A Touch Of Evil: the Supernatural (Board) Game

A Touch Of Evil (ATOE) is a boardgame inspired by gothic horror stories, and presumably Arkham Horror boardgame. It is a much simpler game than Arkham Horror, with more limitations to what characters can have, and a smaller variety of card types. There aren't nearly as many cards in the game either, of course. Also, I managed to fit the cards in the least expensive type of card sleeves, which was nice.

Another difference to Arkham Horror is the addition of Event cards the characters can hold (an unlimited number) until deciding to use them. They represent some more or less random events that can be helpful in different situations.

The main difference when compared to Arkham Horror, though, is the option (in fact, default option) to play the game competitively. In this case, while all the players try to destroy the main Villain, they are competing for the honour of being the hero to do so. Their characters do not actually fight each other (all being heroes), but they try to be first to find the lair of the Villain and to have a final Showdown with him. The Villain is not easy to defeat, so more than one Showdown may be required. It is quite possible that the time will run out, and the Villain's forces will overrun the small town the heroes are trying to defend. Unlike in Arkham Horror, there is no final battle in that case, it's just game over then.

As with Arkham Horror, the game may work very well with only two characters. This is because in both games the evil forces are represented by a random card drawing in the end of each game round, called Mystery phase in ATOE (and Mythos phase in Arkham Horror). This at least is my experience after one test game with only two characters. The mystery cards and the optional advanced rules moved the darkness counter too fast for the characters to be able to properly equip, and so they couldn't defeat the Villain (Scarecrow in this case).

The Clue tokens of Arkham Horror are replaced by Investigation markers in ATOE. These somewhat rare (and under advanced rules, difficult to obtain) tokens function as money in town, and perhaps more importantly, as a way to reveal secrets about the town elders. These are non-player characters who may help either the heroes or the villain.

The map of ATOE is simple, but good enough. There are only four main locations (with special cards for them) to be investigated, in addition to the town and some minor locations. Expansions apparently will add new maps to be attached to the original (at least Something Wicked has a new map). Compared to Arkham Horror, the map is small, and the whole game will easily fit on a regular table.

ATOE is the first boardgame I have seen that included a soundtract CD in the box. I did not pay much attention to it yet, but it sounded nice enough.

Here's the game's page in Boardgame Geek.