The year is 1926. The place is Arkham, Massachusetts. Gateways to places horrible beyond imagination are ripping open all over town, releasing hideous creatures into the streets to stalk the night. Worse yet, if enough of these gates open up, then a monster of unfathomable power will be unleashed upon the world. Pitted against these overwhelming odds is a small band of investigators determined to drive back the ensuing nightmare. They’ll have to delve deep into the mysteries of the Mythos and use all of their skills, weapons, and spells if they want to have even a slim chance of success.
Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce Arkham Horror Remastered, the triumphant return of the Arkham Horror 2nd Edition board game!
Relive the classic Lovecraftian adventure with updated art, refreshed components, and a revamped rulebook. As the first game to return from the FFG “vault,” this game also marks our very first crowdfunding campaign. We’ll be launching the campaign on Gamefound on October 21st, less than a week away from today. Whether you’re a fan of the original game or have yet to dive into Arkham Horror for the first time, you won’t want to miss out on this exciting event!
Of course, many of you may be wondering what exactly is in store for this remaster, but before we can get into that, we have to first answer another question for the newcomers:
What is Arkham Horror?
The Arkham Horror board game is a cooperative horror-adventure game in which 1 to 8 players take on the role of investigators in the ever-imperiled fictional city of Arkham, Massachusetts. These investigators work together to (attempt to) prevent the cataclysmic awakening of an eldritch Ancient One by closing the otherworldly “gates” that keep tearing holes in reality across the city. If you fail to do so, then you get one last shot to save humanity in a Final Battle against the Ancient One itself, but fair warning: if the investigators have to fight off an eldritch god, they are probably gonna die.
You begin the game by choosing an investigator. Each character has their own strengths, weaknesses, tools, and abilities that they can use to challenge the forces of the Mythos. Your investigator determines your stamina and sanity, both of which function as a form of “health” in this game—if either reaches 0, you’re defeated, which comes with some pretty steep penalties. If both your stamina and your sanity reach 0 at the same time, then you’re “devoured” instead, which means it’s time to pick a new investigator!
In addition to stamina and sanity, your investigator also determines the ranges of your core attributes: speed and sneak, fight and will, and lore and luck. These stats determine how many dice you roll when performing a “check,” which is like a test you must pass to succeed at certain actions. If you look at Gloria Goldberg’s investigator sheet above, you’ll notice how each pair of attributes has an inverse relationship with each other. For example, the higher your speed is, the lower your sneak ends up being, and vice versa. You get to choose which pair of stats you go with for each track, and you can adjust your stats a bit during the Upkeep Phase each round, giving you a solid amount of customization for each investigator. Finally, your investigator also comes with one or more passive abilities they can trigger as you play, making each character feel distinct from one another.
There are 16 investigators in the base game and even more in the expansions, giving you plenty of different playstyles to experiment with in your adventures.
Of course, these investigators have their work cut out for them. The city of Arkham is a big place, after all, and there are lots of obstacles that hinder your progress as you attempt to halt the Ancient One’s awakening. Throughout each round during the Movement Phase, you’ll explore the streets of Arkham while searching for clues, fighting (or evading) monsters, collecting useful items, and ultimately trying to close the dimensional gates opening throughout the city—or seal them before they can open in the first place. If you manage to close all open gates or seal six unopened ones, then you win the game! However, this is a lot more difficult than it sounds, especially since…
…monsters constantly prowl the city streets. Sooner or later you’ll have to deal with one, which presents you with a choice: evade it, or fight it. To evade a monster, you’ll test your investigator’s sneak stat against the monster’s awareness, slipping past them harmlessly if you succeed. If you get caught, however—or if you choose to engage the monster directly—then combat ensues. First you perform a will check to try to preserve your investigator’s sanity—these monsters are pretty freaky, after all—then you repeatedly perform combat checks against the monster until you either defeat it or are knocked unconscious. Taking the monster down allows you to continue on your merry way unhindered, but depending on the investigator, it may sometimes be better to try to sneak by unnoticed rather than challenge the horrors head-on.
Once you’re done moving around, you’ll enter the Encounter Phase, which triggers an effect depending on where you are in the city. Each “neighborhood” of Arkham has its own set of location-based encounter cards (an example of one is pictured above). You’ll draw one that matches your location and resolve its effect, which can be helpful or harmful depending on which card you get. This is also the phase where you can close a gate, assuming you’ve met the requirements to do so. If you succeed in closing the gate, then you can also spend five clues to seal it, permanently preventing that gate from reopening for the rest of the game. Remember, if you close all the gates or seal at least six of them, then you win the game!
Finally, the last phase of the round is the Mythos Phase. In this phase, the players draw a single card from the Mythos deck and resolve everything it instructs them to do:
First, it spawns a new gate on a specific space. In the example above, you would spawn a new gate in the Black Cave location, unless that space is sealed (like we mentioned above).
Second, place a clue on each location listed in the top-right of the card. In our example above, you would place a clue on Hibb’s Roadhouse. Remember that you can spend clues to seal gates after you close them, which means this step is extra important.
Third, you activate each monster that matches one of the two symbols shown in the bar above the “news headline” on the Mythos card. Monsters move along predetermined paths, unless they’re already in the same space as an investigator, in which case they stay put and continue to threaten that investigator in their next turn. Keep the potential movements of monsters in mind while you explore Arkham, and you might be able to bypass an encounter entirely.
Last but not least, you resolve the card’s Mythos effect. This is often showed as a news headline on the Mythos card, which describes a one-time effect that you immediately resolve before the card is discarded. These effects can sometimes help and sometimes hinder the investigators. In the Mythos card example shown above, all monsters in street spaces would be instantly defeated—a handy thing to happen if you’re getting overwhelmed! Other Mythos cards might have persistent effects that last for several rounds, so be sure to pay close attention to whatever card is drawn. Once the Mythos Phase concludes, a new round begins, starting with the Upkeep Phase. This is the phase where you refresh all your cards, adjust your stats, and perform various other things across the game board. Once the Upkeep Phase is done, play shifts to the Movement Phase again, and the gameplay loop continues until the investigators win…or lose.
What’s New About this Remaster?
As older fans may have realized by now, this is more than just a simple reprint of Arkham Horror 2nd Edition. The entire game has a fresh coat of paint, with a graphic design that has been completely overhauled from the ground up. Just about every art piece in the game has been updated as well, giving everything a refreshed look and bringing it in line with our modern releases.
Speaking of refreshed, the game has been cleaned up in more ways than just artistically; there are also new quality-of-life changes, such as the addition of the “Upkeep symbol” on several game components to serve as a visual reminder for when something triggers during the Upkeep Phase. This way, you can quickly scan the table for that little red symbol at the beginning of each round to know what things you need to resolve at that time.
In a similar vein, the game’s rulebook has also seen a significant overhaul. While none of the gameplay itself has changed, the language and formatting of the rules have been updated to our modern FFG standard, making everything much cleaner and easier to understand.
At its core, this is the exact same game as the original Arkham Horror 2nd Edition. The gameplay is the same, the numbers are all the same; it just looks prettier, has consistent graphic and text templating across the board, and some monsters have had their names and/or visual designs changed (but not their mechanics).
What About the Expansions?
The original Arkham Horror 2nd Edition had several expansions that added new investigators, Ancient Ones, and gameplay mechanics into the mix. Naturally, we couldn’t leave those out of this campaign!
Struggle against madness and injury in Dunwich Horror. Navigate wandering dimensional rifts and fight epic battles in Kingsport Horror. Dive into investigators’ personal stories and figure out what’s fishy about Innsmouth in Innsmouth Horror. Combine four classic expansions into one with Cosmic Horror. And supplement your collection with a wealth of new resources in Miskatonic Horror!
The exact arrangement of expansion content in this remaster may differ from the original release, and similar to the base game, some names and designs of things may be updated or changed. But all the gameplay content is here, ready for you to revisit after all these years—or experience for the first time!
That’s not all; as a crowdfunding campaign, there will also be stretch goals and other exciting things exclusive to backers. We’ll save those reveals for the campaign itself. Speaking of which…
When Can I Back it?
As we mentioned near the beginning of this article, the crowdfunding campaign for Arkham Horror Remastered launches next week on October 21st, 2026. Be sure to follow the campaign on Gamefound so you’ll be notified the moment it goes live!
Written by Peter Schumacher
