“My sisters wake from the same nightmares,” begins Selene, seer of the White Rose. “A skeletal hand, pale and white as snow, grasping out from darkness."

Of Dreams and Shadows is a co-operative adventure board game whose roots drink deeply of the blood flowing through designer Gordon Alford’s veins. Fed on the years spent either side of a Game Master’s screen, the game radiates the feeling of a fully-fleshed world lurking just off the edge of your vision.

There’s a sense that if you peeled back the edge of the board, it’d come away matted with blood.

If the evocative, haunting art was the lure, Alford’s uncompromising vision was what took bites from my brain. This game is difficult in the best way - requiring thought, decision, and often a prayer.

From this callous world stitched together from Russian folklore, Celtic monsters, and Native American mythology rises a similarly uncompromising game. Relentless in its desire to keep you on your toes but always prepared to knock you back on your heels, Of Dreams & Shadows wears its RPG heart on its bloodied sleeve - roll might against dodge stat - and shares that genre’s propensity for rapid and sudden death.

The enemy’s legions await…

The box itself threatens injury, crammed with dozens of oversized cards and superthick enemy tokens, but when extracted the game becomes a fairly straightforward adventure. Three actions per turn, five turns per act, two acts per game, a rapidly dwindling reservoir of health and morale, and a world filling with the shadow that threatens to overtake your ability to fight it.

Getting by with a little help from my friends.

In the game’s comparatively sedate first half, your heroes gather companions, arms, and spellcraft. Some threats may overstretch your ability to deal with them, leading to a delicate balancing act of doing as much as you can while spending as little strength and will as possible. Abandon ideas of eliminating every enemy on the board - the witch coven in the southern wilds may be laying curses on your dreams from afar, but the time spent reaching and then eliminating them is better spent ridding the north of the minotaur legions.

As Act I loads the pressure cooker, Act II explodes it. The location-specific quests and story events of Act 1 cease to exist. Those monsters you decided not to deal with now lie between you and the Foe, whose army now marches upon the capital; that armor you skimped on buying means you'll need a perfect roll in order not to be instantly slain; will those goddamn witches STOP with the curses already!

Should you have the wherewithal to vanquish the Foe, the sense of co-operative achievement is palpable. We made it. We did it. Oh my god.

Then because that only took like an hour, you shuffle up and start again.

Originally self-published by Alford, Of Dreams & Shadows has since been picked up by Greenbrier Games who are fresh off the success of Folklore: The Affliction. An expansion is promised: The Monster Within (which I will also be reviewIng) which will explore new folkllores (such as the Algonquian Wendigo) and continue the storylines and choices the base game crafted.

The expansion will come with rules for additional character customization and more ways to co-ooperate with your fellow heroes - adding a breath of variety and upping the replay factor

While the art direction is truly stunning, the graphic design is a little dry.

There’s a lot of unused space on the board (A turn guide or player aid might have fit in the bottom right) and the primary colors of the location don’t mesh with the overall feel.

The decolletage is somewhat at odds with the game’s grim reality.

Despite all this, the game delivers a truly visceral thrill. Beyond the mechanics in the rules and words on the cards, this game does something the best ones do - it rose off the table and into my head. Long after Nora’s knives had drunk deeply of Morrigan’s heartblood, long after Tamlin had stopped having the nightmares where the minotaur’s axe had left its mark in his ribcage, I was still thinking back on my adventures, ready to take up arms and attempt to foil the dragon once more.

If you’re looking for something more sharply focused than Eldritch Horror’s sprawling multi-hour bells and whistles experience or want something with a little more narrative bite than the whimsical Near and Far, Of Dreams and Shadows fits nicely into that category of ‘difficult co-op’.

If you’re prepared to really get into doing the voices, getting into your character’s heads, and immersing yourself in the quests, Of Dreams and Shadows will in turns challenge and send dark thrills down your spine. I cannot wait for the expansion.

Calvin's Corner - Of Dreams and Shadows

Calvin Wong

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