A game for family night that is finally better than mafia!

Years ago (now over two decades – wow), when I first played the game Mafia, I was blown away.  It was so fun.  There was so much sneakiness and intrigue.  You just never knew who was capable of pulling off the big lie in the gaming group.  But then something bad happened.  Over the course of 20 years, the game began to be more and more tarnished as the years went by.  The games took too long, the narrator was boring or over-animated, the same people got killed off first every time, parents would protect their kids, etc.  The flaws in the game became so glaring.  Enter Don’t Mess With Cthulhu.

This new game by Indie Boards and Cards is the antidote to a failing once great game.  Don’t Mess With Cthulhu basically fixes everything that is wrong with mafia and puts it in a nice little monster-themed package.  Brilliant!  The games are now quick. There is no narrator.  No one gets killed off in the game.  Thus, no one has to over protect anyone, and no one gets eliminated first every time.  I am telling you, it fixes everything that is wrong with Mafia!

The game basically plays through cards that everyone is trying to either reveal of keep hidden.  You all have your roles just like in mafia.  So everyone is working toward an end goal.  However, like in mafia that is all hidden from the other players.  You then have a cool flashlight mechanism that allows player to reveal different cards in their hand.  Plus, whenever someone reveals a card from another person’s hand, the person who’s card was revealed gets to be it to pick the next card from someone else’s hand that will be revealed.  This switching turns makes the game much more balanced between good guys and bad guys, giving everyone a fair shake at revealing things. 

All in all Don’t Mess with Cthulhu is a welcome replacement to a brilliant game.  This is another in a long list of games being put out by a company we have fallen in love with.  Hopefully this too will put Indie Boards and Cards on your watch list of amazing gaming companies.  We for sure, cannot wait to see what they do next!