Video Game / Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace

Madness begins when reality departs

The year is 1926: a professor of astronomy is found dead in her mansion and everything indicates that she has been the victim of a heinous murder. Choose from 12 intrepid investigators from the Arkham Horror games, each with a unique set of skills, and assemble your team to shed the light over this mysterious death.

Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace is a turn-based RPG that has players investigate a mystery by collecting clues and performing interrogations while also defending themselves from enemies pulled from the Cthulhu Mythos who may stand in their way, such as cultists, violent asylum patients, and of course, eldritch abominations. Players can choose from an initial cast of seven investigators, all of whom are featured in the original Arkham Horror board and card games, and can pick up an additional five over the course of the nine-chapter original storyline. The game was developed by Asmodee Digital and released on Steam, Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo Switch, on March 23, 2021.

Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace provides examples of the following tropes:

• Action Girl: Jenny Barnes and Zoey Samaras are definitely this. The others are more of the Action Survivor type.
• Apologetic Attacker: Tillighast becomes this after you defeat her in the final battle. She apologizes for her actions and admits her faults and thanks the investigators for doing the right thing in destroying her. Of course, she does not do this directly but only in narration only the player can hear.
• Ax-Crazy: The cultists are this, naturally. The inmates at Arkham Asylum also count.
• Big Bad: There are technically two. Shub-Niggurath is more of a Greater-Scope Villain and the main Mythos creature the cultists are trying to summon. However, the main Big Bad for the game is Wilhemina Tillinghast, the murder victim whose death you're investigating.
• Badass Bookworm: Carolyn Fern, Kate Winthrop, Agatha Crane, Harvey Walters all qualify.
• Book Ends: The game begins and ends at Tillinghast's mansion.
• The Cameo: Norman Withers, a playable character from the tabletop games, appears here as a non-playable NPC.
• Chekhov's Gun: More like Chekhov's crib in this case. Professor Tillighast was interested in motherhood but her life didn't permit for that. She ended up studying a fertility god (or what she was led to believe was one) initially out of scientific curiosity, but then she committed to it when she felt it would advance her own personal goal, fully devolving into madness in the process.
• Cool Old Guy: Harvey Walters likes to remind cultists he "isn't too old to teach [them] a lesson!"
• Cool Old Lady: Agatha Crane is very sociable and is the only professor other than Harvey Walters who is willing to personally defend her students when cultists invade Miskatonic University.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Several characters have this in their backstory but for Kate Winthrop, it's her special ability. However, in her case, it allows her to reduce the chance of triggering any traumas she may be inflicted with.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu??: Subverted. While you will fight an Eldritch Abomination by the end, it is not Shub-Niggurath itself but rather a Dark Young, a monster that acts as Shub-Niggurath's proxy.
• Escort Mission: Two of the chapters will have you protecting a non-playable character in order to win, though you don't have to also bring them anywhere. You are even encouraged by the tutorial to use any healing or protective abilities you might have for such missions.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Reborn and Birthling monsters all count. So does the final boss, Dark Young.
• Foreshadowing: While your characters are horrified at the things they're forced to see and deal with, Tillighast's narration has her come off as more amazed and intrigued at the spectacle, even if out of scientific curiosity. That's because that was how this all started for her before her curiosity devolved into sheer homicidal madness.
• For Science!: Part of the motivation behind Tillinghast's actions.
• Good Is Not Nice: Alphonse Lanuit turns out to be this.
• Glass Cannon: Rex and Zoey like their melee weapons as they are both strong in the skill, but Zoey has only four max sanity while Rex's HP is not as high as Roland's or even Carolyn's to justify taking frequent hits.
• Hollywood Voodoo: Alphonse Lanuit has a shop seemingly dedicated to this as his day job.
• Human Sacrifice: Wilhemina Tillinghast's murder was this.
• Improperly Paranoid: The end of the Bayou chapter can end this way if the characters become too traumatized before then. They will kill Alphonse Lanuit after he manages to close the gate because He Knows Too Much and could potentially use his knowledge to open another gate.
• Intrepid Reporter: Rex Murphy's entire shtick.
• Jack of All Trades: How Rex Murphy's ability basically works. While he is normal investigative skill is "Physical," he has potential access to all other skills in the game and they have a chance to pop up whenever the player is about to further inspect a clue or question someone. Agatha Crane is also this to an extent, as she has average stats in all weapon skills.
• Kill It with Fire: This is the best way to kill the Reborns you come across.
• Lady of Black Magic: Marie Lambeau is this as she is one of the strongest magic casters in the game due to her witch heritage. Gameplay-wise, she uses fewer Action Points to use spellbooks and she has less chance of her spells going wild when cast.
• Magic Music: Marie Lambeau is said to have some form of this in her backstory but it doesn't factor into her gameplay at all. Jim Culver also counts as his trumpet-playing was once said to have briefly brought the dead back to life.
• Mother of a Thousand Young: The Trope Namer is the Greater-Scope Villain of this game, after all.
• Multiple Endings: Many of the chapters have varying endings depending on how mentally well off your party is by the end of it. If they manage to stay sane, they may end the chapter making a reasonable decision to advance their investigation. If they're too mentally broken or traumatized though, they might do things that are either bizarre or just plain violent and awful.
• Mutually Exclusive Party Members: The seven investigators available at the start are mutually exclusive with each other; only the one you select will join the party, while the others are unavailable for the rest of the game.
• One Degree of Separation: Professor Tillinghast is already at least somewhat familiar with each of the 12 playable characters. A few of them were even her colleagues. Thus, your lead investigator that she personally invited to her mansion in the beginning can be anyone from a fellow professor or researcher to a musician whose performance she once witnessed or a butcher to drop off her delivery.
• Sadistic Choice: You come across a non-player-character that you save from a group of Birthlings. However, he then says that some of the bugs infected him already. Your characters already know what he will now become and there is no cure. Your only choices are to kill him or leave him for his horrified wife to find.
• Sanity Meter: This game naturally has one and letting it deplete to zero inflicts a character with a specific trauma that will debuff them in some way. They might harm themselves at the end of a turn, be forced to make another sanity check, suffer from a lowered initiative, etc. Sanity resets to max after being lowered to zero though, as characters can suffer up to three traumas at once. Anything past that, and those traumas can become even worse. In order to manage it, you'd have to either give your characters the occasional cigarette pack you come across to calm their nerves (at a cost of 1 HP), or check around the environment for calming elements that may help the party feel at peace and thus increase their sanity.
• Schrödinger's Player Character: You pick one of seven investigators at the start of the game. Only the one you pick gets involved in the mystery, with the others never appearing in the story.
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: There are several instances of this, most notably at Tillinghast's mansion at the end of the game.
• Squishy Wizard: As is the case in the original games, Harvey Walters is this. The same goes for Marie Lambeau as she has average-at-best mental resistance and middling HP on par with Harvey.
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: All of the spellbooks you can find in the game.
• That's No Moon: The comet that the Herd of Algedi is interested in is actually a portal that could be used to summon beings from another world, potentially Shub-Niggurath itself.
• The Gunslinger: Roland Banks and Jenny Barnes are the best examples here.
• The Social Expert: One of Agatha Crane's investigative skills makes her this, meaning she's ideal for chapters where you will be questioning many non-playable characters for information.
• The Unfought: Shub-Niggurath is never fought as a natural consequence of sealing the cultists' gate before the end of the storyline.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: This can happen to an extent with the player's party and it can affect how they end certain chapters. This also applies to Professor Tillinghast herself.
• Turn-Based Combat: Characters take turn fighting enemies using up to 5 action points with which to move, use weapons to attack, use items, etc. Turns are determined by a character's Initiative score when compared to the enemies and their turn order is also visible, allowing for players to plan ahead.
• Unreliable Narrator: Considering how she steadily criticizes your "sane" conclusions while praising your "insane" ones as you progress the investigation, never mind how she initially praises a cult who almost immediately imprisons you, this was kind of a given for Professor Tillinghast.
• Workplace-Acquired Abilities: Many of the characters' abilities tie in to their professions in some way. Zoey, who is both a chef and a serial killer of sorts is strong with melee attacks. Rex Murphy is an investigative reporter whose intuition allows him to potentially access any skill in the game. Then you have Roland Banks who, being a Bureau agent, is strong with firearms. This even extends to some of their idle dialogue and battle quotes as they usually have the characters referencing their profession in some way.