presentation

Pocket Madness

Cthulhu for families

In the Cthulhu universe, you try to open portals or to publish research result by collecting and displaying sets of location cards.

Seven portal cards are on display, as are 65 location cards, some of them open-faced, some face-down, card numbers being visible, all arranged in an overlapping row. The are different numbers of cards for seven locations.

In your turn, you either draw 1-3 location cards from the rightmost end of the row; there is no limit for cards in hand. Or you open a portal by displaying between 1 and 3 sets of three or more identical location cards and take the corresponding portal, either from the display or from the placer currently owning it. Or you publish research results by displaying between 1 and 3 rows of seven different cards each; this gives one madness token for all other players for the first set that is displayed in a round. For each additional set displayed in a round, players receive one more madness token per set than for the previous one.

An optional action is to use the ability of a portal card and then to return the card to the display of available portal cards.

When, in a round, all location cards are taken, all have one more turn and then receive one madness marker for each type of location card in hand. If, in a round, someone has shed all his cards, he discards half of his madness markers and all other players take one madness marker.

When someone has collected ten madness tokens, you win with fewest tokens.

Pocket Madness features a popular topic and a standard mechanism, combined in a well-working, little family game with some tactics from choosing sets and using portal cards.

Players: 2-4

Age: 8+

Time: 30+

Designer: Bruno Cathala, Ludovic Maublanc

Artist: Mathieu Leyssenne

Price: ca. 24 Euro

Publisher: Funforge 2016

Web: www.funforge.fr

Genre: Cards, Set collecting, Cthulhu

Users: For families

Version: en

Rules: en fr

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Simple, quick game

Arranging the location card row takes time

Nice filler game

Cthulhu topic nicely implemented

Compares to:

Rummy, Level 8 and other set collecting games on groups and sequences

Other editions:

Funforge (fr)

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0