Eldritch Tricks

The most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

Innsmouth will fix that.

THE SEA HAS A HAND

You know how tricks work. Follow suit, play high, take the pile.

Except in most missions one suit was removed before the deal, and those cards belong to Dagon. Every trick, he turns one face up: a number you have to meet or beat. Clear it and the trick is yours. Fail, and he takes it — and every investigator at the table loses a point of sanity.

Nothing attacks you here. The town simply keeps showing you things, and you keep being unable to stop understanding them.

SOMEONE AT THIS TABLE WANTS THE GATE OPEN

In some missions, one investigator is quietly handed a different objective. Feed the Deep One. Mark of the Void. The Witnessed Fall.

They still sit at the briefing. They still nod along.

EVERY GOAL. NO EXCEPTIONS.

Win at least two tricks. Take four Tomes. Win the fewest tricks at the table. Make sure Dagon takes a trick with the tide in it.

Everyone can see everyone's goal. That's the easy part. They contradict each other, there are only so many tricks in a hand, and if one investigator misses, the mission is lost — no matter how well the others played.

THERE IS ALWAYS A WAY OUT. IT IS RARELY FREE.

The Arcane cards stand apart from the suits. Rank means nothing against them. Suit means nothing against them. The trick stops being a contest the moment one hits the table, and Dagon's threshold cannot touch it.

Relics ask for nothing. Not at first. You can throw one onto any trick, but you can only lead with one when nothing ordinary is left in your hand.

Spells cost you a point of sanity. The trump that saves the table is drawn from the same account the tide is already emptying.

TWENTY-SIX MISSIONS

Arrival. Zadok's Warning. The Esoteric Order. Blood of the Pact. Devil Reef. The Gate Beneath the Reef.

A full campaign across a map of Innsmouth, and the rules get worse as it goes. Thresholds that stop accepting ties. Epic missions that are not won until every investigator on the roster has won them. Missions where every Arcane card costs sanity. And a finale where Dagon sits down at the table with his own hand, leads the first trick, and every trick he takes fills the doom track.

• Co-op trick-taking with an actual opponent. Not a puzzle. Something on the other side of the table taking cards off you.
  
• Shared fate. Sanity loss hits everyone. When one investigator breaks, the mission ends for all of you.
  
• 16 investigators, each with a goal. Most have a power; some are bound to a suit or carry a burden.
  
• The Arcane Deck. Trumps that beat every suit card. Spells cost sanity.
  
• Traitor missions. One seat, playing a different game, saying nothing.
  
• Solo or online. Play solo with AI investigators at a table of three to five, or online co-op through Steam for two to five players, with AI filling any empty seats.
  
• Narrated campaign. Every mission opens with a voiced briefing, and a guided tutorial teaches the table.
  
• Four difficulty levels, from Normal to Brutal.

COMPLETE

Eldritch Tricks is finished. Everything we set out to make is in it: the full 26-mission Innsmouth campaign with 16 investigators, three epic missions and the finale against Dagon, solo play with AI teammates, online co-op on Steam, a guided tutorial, controller support and 30 achievements, on Windows, Apple Silicon Macs and Linux. From here on, updates are bug fixes. We are not adding new features.

"We shall swim out to that brooding reef in the sea, and dive down through black abysses to Cyclopean and many-columned Y'ha-nthlei."
— H.P. Lovecraft, The Shadow Over Innsmouth