Eighteen cards. Four tokens. One pad for keeping score. A single golf pencil.

That’s how I introduced last year’s Tides of Time, Kristian Čurla’s then-unique microgame about the dawn of civilization as glimpsed through the world’s tiniest lens. It was a bijou of a game, as clever and elegant as it was petite.

Now we’ve got Tides of Madness, which at first glance appears like little more than the inevitable Lovecraftifying that has gripped so much of this hobby. But let’s take a closer look.

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