Arkham Horror: The Card Game is a Collectible Card Game — specifically a living card game — spinoff of Arkham Horror. Like its predecessor, AH:tCG is based on H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos and takes place in the 1920s, and is a fully cooperative game, with the players teaming up to fight the forces of the Mythos controlled by the game.
Players control investigators that try to penetrate the occult mysteries of Arkham, Massachusetts. Play consists of investigators moving across various locations, investigating the locations to discover clues and battling enemies and the forces of the Mythos. The plot of each scenario is determined by "act" and "agenda" cards: the act deck describes the objectives that the investigators are trying to accomplish, usually by collecting enough clues from the locations; and the agenda deck describes the forces of evil and progresses slowly but surely as time goes on. If all cards in the act deck are completed, the scenario ends in a win for the players, and if all cards in the agenda deck are completed, the scenario ends unfavorably (but not always as a loss for the players).
Each scenario has multiple possible endings, depending on the actions the investigators take during the scenario and the result of the race between the act and agenda decks. Scenarios are generally linked together in a campaign, with the results of each scenario affecting how later scenarios play out. This being Lovecraft, happy endings are hard to come by.
Players are represented in-game by investigators, each with their own special ability and deckbuilding requirements. The investigators are split into five roles that represent the broad archetypes of Lovecraftian protagonists:
- Guardians directly fight the evils plaguing Arkham. The Guardian class focuses on combat and enemy management.
- Seekers study and uncover the dark truths of the world. The Seeker class focuses on gathering clues and movement abilities.
- Rogues avoid direct confrontation. The Rogue class focuses on evasion and resource stockpiling.
- Mystics embrace the occult, with all the risks that entails. The Mystic class focuses on high risk, high reward gameplay.
- Survivors didn't sign up for this. The Survivor class focuses on luck manipulation and reusing already-used cards to balance out low stats.
Several expansion campaigns have been released, in addition to one-off scenarios and custom fan made content.
Campaigns:
- Night of the Zealot: The ghouls of Arkham abandon the shadows and take to the streets - aided by their god, Umôrdhoth.
- The Dunwich Legacy: A cult attempts to take vengeance on Dr. Armitage after the events of The Dunwich Horror.
- The Path to Carcosa: The play The King in Yellow threatens the invasion of an alien world. Or are you just losing it?
- The Forgotten Age: An expedition into the jungles of Mexico discovers a threat to the very fabric of time itself.
- The Circle Undone: At a charity event hosted by the Silver Twilight Lodge, four people have utterly vanished, and the dead are strangely restless...
- The Dream-Eaters: An intertwined double story as one group becomes lost in the Dreamlands and another works in the waking world to return them home, with the fate of both worlds hanging in the balance.
- The Innsmouth Conspiracy: The team of investigators got stuck in Innsmouth, without memory of how they got there. Will they remember in time to prevent an upcoming catastrophe?
- Edge of the Earth: The second expedition to the City of the Elder Things goes disastrously, and now investigators must not only survive, but find the answer to what lies behind the Mountains of Madness...
- The Scarlet Keys: The investigators gets forcibly recruited to obtain the dangerous artifacts known as "the Keys" before the mysterious Red Coterie does. But the true enemy lurks in the shadows, slowly but steadily erasing our world not just from existence, but the very history and our memory...
- The Feast of Hemlock Vale: In preparation for the great feast, previously off-limits Hemlock Isle opens up for visitors, and survey team from Miskatonic comes to research its bizarrely-mutated nature, unaware that the island has a dark secret.
- The Drowned City: A group of investigators gets sent to recently-resurfaced R'lyeh to retrieve some relics for their shady benefactor, Randall Tillinghast, unaware that it may be the last time they see their home.
Standalone Scenarios:
- Curse of the Rougarou: A cursed beast stalks the swamps of the New Orleans bayou.
- Carnivale of Horrors: The celebrants of the Carnivale of Venice are the sacrifices for a dark ritual.
- The Labyrinths of Lunacy: The investigators must work together to escape a madman's deathtrap.
- Guardians of the Abyss: The investigators explore Cairo and the Sahara Desert to solve a sleeping sickness where no one will wake again.
- Murder at the Excelsior Hotel: A murder occurs at the prestigious hotel, and the investigators must solve this case before the police arrive and possibly accuse them of this murder... or they become the next victims.
- The Blob That Ate Everything: A throwback to B-Movie horror with multiple groups trying to take down the giant critter.
- Barkham Horror: The Meddling of Meowlathotep: Originally announced simply as an April Fools' Day joke in 2019, but fan reaction was so popular that it was released for real later that year. This expansion is set in an alternate universe, where evil cats have become a grave danger to the world, and the only force that stands in their way is a team of heroic investigator dogs.
- War of the Outer Gods: Three Ancient Ones are attacking at once; fortunately, they're just as hostile to each other as to the humans, which gives the investigators a chance to stop them before it's too late.
- Machinations Through Time: Nobel-winning scientists and their breakthroughs have vanished from history, leaving humanity devastated. The investigators are sent on a time-traveling adventure to find out who disrupted the past and is messing with the future.
- Fortune And Folly
- The Midwinter Gala
- Film Fatale
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