD. The adventure will have one to three tasks to complete. They have no names, just a picture with smaller inset pictures depicting the glyphs needed to do that task. You click on the book to roll virtual dice and summon glyphs. You normally get 6, but by using items can add a special red and/or yellow die. You then try and match the glyphs you rolled to the adventure requirement. If you cannot use your rolled glyphs to complete one of the adventure’s tasks, you can discard one of the glyphs you summoned and re-summon the remainder. Rinse and repeat until you successfully complete all adventure tasks or fail, either by giving up or running out of glyphs.

The glyphs correspond to sides of a die:

Peril (skull)
Lore (scroll)
Terror (tentacally thingy)
1 Investigation (magnifying glass with number 1)
2 Investigation (you get the idea)
3 Investigation

The yellow die removes the terror side and adds a 4 Investigation, and the red die also removes the 1 Investigation and adds a Wild.

Tasks can include things like 2 Peril, 1 Terror and 1 Lore, etc. There can also be sanity and stamina costs just to complete the task. The museum is a rough place, and investigations in the Lovecraft universe generally do not leave you whole even when you win. Some tasks on an adventure can be completed in any order, and some must be done in a certain order. You cannot complete more that one task per roll, so even if you have glyphs you wanted for further tasks, you have to re-roll and hope. If you do have to discard, you can pull an additional glyph from the remainder to the side to save for the remainder of the adventure attempt Other items you may have could also allow you to save a result or re-roll dice of your choosing. A successful adventure scores the reward for the adventure, which can include items and spells to help out on adventures, access to alternate dimension adventures where the rewards are greater, trophies to spend at the entrance on healing and items, and the coveted Elder Signs. Fail, and suffer the consequences. These can include damage to your sanity or stamina, doom tokens or monsters being added to adventures, making them harder to complete. There is some more to this, but that is adventuring in a nutshell.

Each investigator takes their turn, and each adventure turn moves the clock. Essentially, every 4 investigator turns will turn the clock to midnight. At midnight, uncompleted adventures with a midnight effect (depicted with a moon) cause their listed effect, which may add monsters, harm investigators or increase the doom track. A doom token is also added automatically, and may cause a monster to appear as well.

If a investigator looses all of their sanity or stamina, they die. If all of your investigators die, it is game over. I know for a fact that if Azathoth awakens, it is game over. I think you might be able to battle Yig, but, frankly, if I fail to seal Yig away it is because all of my investigators die, not because I filled the doom track, so, frankly, I do not know.

I do have a couple of issues with the mechanics of the game. Sometimes it doesn’t like where my finger is when attempting to drag and drop glyphs, but that got better over time as I figured out where the device wanted my finger to start. I get a bit irritated that the game, or at least the movies, do not ignore the auto sleep function of my phone. I have yet to see the entire opening movie because my phone goes to sleep, and when I wake it up by touching it the movie gets pre-empted. On the other hand, the game auto-saves when you close it, so if you wanted to pick up where you left off it is easy to do so.

For those of you who want to know the differences between the digital and board game versions, here you go.

The allies have been removed entirely. There doesn’t seem to be any lingering mythos that I can see. Spells can be cast AFTER the glyphs are rolled, so in response to something that you wanted to keep. If an investigator dies, they are dead. No picking a new one. There are significantly less Great Old Ones to choose from. There seem to be easier monsters in the pot against Yig than against Azathoth, and the midnight effects are harsher against the latter.

There is also no set-up and no clean-up, which is nice. You can just start it up and play, and stop when you would like.

So, is it worth the purchase? I think so. I played it a great deal the first week I had it, and after that I start it up now and then. I also strongly recommend it if you are interested in the board game but just aren’t sure it is for you. Four bucks isn’t too much for what can amount to a preview of the $35.00 game, and they seriously are close enough that you would get the general idea.

I gave in recently and dropped $6.99 to get “Elder Sign: Omens HD”, which is the iPad version. The iPhone version is a separate game, which I did not play. That screen is just too small, yo.

I’m interested in playing the board game version, so I figured the iPad version would tide me over until then.

From the game’s description:
“Elder Sign: Omens is a solitaire cousin to the popular cooperative board game, Arkham Horror. This version relies on a dice-rolling mechanic to advance through various adventures as the player races to stop the machinations of the evil Elder G-o-d-s.”

What I liked

The visuals and sound are amazing!
Not only do you get some interesting cut scenes with nice voice overs, the in game graphics are fantastic – almost like you would expect from a console version of a board game.

The gameplay is fast and easy.
I have read that setting up the board game version for Elder Sign can be complicated – but not the case with the iPad version. I appreciate not having to reset a board or knowing the rules to keep the game moving.

In-game purchases.
Sure, the in-game purchases could have been free – but I’m not opposed to feeding people who make cool games for me to play. Not only are there more powerful monsters to purchase and fight, but more powerful and varied investigators. I can’t wait to be crushed by Cthulhu…

Solitaire play.
Not always am I able to play board games with a group. This has no setup, no clean up, and I can play the game with one hand and eat pizza with the other – and game pieces and dice don’t have to get greasy. Score.

What I thought could be better

Explanations.
I found that my first couple of games I was lumbering through not really knowing what was going on. I would have preferred a tutored first game, where it showed me as I went along what was happening and why. For me it was far too easy to miss that the tutorial videos are under the help menu. They are accessible inside the game as well, as long as you know where to click.

Should you buy it?

Yes. Definite purchase for fans of the Cthulhu mythos or interesting board games. It’s got the cool 1920s-30s feel to the coffee and blood stained map that shrieks H.P. Lovecraft. Fantasy Flight knocked it out of the park with quick, smooth and challenging gameplay. When it includes a tutorial play mode, I’ll make my wife play it too.

You’ll probably love this more than me if you’ve played and liked the original “Elder Sign” board game, but that’s ok. There’s plenty of “Elder Sign: Omens” for both of us to love.
—
Bob Ball
Voice actor at BobBallVO.com,
host of quiz show “PopQuizzical” on iTunes,
mental giant on game show “Word Rango” on iTunes

If you play board games, owning a good smart phone or a tablet is an excellent device to add to your games collection. Although neither will replace the social aspects of playing a board game nor the pleasure of handling a game’s physical components, a good version of a board game adapted to either device will capture exactly the feel and tactics of its play whilst handling the game’s mechanics. Such a good version should also offer solo play as well as play against other opponents, or if a co-operative game, allow the participants to play together. The version of Rio Grande Games’ Carcassonne adapted by exozet games is excellent example of the former, whilst Elder Sign: Omens is an excellent example of the latter. It is available on the Android and iOS platforms, this review having been done on an Android tablet.

As the title suggests, Elder Sign: Omens is the electronic adaptation of Elder Sign, the third co-operative board game of Lovecraftian investigative horror published by Fantasy Flight Games. Where Elder Sign has up to eight investigators exploring Arkham Museum to prevent the strange goings on that herald the coming of an Ancient One such as Azathoth, Cthulhu, or Yog-Sothoth, Elder Sign: Omens has a team of up to four investigators exploring Arkham Museum to prevent the strange goings on that herald the coming of the Ancient One known as Azathoth.

The game has the intrepid investigators visiting the various parts of the museum, some of which might lead to other dimensions, and casting glyphs that will counter or stop the strange goings on in each location. The investigators will each have their own special ability that will help them in this casting as various spells, items, and clues that in turn enable then investigators to hold onto glyphs between castings, add more glyphs, and re-cast the gylphs. If successful, the investigators can gain more spells, items, and clues as well as the all-important Elder Signs that they need to accumulate in order to prevent the coming of Azathoth. If unsuccessful, the investigators can suffer deleterious effects to their health and sanity; have monsters appear particular locations that need to be dealt with before the tasks there can be attempted; and let Azathoth gain more of the Doom Tokens that mean that the Outer God is closer to Earth.

Elder Sign: Omens begins by asking the players to assemble an investigation team, either by selecting from one of the sixteen available or by taking a random team. Each of the investigators is illustrated and is accompanied by a description of his or her ability. For example, Harvey Walters can alter Terror glyphs to Lore glyphs, whilst Carolyn Fern is a Psychologist who can help restore her own Sanity or that of another investigator. From there, the investigators can proceed to the Museum itself, shown by a map upon which are marked the first of the game’s many bizarre incidents. These can be scrolled through and examined before going there, enabling the players to make a choice as to which ones they tackle.<

At each incident, an investigator will be confronted by one or more tasks. Sometimes these have to be done in a certain order, but most can be completed in any order. Either way, only a single task can be completed with a single casting of glyphs. These are cast to match the symbols on each task, the glyphs either being used to match the symbols or re-cast to get the ones needed. Re-casting the glyphs is usually done at the cost of losing a glyph on the next casting. Consistent quickly leads to the investigator failing to deal with the incident and suffering various effects as described above.

The players need to accumulate fourteen Elder Signs if they are to prevent the coming of Azathoth, who only needs to gain twelve Doom Signs. This is not an easy task, especially if monsters appear that make tasks more difficult or even prevent glyphs from being cast until they are dealt with. In addition to the growing number of Doom Tokens, a sense of urgency is built into the game with a clock that regularly strikes midnight and heralds further terrible effects such as more monsters appearing or Azathoth acquiring yet more Doom Tokens. The players’ choice of investigators will ease or hinder this task, with investigators who can re-cast glyphs tending to be easier to use, if not being more useful. With sixteen investigators to choose from, Elder Sign: Omens has the capacity for the players to experiment to get the right combination of investigators that they are happy to explore the museum with.

Physically, Elder Sign: Omens is very well presented. The artwork, much of it seen in previous games of Lovecraftian investigative horror from Fantasy Flight Games, is used to great effect with some of it animated as certain events occur. In fact, on a tablet device, the artwork is better presented than in the actual Elder Sign board game, where the artwork, although very good, is too small to be really appreciated. Elder Sign: Omens also handles the physical mechanics of the game, such as the clock striking midnight and the appearance of new incidents, with a pleasing deftness that makes the game flow uninterrupted. Together, the removal of these mechanical processes away from the players’ gaze and the removal of the clutter of components that can be an issue in Fantasy Flight Games titles, combined with the use of the map to guide the investigators around the museum serve to give Elder Sign: Omens something akin to a narrative flow, which unfortunately, is somewhat lacking in the board game itself.

If anyone has played the Elder Sign board game, they will notice certain differences between it and Elder Sign: Omens. Most obvious is that fact in casting the glyphs to attempt tasks, the players are not actually rolling dice as they are in the board game, but the removal of the dice gives the play of the game much more an immediacy. The other noticeable differences between Elder Sign and Elder Sign: Omens are that only the one Ancient One is ever faced in the current version of Elder Sign: Omens and that it is not possible for the investigators to have Allies in Elder Sign: Omens as they can in Elder Sign. Neither of these should be seen as actual omissions, but rather as a streamlining that eases the flow of the game.

The final major difference is that in Elder Sign it only matters whether the investigators prevented Azathoth from coming to Earth or not, whereas in Elder Sign: Omens, not only does that matter, but so does how well they did. At the end of each game, the performance of the investigators, and thus the players, is scored. The game keeps a record of the scores, so everyone can check to see how well they have done.

For anyone new to the game, Elder Sign: Omens comes complete with a tutorial that guides you through the game with the aid of a nicely ominous voiceover – this voiceover also narrates various events throughout the game. To chilling effect. The tutorial itself needs careful attention to fully grasp how the game is played, and is probably worth watching again after at least one full play through of the game. Fortunately, the tutorials can be reset to watch again. Overall though, anyone who has played Elder Sign will have an easier time in playing Elder Sign: Omens than someone who has not.

As a playing experience, Elder Sign: Omens is an excellent solo experience. It also plays well with two participants, their discussing various courses of action and deciding what each investigator will do and what each will do with their glyphs. With more players, the game slows a little essentially because everyone is sat around a small screen and the decision making process takes a little longer. Nevertheless, having the tablet makes the game feel faster and slicker, as well containing everything needed in one easy to hold package.

Pros:
It’s a great solo play game when you just want to kill some time. It is a real challenge to win until you find the perfect team, and work out a solid strategy.

The production quality is great and very well polished and the art work with the sound effects keeps the theme alive throughout the entire game. The downside to the theme is that there is only one boss that you go up against.

Cons:
Once I figured out those two factors the game actually got to be a little to easy.

You go up against the same Elder every time so your strategy does not have to vary because the way monsters and such behave the same. Once I found out the best team and worked out a strategy I was winning 3 out of 4 games.

In conclusion:
Is it worth the money? Yes.

This is a great solid game available on the limited Android market of digital board games. Lets hope Fantasy Flight creates an update that will add more Elders for some variety.

I have to admit, huge fan of HP Lovecraft! I own and play many games based on his works and have read just about everything he has written. As usual, this app does not truly compare to any similar, high quality board games that are out there, but as apps go, this does a very nice job. I play it often and keep it on my Kindle as one of the few games to always hold a spot. This game does a good job of setting a tone or feeling. I truly enjoy playing it. As usual, the benefits of apps over board games are few, but important – great solitaire ability, no true set-up time, always have it on you, can play in no space. If you like HP Lovecraft or the games based on his works, then this is an app you should pick up.

Elder Sign: Omens is great as a card game, but now as I played it with a friend for several hours until his IPAD died in the car ride home Gencon 2012 to Buffalo. Everything that is in the card game is here and the playability is outstanding and easy to get into. Keep playing gamers and don’t let the Old Ones get the upper hand, or do cause you have no choice…

Bandit Eskimo

END OF LINE…….

I was looking forward to this game and was going with the randomized team set up the first few times. I wasnt even close to win the game.
Then I tried a put together a team my self. I won a few times and lost a few times, and all this on the easiest level.

Well enough said about that.
My problem with this game is the randomized signs you get when trying to solve quests. You have no security what so ever that you’ll get some of the components to solve your quest. The stuff you have rerolls (which are as much random as the original rolls), transforms (which transforms one component to another – and is likewise random) and you have red and yellow additions (which again is random).

If I’d new about this ahead of buying it, I wouldn’t bother spend the few bucks this game costs.

On the pluss side the graphics are good.

Keep away!