Inspired by the award-winning Arkham Horror board game franchise and integrating elements of that series into a streamlined new form, Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace is an enjoyable engrossing horror-mystery -- with enough depth to justify multiple playthroughs through the relatively fast-paced plotline.
Set in the perpetually misty nights of New England in 1926, Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace gives players a wealth of characters to choose from, each with their own unique attributes, weaknesses and personality quirks, to use while investigating the mysterious death of Professor Tillinghast. As the mystery deepens, the player finds themselves up against a mysterious cult that has some connection to her grisly demise -- and the dark powers they seek to bring further into the world.
Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace operates as a relatively simple turn-based RPG, with players exploring iconic settings and scenarios from the Arkham Horror series for clues while fighting against cultists and combatting the encroaching madness these encounters bring. There are a handful of puzzle elements, but these are largely solved by simply exploring the environment and figuring out which encounters to complete before moving on.
The gameplay is at least streamlined to a fine point, making Mother's Embrace incredibly easy to pick up and play. Combat also flows well, with a deceptively unique difficulty curve in place thanks to the Mythos Clock. Many actions that can be taken during the game can result in the Mythos Clock ticking closer and closer to completion, indicating that some unseen dark powers are at work and preparing to affect your party.
Filling the clock results in a new negative impact happening to the entire party and resetting the clock, giving the game's otherwise typical point-and-click mystery elements a consistently foreboding sense of suspense. In other games, raiding every cabinet available for supplies is second nature, but Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace finds a way to quietly fill those moments full of foreboding.
The Mythos Clock -- and the ensuing Sanity Checks that result in the characters suffering from new impediments depending on how investigations and combat have played out -- give Mother's Embrace a bit of extra energy to help it stand out from other games with similar playstyles. Otherwise, the gameplay is what one would expect from a largely simple investigation broken up occasionally by turn-based combat.
To the game's credit, the combat especially has been streamlined and simplified into something that's easy to pick up and master -- albeit becoming somewhat repetitive in nature over time, as turn-based RPGs often become. Luckily, the game's relatively short story encourages multiple playthroughs with the different characters, giving it more variety than it may have had otherwise.
There are questions to be asked about problematic elements, from the game's use of "madness" as a catch-all for status afflicting game mechanics, along with actual real-life neurosis being simplified into a negative status buff that can be solved by not taking the character on the next mission. The same could be said for the genre of Lovecraft-inspired horror as a whole and how it can trivialize mental health, which extends beyond just Mother's Embrace. The game tries to take time to distinguish its characters with enough personality and personal hangups to be endearing, also finding connections for the elements of their psyche that can be targeted.
While Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace may be less concerned with reinventing the wheel gameplay-wise, it excels in execution, possessing a strong sense of atmosphere that benefits the game's feel and tone. The graphics are consistently clean, if not spectacular, but the sound design, general lighting and overall world design are effectively unsettling -- especially as the player becomes more surrounded and consumed by darkness.
While there are elements of the gameplay that can be dull at best and problematic at worst, Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace is otherwise a creepy, well-constructed and overall enjoyable horror-mystery that should appeal well to fans of the genre -- and it is easy enough to pick-up that gamers curious about the universe should find some enjoyment as well.
Developed and published by Asmodee, Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace is now available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC.