Ancient Terrible Things: A four-sided game review

Ancient Terrible Things is a Yahtzee-style dice game with a Lovecraft/Cthulhu theme that adds elements of hand management and special powers to take it to a slightly higher level.

But if you’re a relatively new player, don’t be put off. While there’s lots of cards in the box there are never too many choices; this is definitely a tactical rather than strategic game.

Games tend to last about an hour with little change between player count, which is two to four players.

As for the horror theme, it’s very cartoony there’s nothing to worry about in terms of age range. Your first thought should be, do I like ‘push your luck’ dice games? If so, read on.

The game retails for just under £40, which is definitely at the expensive end for this kind of dice game. However the components are very high quality, from the box to the board through to the dice, so at least in those terms you get your money’s worth.

In a turn of Ancient Terrible Things each player will try to defeat a creature by rolling the required combination on five dice (a pair of 5 or higher, a run of three etc). Successes give you the creature card, which will earn you end-game victory points.

Each turn you also get resources and an action. Resources variously let you use cards, buy equipment, defeat creatures or alter your dice rolls – with cards, actions and equipment doing more of the same, or giving end-game points or multipliers.

Teaching

While Ancient Terrible Things is very much a Yahtzee game, this has both advantages and disadvantages.

While on one side it’s easy to see if people may like the game and gives people a grounding in what to expect, it also does things differently enough to make grasping the differences tricky for some.

The main thing you need to explain is how rerolls work. Unlike standard Yahtzee style games, if you want to reroll you can’t just put dice aside that you choose. Instead you have to spend a focus token on every dice you don’t want to reroll – otherwise you have to reroll everything. This can take some getting used to, but does work well.

In addition there are several other types (colours) of dice which work differently: red dice are one-shot (can’t be rerolled), yellow ‘luck’ dice work like a standard Yahtzee dice (can always be rerolled for free) etc. However these only appear through equipment or feat cards, so rarely have to be explained right off the bat and don’t add too much confusion.

Beyond this, the game does a great job of explaining itself on the cards. There’s a stack of equipment (to buy) and feat cards (you always have three of these in hand at the start of a turn) but even on the first play most players won’t need to ask how these work.

The four sides

These are me, plus three fictitious amalgams drawn from observing my friends, and their respective quirks and play styles.

• The writer: While the theme of Ancient Terrible Things could be anything, the style and art do help generate an atmosphere – even if they’re nothing like immersive; the comic style font and dark green pallet will draw in anyone with a bit of a love of all things Lovecraftian. There are interesting decisions to be made most rounds, but it does always comes back to the luck of the dice. This will hopefully balance out each round, but no amount of cards can save persistent terrible luck.
• The thinker: While largely tactical, there are some strategic elements. Creatures come in four colours and being the first to three of one type gives you a bonus card for end game scoring – but thus can be taken from you if someone overtakes you on a colour (as with the road bonus in Catan). You can also get negative points for failing to defeat a creature – but sometimes it’s worth taking this on the chin if it stops someone else getting a creature of a colour you don’t want them to have.
• The trasher: I love a bit of dice rolling and a horror theme, while Ancient Terrible Things gives you plenty of ways to mess with people – but none of them should be nasty enough to scare off the cry babies. Big risks can give big rewards while failure is never that punishing, encouraging you to go for the big roll. And having four types of token really lets you go down one route (equipment say, or reroll tokens) or spread yourself thin, giving several routes to victory. I like it.
• The dabbler: While horror will never be my first choice of theme for a game, this one is done cartoony enough not to put me off. The clear dice are gorgeous and there’s a nice humour running through the game, although everything is a bit dank and dark – which can be tricky in bad light. But most importantly it retains the fun factor of a good dice game while being as tactical/strategic as something like King of Tokyo without being quite so in-your-face.

Key observations

The “it’s OK” brigade essentially say, “This is just a Yahtzee game with a bit added on”.

In truth I can’t argue with that and if you don’t feel you need this style of game in your life it’s time to walk away.

But if you really like Cthulhu, or do like a good light dice chucker, it’s worth checking out – just prepare yourself for an expensive price tag for this style of game.

Harsher critics call it boring, saying the decisions you make don’t matter. While boring is obviously a personal opinion, the comments on choices do baffle me – I can only presume they are based on a very short playtime.

Will the player who rolls best win the game? Possibly. Will someone who rolls terribly the whole game lose? Yup. But it’s a dice game! And I’ve seen good equipment combos and spoiler play win people games, which is good enough for me.

Finally, there are inevitable comparisons to Elder Sign. Inevitable, but in my mind misguided. Personally, I see zero validity in comparing a competitive game with a co-op game – who is going to agonise over only allowing themselves one Cthulhu dice game in their collection, even if the play styles are miles apart? Of course if you like co-ops more, go for elder Sign – but there’s really no other basis on which to compare the two.

Conclusion

I traded King of Tokyo away quite quickly as while I didn’t hate it and would play it again (in fact I loved the style and components) it simply didn’t quite have enough game to make me want to take it down from the shelf. For me, Ancient Terrible Things does.

It may be a little of style over substance getting the better of me, which is rare – but I do love the look of this game, despite it being a little too dark (pallet wise) in places. For me the playful style comfortably makes up for this and I love looking at this on the table.

It has those stand-up dice chucking moments, it has those “no!” moments on amazing or terrible dice rolls, and while bad rolling can leave you out of things on occasion most games tend to be satisfyingly close – with the winner emerging in the final count, rather than a few rounds earlier.

My one reservation is the price point. While on one hand the components are worth the entrance fee, the likes of Elder Sign and King of Tokyo both retail for closer to £25 rather than close to £40. I’m really happy with my purchase as the game is a great fit for me, but I’d be happier recommending it if they could get the price down.