The Aviary

As previously mentioned, I am having a solo boardgaming party while on vacation. I've played through all of my newer solo games, and then decided to break out the big Arkham Horror board game, which I haven't played in years. I set it up late yesterday afternoon and played till about 8 o'clock.

Arkham Horror is the first board game that you could play solo that I ever encountered. Which seemed great, because it was clearly a game I was going to love based on the theme but also it was a game that my family would almost never want to play with me. The theme is extremely cool and looking at all the different wee pieces is fun and there are lots of also fun-looking expansions to add new mechanics.

But here is the thing - it is too much. There are too many different kinds of pieces and cards, too many things to track of, too many moving parts. Hell, the board itself is too damn big and I can never find anything on it. You can't get into the horror of the theme because you're spending too much time remembering how all the different parts work together. I will freely admit that I occasionally cheat at solo games - I'll make up my own tweaks to the rules if the rulebook is ambiguous and I've occasionally given myself a reroll or two during a session because the point of a boardgame is to have fun and I'm not affecting anyone but myself. I don't cheat at Arkham Horror, though - I just straight up play wrong because I can't remember all the rules about monster movement and limits and what the fuck ever, so I ignore them entirely.

It's not an unfun game. But playing it again yesterday made me realize that I have other solo games that do a lot of what it does, but in a way that I find more enjoyable. (Horrified* has a lot of the same basic game mechanics but is simpler and smoother to play, and also has a theme I'm very into. And the Arkham Horror card game is obviously doing the same Lovecraft-fanfic-game thing as the board game, but is more portable, more customizable, and is straight up just more fun to play. And neither of them rely on you having a big game table in order to just set out the board.) Plus, setting up the game, playing it, and putting it away is an all-day event, which is frankly more work than I want to do.

I think it might be time to pass this game on to a more loving home.






*Horrified is extremely adorable in terms of theme, if you are a Universal Horror fan. Literally the only problem with it is that they probably will not make expansions to include less popular monsters. (They do have an American cryptid version, and that's also adorable, but I want Dracula's Daughter options.)