Arkham Ritual

Ninja Star Games presents

3~7 players : Ages 10 and up : 20 minutes

Arkham Ritual is a deduction, bluffing, and press your luck card game about escaping from a horrific ritual worshiping the Great Old One. Designed by Hiroki Kasawa and illustrated by Emily Ling, Arkham Ritual was successfully funded on Kickstarter on March 9th, 2017 with a support from 2484 backers and raised over $32,000.

What is Arkham Ritual?

In Arkham Ritual, you don’t see the card you are holding. Instead, you see the cards other players are holding. You must guess the card you are holding by looking at other players’ cards and the cards that have been played.

The game is played over a course of multiple rounds and each round consists of multiple turns. Each turn one player draws the top card of the deck, looks at it, and passes it to another player. The player who receives the card has a choice either to a) discard the card he / she is holding face up and take the new card without looking at it, or b) pass the card to another player without looking at it. After a player takes a turn, another player takes his / her turn.

The round continues until one of the round end conditions is met, at which point all players reveal their cards. At this time, if you are holding a cursed (red) card, then the card corrupts your mind and you lose sanity. If you are holding a sane (blue) artifact card but some other player is also holding the same artifact card (regardless of their color), the artifacts create unpleasant resonance and corrupt your mind, losing sanity. You successfully survive the ritual only if you are holding a unique sane (blue) card.

Players lose sanity by discarding sanity markers. The next round is played until one or more players have lost all their sanity markers. All players who still have sanity markers survived the ritual, and the winner is the player with the most sanity markers!

Story

You are a freelance journalist working in the city of Arkham. One day you hear about a mysterious ritual taking place in the underground cellar of the city’s prestigious Miskatonic University. You and your team decide to infiltrate and investigate the ritual anonymously, in the hope of securing the next exclusive. Without much though, you step into the cellar, but it doesn’t take long before you come to regret your decisions. The cellar is a shrine to ancient god and the horrifying ritual is tearing apart the minds of those who participate, causing them to go insane!

In the dark and musty cellar, worshipers are passing around artifacts. The light is dim so you can’t quite make out the artifacts you are passing around. However, further away in the distance you get a glimpse of what others are holding. You can see the effect these magical artifacts are having on their bearers. You will need to deduce what you’re holding by studying the other worshipers.

Preserve your sanity and escape from the ritual alive!