I’ve been playing more Cthulhu Realms lately, attempting to learn how to play better by finishing the hard campaign. It was only after beating my head against the hard campaign that I discovered the achievements are the real way to learn how to play.
Darwin Castle’s Cthulhu Realms is a Lovecraftian-inspired board game where up to four players compete to drive each other insane. It’s a deckbuilding game, where you start with a weak deck and buy better cards as you play.
Challenging Myself
When I first played this game I went through the easy campaign and managed to get to the end of Chapter 2, the latest and final chapter to be released. While this campaign was a little challenging in places, ultimately I finished it in a few days.
Recently I’ve been trying to finish the hard campaign and I’ve been finding it frustrating. After only a few turns, it would seem like the hard AI would be able to play pretty much all of its cards and have a well constructed deck, whereas I’d be struggling to draw cards that were actually useful. I must have been missing something.
Since I was getting bored of losing I decided to try something different. Each level in Cthulhu Realms has 3 achievements, granted for winning a game under certain conditions. For example, one level will give you an achievement if you play three locations in a single turn, then go on to win the game.
I played through the easy campaign again, completing every achievement. Then it was back to trying the hard campaign again. But this time I noticed something. Playing the hard campaign felt easier, like I knew what I was doing. It was still challenging, but I felt myself more prepared for those challenges.
Without realising it, I had been taught how to play the game properly.
Achievements as Lessons
What I hadn’t realised is that the achievements had taught me new strategies to use in the game. By forcing me to think outside the box and play in different ways, I had gotten more used to a lot of the hidden mechanics in the game.
Deck Colours Matter
An example of an early achievement is to create a deck with three cards of each colour. This forced me to play with a balanced deck, and familiarise myself with the qualities of each deck.
Black is your default deck, weaker but the place everyone starts. Green generally deals with abjurations (removing cards from the game), to help thin out your deck. Yellow generally improves draw, allowing you to draw more cards and play the cards you want to play. Finally, Purple offers healing and sanctuary, allowing you to last longer in a game.
Deck Thinning and Refinement
One achievement challenges you to abjure all Followers and Goons, the weaker black cards that you start with. This teaches you how to refine a deck so that only stronger cards remain. A similar achievement asks you to start a turn with zero cards in your draw or discard piles, teaching you to make a very refined deck that always has all cards in play. Another challenge asks you to gain a card you already abjured, forcing you to discover cards with the ability to do so.
Card Recursion and Combo Play
Another challenge asks you to play the same unique card, The Unspeakable One, twice. With only one of these cards available in every game, the only way to do this is to play it, abjure it, regain the card, and then use yellow cards to draw it again. This is an advanced strategy that chains multiple systems: sacrifice, recursion, and card‑draw manipulation, and it is taught to you simply by having an achievement.
Alternate Win Conditions and Pacing
Another challenge I liked was to win after the 20th turn. This is harder than you think, as you need to last that long and keep your opponent at bay. I started abjuring all the cards in the deck as I played, until the game ran out of cards. It turns out that Cthulhu Realms ends the game when the market deck is exhausted, and whoever has the highest Sanity wins. I had won, but I was far away from the 20th turn. I had also learned a new mechanic, and a new strategy.
As it turns out, many of these achievements have been designed to force players to learn and think of new strategies. And these strategies can be used in normal games. Now, I can create a deck where I can play all of my cards every turn, and do a lot of damage to my opponent’s Sanity. I have new ways to win a game, and I’m ready to take on the hard campaign.
Good Design
Many games need a tutorial of some kind to get player’s started. It’s unavoidable. But sometimes these tutorials are dry and text heavy. The best games teach the players how to play without them even realising it. By slowly introducing new challenges and forcing players to think, they naturally become better at the game.
Cthulhu Realms has both a standard tutorial and a hidden one. The standard tutorial teaches you the basic rules of the game, but if you take on the achievements you start to learn the actual mechanics and strategies available to you. It’s a good design that allows players to get better at the game.
It’s a shame that the online gameplay for this game is dead now, but I’m hoping to track down some people to play the physical board game with one day. If the design did its job, I should now be the terrifying cultist at the table, not the sacrifice.
