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Fantasy Flight's Barkham Horror turns an April Fool's joke into reality

Get ready to take on a supernatural investigation that replaces eldritch horrors with the secret war of cats and dogs.

TJ Denzer

December 3, 2019 9:35 AM

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Earlier in 2019, Fantasy Flight had themselves a little fun with their iconic Arkham Horror tabletop game universe, offering “Barkham Horror,” which replaced the investigations into Cthulu and other eldritch gods and monsters with investigations into evil cats. Perhaps unexpectedly, their fans absolutely loved the idea so much that Fantasy Flight is now making Barkham Horror a real game.

Announced on December 2, 2019 via a blog post on Fantasy Flight’s website, Barkham Horror: The Meddling of Meowlathotep is a card game scenario pack that will be launching soon. The game brings cat conspiracy and, dare we say, impending cat-astrophe to the Arkham Card Game style with a 78-card set. In this standalone adventure, investigators must discover the truth behind the return of Meowlathotep, the Prowling Chaos, who is set to return and ruin the city of Barkham.

Fantasy Flight claims that the extremely positive response to their joke earlier in 2019 is what prompted the actual development of Barkham Horror.

“Our graphic designer, Chelzee, had so much fun morphing classic Arkham Horror: The Card Game art into new zoological horrors,” FF wrote in the announcement. “And we were delighted to share the article with all of you. We thought that was all the project was: a fun piece for one day. How wrong we were. The response from you, our fans, was incredible; and you asked, nay, demanded that we make this product.”

And so, here we are with an assortment of cards that have fun with the normal Arkham themes, taking the usual investigative efforts of a good Arkham Horror game and bending them towards the theme of cats vs dogs. Unfortunately, if you’re a cat fan, you might be on the short end of the stick here (unless of course you lose on purpose to welcome the feline overlords).

Barkham Horror: The Meddling of Meowlathotep is available for pre-order in the continental US now for $19.95. Want to check out more tabletop delights? Check out the Alien tabletop RPG launching early this December!

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.