Cthulhu has come a long way since the advent of cosmic horror. Look at this little guy!
Purple, to go with classic cosmic horror prose.
He came with my (Kickstarter) copy of the game. A compelling mascot for a fun, compact engine-builder. The box is small for this type of game, and packed with high-quality components from resource tokens to plastic tentacles (in a variety of poses!) to evocatively named cards. The game is crunchy enough to fire those optimizing neurons, simple enough to play with (older) kids, and fast enough that you can get 2-3 rounds out of an evening’s game time. My nine-year-old loves it, and not just because she’s an obsessive collector of soft toys.
THE NECRONOMICON
Cosmoctopus is an engine-builder without a lot of randomness or wrinkles in the gameplay. No dice, no trading, not a lot of phases, no extra boards or variation in player abilities. You’re trying to create a strong economy and leverage that to acquire eight tentacles before your fellow devotees of the Great Inky One. He or she who does so first summons Cosmoctopus in all its glory and is rewarded greatly, in line with cosmic horror genre convention.
Victory!
The original Zatu Review on the game does an admirable job of explaining the setup and the rules, but here’s the briefest of rundowns:
- Set up the Inky Realm tiles in one of several recommended configurations, or make one up. Add wormhole tokens to taste (recommended after a few times playing);
- Deal out 5 cards each, and two of each resource type (red Whispers, blue Stars, gold Coins and black Ink). Set up the devotee card row, and have the Forbidden Knowledge tokens and First Contact cards to hand;
- On each turn, Cosmoctopus Turns to Face You. Move its idol one tile (or pay to move more), and pick up the indicated resources and/or cards on that tile. Play one card (if you are able to pay its costs). Discard any extra resources or cards you have if you’ve got more than 8 cards or of any one resource. That’s it*!
*Except for buying Forbidden Knowledge, and also some cards let you play more cards after playing them (lightning symbols on red Hallucination cards), and also some cards have abilities that trigger when you gain resources or tentacles. Turns can be long if you set them up properly, resulting in very satisfying wins when you jump from 4 or 5 tentacles to 8 with proper sequencing!
The simplicity of the core gameplay means the game is not difficult to pick up at its core, and I didn’t have much trouble teaching it to children.
STRANGE AEONS
The gameplay rewards strategic planning and opportunistic tactical pivots. There’s a delightful tension in the early stages between developing a resource engine (generally required to win) and making a big expensive push for tentacles early on. The first tentacle each player earns gets them their choice of First Contact card: all of these are strong, but the first player to earn a tentacle gets their pick of all four, and the rest have to choose from that player’s leavings. Do you pursue the first pick, or make do with what’s left so you have a better setup for later?
It’s generally advisable to build up black Scripture cards (discounts) and gold Relic cards (resource generation) early, as these boost your economy, but they don’t do anything else. You can use them to build towards Forbidden Knowledge and get two tentacles, but there are only four of these tokens (one per resource type) and once they’re gone, they’re gone. One of your opponents might use a red Hallucination or a Scripture with Submerge to suddenly generate a burst of resources and grab the Knowledge you wanted. Now it’s gone for good. Maybe it would have been better to build a smaller engine and play for at least one Knowledge. Without the two-tentacle boost, you’ll struggle to catch up.
With that in mind, playing a game of Cosmoctopus well requires you to have a plan, but be willing to change it on the fly as circumstances dictate. A new card in the card row, or an unexpected big play from an opponent can throw off an overly-rigid plan.
AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS
Catching up in a game is very difficult, because Forbidden Knowledge gets grabbed early. Other ways of generating tentacles take much longer. Sequences of red Hallucination cards CAN generate a lot of tentacles in one turn, but this requires a lot of resources and the right cards from the card row. Sometimes the cards just aren’t there when you need them, and the main way to get new ones is through moving Cosmoctopus, taking the undesirable cards and allowing new ones to be dealt. If they’re good, though, your opponents will just take them! Blue Constellation cards all generate tentacles, but very slowly, and because they’re completely face-up your opponents can all see what you’re doing - and again, the main way you fill your Constellations is by moving Cosmoctopus.
Pictured: a card row not cooperating in the early game
This brings us to player interaction. There isn’t much in this game - you’re racing to eight tentacles and you can’t remove or otherwise interact with any cards or tentacles your opponents may have. What you can do is try to anticipate their best moves on the Inky Realm and move somewhere that prevents those moves being made. This creates some feel-bads at the table (tears, recriminations, vows of vengeance), mostly because of how petty it is to use your movement to stymie an opponent like that - and how often it will be a good idea to do it anyway.
That all said, these issues can be addressed with skilful play (and/or luck).
BEYOND THE INKY REALM
The new expansion, Cosmoctopus: Beyond the Inky Realm, promises a second plushie Outer God at the higher pledge tiers on the Kickstarter. There are probably cheaper ways to get my daughter a new plushie, but this one comes with a free gift for me! The expansion also offers an expansion to the main game that brings a few of those wrinkles the core experience does not offer. It promises faster and smoother (though more complex) base gameplay, as well as a whole new resource system with its own game board and tiny eldritch cephalopod.
The new aspects of gameplay promise to directly address some of the core game’s weaknesses:
- The new Telescope mechanic can change up an uninteresting card row to get a stalled game flowing, and speed up Constellations, which are the slowest and most telegraphed tentacle-generating cards in the base game;
- Starting Trinkets offer a boost to initial resource generation to get engines off the ground, allowing for bigger plays to be made faster;
- Prismoctopus and the Path of Glass on which it moves can power even bigger bursts of resource generation allowing for 3 tentacles to be gained at once - which could allow for a lagging player to catch up but may just help the rich get richer.
I’m currently waiting for my copy (expected Jan 2026) so watch this space for the expansion review when it’s out.
Things I Loved:
- Components are tactile and high-quality
- Adorable mascot in the Great Inky One
- Core gameplay is easier to understand than it looks
- Games move quickly with a lot of forward momentum and potential for big surprise plays
- Huge replayability factor due to different Inky Realm setups
Things I Didn’t Love:
- Some learning curve to specific cards/mechanics
- Can be very difficult to catch up if you’re behind
- Some of the Inky Realm maps make for awkward positions resulting in non-turns
- Little interaction between players
