When the End of the World Is Just the Beginning

The night Madison City died, nobody saw the stars go out. People only noticed the silence; no traffic, no sirens, no distant music. By the time the sky split and something vast stared back, it was already too late for plans, politics, or prayers.

The Legacy of Cthulhu – The Board Game drops you into what comes after that moment: the ruins, the ash, the desperate Survivors who somehow didn’t die when the Great Old Ones woke up. It’s the board game adaptation of the cult Role-Playing Game The Legacy of Cthulhu, reborn as a fully revised international edition after a successful crowdfunding campaign in Brazil in 2024. The world is inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos tradition, but tells its own post-apocalyptic story where the Great Old Ones have already broken through.

You’re not trying to stop the apocalypse. That ship sailed. You’re trying to live with it.

In many Cthulhu stories, the horror is still a rumor; a strange book, a missing person, a whisper that something is wrong. Here, the mask is off: Cthulhu and other Great Old Ones loom over a broken world, and Madison City is one of the places caught in the crossfire.

You start with almost nothing. Your Shelter is gone, your supplies are thin, and the streets are crawling with cultists, deranged survivors, and things that should only exist in fever dreams and forbidden tomes. Every Mission feels like a small, doomed chapter in a much larger cosmic war you can’t control; only survive long enough to escape. Instead of a slow, pre‑apocalypse investigation, this game asks a different question: when the Old Ones have already reshaped the world, how do you survive the fallout day after day?

And even if claws and teeth don’t get you, the things you see just might.

If you’ve played other cooperative games where each player controls a character, takes a couple of actions, and then faces an enemy phase, you’ll feel at home here. Moment to moment, The Legacy of Cthulhu – The Board Game is fast and physical: you kick in doors, sweep rooms, sprint through flooded tunnels, and empty the last shells in a battered shotgun while something huge lumbers closer. Every turn is a tense little puzzle: do you Move Silently and risk failing the test, or fire the loud weapon and pray the new Monsters don’t spawn too close?

Underneath that action, the Mythos is always chewing at your mind. Certain enemies, Events, and discoveries force tests that leave your Survivors with growing stacks of Madness markers, a track that shows how close they are to breaking. Ignore that track for too long, and a character doesn’t just “faint”, they break: fleeing the campaign forever, or staying on the board as a threat under your control, turning their weapons on the very people they swore to protect. Madness here isn’t window dressing; it’s as important as your Health or your last bullet.

The game keeps asking the same uncomfortable question: how much horror can you endure to stay alive? Later, you start to question: Is this worth living for?

Madison City is not just a backdrop; it’s a character that holds grudges. The more Noise you make (shots fired, doors smashed, desperate clashes), the more trouble you stir up. Wandering Monsters follow the echoes of your mistakes, and at the end of a Mission, the accumulated Noise can unleash Horde attacks on your Shelter or even “The Call of Cthulhu,” a moment when something titanic finally notices your existence.

In Escape from Madison City (Adventure Mode), you’re not just surviving one scenario. You’re planning routes through the city on the Madison City Tourist Guide, pushing your luck past places marked with Encounters that might be ambushes, bargains, or worse. Your Shelter, first a fragile RV from the 1980's, later whatever you can rebuild, evolves with upgrades that mean the difference between clinging to life and collapsing under the next Horde. The Noise and Horde systems tie your short‑term choices (like firing that shotgun now) directly to long‑term consequences when you get back “home.”

You’ll remember the Missions you barely escaped, the corners you refused to turn again, and the night you chose to flee instead of fight—and still paid the price.

Follow the campaign on Gamefound and make sure you’re there before Madison City notices you.