Mansions of Madness

Mansions of Madness is a cooperative tabletop exploration game set in the Cthulhu Mythos universe created by H. P. Lovecraft, originally designed by Corey Konieczka and published by Fantasy Flight Games in 2011, then substantially rebuilt as a second edition designed by Nikki Valens beginning in 2016. In the first edition, two to five players explored a locale and solved a mystery against a human keeper player who controlled the horrors they faced; the second edition instead supports one to five players fully cooperatively, replacing the keeper with a companion smartphone or tablet app that runs the story, controls monster behavior and reveals the modular map as investigators explore it. Investigators search for clues, solve puzzles and confront Lovecraftian threats while sanity and health tracks push them toward madness or death as the scenario's horror escalates, and the app-driven branching narrative changes according to the choices and discoveries investigators make. The redesign was widely praised for blending digital app assistance with traditional tabletop exploration.