Introduction

Innsmouth Escape is a one against many strategy game for 2 to 5 players, with a theme based loosely on the short story "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" by H.P. Lovecraft...

One player takes on the role of the Student trying to rescue his friends and escape from the strange town of Innsmouth. All other players take on the roles of Deep Ones.. with various elements of the game being adjusted depending on how many deep one players there are.

The Human player wins if he rescues 8 victory points of captives and then escapes.... whereas the Deep Ones win collectively if they defeat the Human in combat.


Components

The game comes with the following components:

- 45cm x 45cm quad fold game board - This is actually a pretty decent quality gameboard which lies flat and folds very easily without any danger of damage or tearing. The board features a map of the town, which is divided into 6 rows and 6 columns, with various icons in some of the squares. Despite the map and the icons, it is however a bit drab to look at, and could have done with a bit more colour.

- 1 plastic Human miniature and 100 plastic Deep One miniatures - in true Twilight Creations fashion, these are reminiscent of the miniatures from Zombies!!! although I would say that the Deep Ones are more sturdy, certainly than the figures from my widescreen edition of Zombies!!! And in my limited experience of plastic miniatures, these are pretty nice, sturdy and fairly detailed miniatures without being too clunky.

- A set of 12 cardboard location tokens labelled 1 to 6 and A to F, as well as cardboard tokens for wounds, equipment, captives and events. - These are nice, circular tokens, which are 2.5cm in diameter and about 1mm thick. They are much nicer than the life and bullet tokens from my copy of Zombies!!!

- A deck of 46 Deep One cards - These are black bordered cards, which are the same size as cards from the Zombies!!! boardgame, but feel as though they are on more flimsy card stock.. i.e. they feel thinner and more flexible. There is also no variation in the artwork... every card has the same picture on it's face, which is also the same picture that is on the back.

- 4 decks of Human Cards - 9 movement/rest cards; 12 captive cards; 8 encounter cards and 19 equipment cards. These are all the same size, and on the same cardstock as the Deep One cards. As with the Deep One cards, the Encounter deck all have the same image on the card face, which matches the icon on the game board... likewise so do the cards of the movement deck. The 12 cards of the captive deck feature 8 different images of captives or deep ones, with some images being repeated (with the artwork reflected from left to right). The Equipement Cards feature 14 different images, with some cards (such as the pistol) being repeated. The artwork on the equipment cards is in my opinion much better than that of the other decks.

- An 8 page rulebook - 4 pages of which have coloured images. The rules are fairly easy to read and describe the game well, however they could have done with more differentiation between the headings and subheadings... so it takes longer to flick through and find the right section when a rules query comes up during the first game. Thankfully the rules are pretty straightforward, and with a turn summary printed on two of the four sides of the game board, the rules won't be necessary after the first couple of plays.


Overall the components are pretty nice... certainly the board, miniatures and tokens are good quality. The cards however aren't as thick as those of other games... and my main dislike as far as the components go is the artwork, which is very limited and looks quite poor... particularly since the artwork for zombies is so good.


Gameplay

For me, the gameplay is remeniscent of Scotland Yard, crossed with Zombies!!!. The Human player moves in secret, then the Deep Ones move, draw cards and spawn... after which the Human player reveals their location... recovers any equipment, captives or encounters and then fights any Deep Ones in the same space, before moving again.

Deep one players are restricted to playing 1 card per round, as per Zombies!!!, whereas the Human player can play any number, though their cards are harder to come by. The Human player also has a varying number of wounds depending on the number of Deep One players, however this is the only mechanism for balancing the game for different numbers of players, and this did not seem to be enough of a difference... particularly since with 4 Deep One players the Human only has 6 extra wounds compared to when there's only 1 Deep One player, though there will be approximately 4x as many Deep Ones on the board AND the Deep One players will be able to play 4 cards per round.

I've played the game 4 times so far... twice as a two-player in which the Human won both times, and twice with five players, in which the Deep Ones won once and the Human won once.

It definitely feels like the game is not quite finely tuned for player balance, with it being distinclty easier to win as the Human player with fewer players.. and more likely the Deep Ones will win when there are more players... Though this is not usually an issue for me, as I enjoy experience games that aren't necessarily well balanced, because there is enjoyment in simply playing the game and sharing in the atmosphere and the banter.

The game plays fairly quickly and the times for my 4 plays have ranged from 40 minutes up to about 70 minutes (this is compared to the published playing time of 60 - 90 minutes), and the theme definitely fits the mechanisms of the game... particularly as a 5 player game, in which the Human player has a fairly oppressive feeling of impending doom.


Summary

Innsmouth Escape is a fairly light game combining some euro mechanisms with ideas from miniatures gaming.. It plays fairly quickly and can either be an experience game for up to 5 players, with plenty of banter and in-jokes, or a slightly more strategic game for 2 players, although I feel the player balancing could do with a little work and maybe some houserules.

My biggest disappointment however was with the artwork which I thought was pretty poor.. The card art in particular could have done with a bit more variation and a bit more colour...

Despite those criticisms I have enjoyed playing Innsmouth, and I can see me pulling it out again quite soon... certainly I will be playing this with my brother when we don't have the time/space for Arkham Horror, or do not feel up to saving the world in Pandemic.