Herein you’ll find short snippets of reviews of Feed the Shoggoth!, with links to the full review. We’ll be adding to this as more reviews come in!
I loved Feed The Shoggoth! This is what I would call a near perfect beer and pretzel game. It moves quickly, every player is involved at all times so no one feels bored or left out as other actions drag on and opportunities for undercutting and sabotaging your competitors abound. The mechanics are such that while easy to grasp and understand, particularly after a game or two are under your belt, there’s enough depth there to keep you on your toes and laughing the whole way to the abyss.
. . .I also loved the fact this game plays well with 3 to 6 players. This is a hard area to crack and Feed The Shoggoth! does the job extremely well. With simple optional rules that allow you to tune the game for either a longer, more strategic game or a shorter, nastier affair Feed The Shoggoth! has large amounts of replay value. Every person I invited over to test this game, every single one of them, loved it. This is unheard of. This game had me cursing at my phone’s camera for not operating fast enough. One second the table would erupt in wild laughter and then suddenly everyone was back to intense, devious plotting. I felt as if I was watching The League of Gentlemen performing a sketch wherein they deconstruct a gaming session. When one adds to this the consideration it is entirely possible to play three or four games of Feed The Shoggoth! in the time it normally takes to set up other Lovecraftian themed games I believe Squamous Studios has a release on their hands that rightfully deserves its place in every gamer’s collection of our darkened corner of the world.
I really think that gamers who like Munchkin will love this game. And it really doesn’t matter to them whether they need another game like this since Munchkin fans tend to buy forty-five million versions of the game anyway. Even if they already have the Cthulhu version, they will want this one.
The game is easy to teach and plays up to 6 players, so there will be ample opportunities to play it with all sorts of crowds. It’s a small package that travels well and doesn’t take much time to set up. It is very funny, and the artwork is fun and silly with obvious nods to John Kovalic on the Minion cards.
I should say that it doesn’t play exactly like Munchkin. I don’t want to give the impression that this is not its own game or that it’s just a clone. I certainly don’t think that.
There is no kicking in the door to find a monster to defeat. But there is the opportunity every turn for my opponents to screw me up. Feed the Shoggoth is much simpler, but the comparisons are immediate in the feel and in the “take that” gameplay. And I think that will appeal to a lot of gamers.
The two main strengths of Feed the Shoggoth! are the replay value and the Shoggoth card. The huge variety of the Faction, Spell, and Artifact cards help make each game experience different each time you play. You will find that the Spell and Artifact cards have a few repeated cards, but for the most part, especially with the Artifacts, all are almost completely unique. Having a different game experience is ideal for replay.
Feed the Shoggoth! rewards players for outwitting their opponents by playing them off each other, as well as for making use of as many cards as they can on opponents’ turns, which maximizes their replenishment draw at the end of their turn. Putting yourself into the lead at the beginning is not necessarily the best plan as it can put a target on your back, forcing you to suffer the worst of your opponents’ cards. So a careful balance must be struck between when and how you score points. Some good bluffing skills are also helpful, especially when you don’t have a Minion to sacrifice, and making the other Cult Leaders do the work of pulling the Shoggoth away from you is always advantageous.
If you are a fan of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories and the works of the wider Cthulhu Mythos and like fun and games, this game is a must have. If you have no idea who the hell Lovecraft is and have never read any of this tales but still want to play a fast and fun card game, this is a must have. So yeah, it’s pretty much a must have. Get it, and don’t forget to keep that shoggoth well fed.
Feed the Shoggoth! has so many twists and turns, amazing comebacks and spectacular downfalls that the game often feels like a dark satirical soap opera rather than a card game. It all comes down to the way players interact with each other. Everything is geared to do one of two things: get eaten or get someone else eaten. The entire time I was playing it I kept thinking, “If Mel Brooks ever made a movie based on H.P. Lovecraft, this would be it.” Dark slapstick disparaging humor at its finest.