Engle Matrix Games
Engle Matrix Games are a type of game designed by Chris Engle and published by Hamster Games. The games are all the same on a mechanical level, with each game distinguished only by its individual story or setting.
Every Engle Matrix game can be played as a standalone game; there is no core game that it is necessary to purchase.
These games are generally storytelling board games, using discussion between players as a conflict resolution tool, modeled after a real-life psychotherapy tool. Additionally, when these games are referred to as "role-playing games", it's closer to role-playing in the psychological therapy sense than the tabletop gaming industry definition of role-playing game. Unlike most other Cthulhu Mythos-themed games, which treat insanity as an amusing lark, Engle Matrix Games takes an approach to the subject closer to real-world psychological therapy.
More information on Engle Matrix Games can be found here: Free Matrix Game Rules.
On an editorial note, there's a severe lack of information about these games available on the internet that makes it difficult to collect information about them. The Hamster Games web site doesn't list information by game. The games were all home-published, and the publisher apparently changed formats (hardback, paperback, Ziplock (whatever format that is), and boxed) frequently. So it's very difficult to tell how many different editions or versions there are of any one game. Pages haven't been created for the games that only appear on retail sites so to not copy proprietary information.
The "Cthulhu Madness" games are all card games.
This is a list of Cthulhu Mythos-themed Engle Matrix Games:
- Arkham Terror (with "Cthulhu in Class")
- Arkham Terror: Experimental Therapy
- Cthulhu Madness: Aliens
- Cthulhu Madness: Apocalypse
- Cthulhu Madness: House of Dagon
- Cthulhu Madness: Midnight in the Graveyard
- Cthulhu Madness: Reanimator
- Cthulhu on Campus (with "The Graveyard Shift")
- Dead Man on Campus
- Voodoo Beach Party
And the two-in-one games:
- Chaos on Campus - Horror at the Miskatonic University (Note: This could actually just be one game. It was hard to tell.)
- Cthulhu on Campus - Dead Man on Campus
