Country: United Kingdom

Penny Dreadfuls were short illustrated periodicals, very popular in the United Kingdom in the second half of the nineteenth century.
They were very cheap booklets, costing just one copper penny and offering short stories with vivid and popular themes narrated with an emphatic and sensationalist style.
Despite the low cultural value, Penny Dreadfuls gave birth to a genre that has constantly evolved to this day.

In Penny Dreadfuls of Victorian London: Sensational Tales of Terror, 1 to 5 players will share bizarre and frightening tales masterfully narrated by our authors, set in gloomy Victorian London in the late 19th century, infamous for the mysterious serial murders in the neighborhoods of Whitechapel and Whitehall.

In each Sensational Tale, specific Characters living in an ordinary Victorian world are suddenly embroiled in shocking events that catapult them out of reality and natural conventions. By joining them, players face a bizarre scenario, investigating, making deductions and choices,
facing trials leading to unpleasant consequences or handsome rewards.

Each game has a variable number of turns with different possible outcomes, ranging from miserable failure to utter and satisfying success, all depending on how the players interpret the story, sharing the fate of their Stars.

—description from the publisher

Welcome, devotees! The celestial gaze of the Great Inky One falls upon you; do you have what it takes to be the most dedicated follower?

Cosmoctopus is an engine-building, tentacle-gathering board game for 1 to 4 devotees. Guide Cosmoctopus through the Inky Realm, a flexible configuration of tiles, to gather resources and obtain powerful cards that represent relics, scripture, hallucinations and constellations. Harness the power of these bizarre objects and experiences, craft potent card combinations and be the first to gain 8 tentacles to win!

Your turns are simple; the game’s excitement and depth lie in working out how best to use an ever-powerful hand of cards. Unlike some other engine-builders, you’ll be straight into the fun, upgrading your engine from turn one. With variable setup, easy ways to alter difficulty and optional solo and co-operative modes, Cosmoctopus offers a versatile tabletop experience, whatever your gaming tastes.

—description from the publisher

Get ready to enter the poor and dreary Whitechapel district in London 1888 – the scene of the mysterious Jack the Ripper murders – with its crowded and smelly alleys, hawkers, shouting merchants, dirty children covered in rags who run through the crowd and beg for money, and prostitutes – called "the wretched" – on every street corner.

The board game Letters from Whitechapel, which plays in 90-150 minutes, takes the players right there. One player plays Jack the Ripper, and his goal is to take five victims before being caught. The other players are police detectives who must cooperate to catch Jack the Ripper before the end of the game. The game board represents the Whitechapel area at the time of Jack the Ripper and is marked with 199 numbered circles linked together by dotted lines. During play, Jack the Ripper, the Policemen, and the Wretched are moved along the dotted lines that represent Whitechapel's streets. Jack the Ripper moves stealthily between numbered circles, while policemen move on their patrols between crossings, and the Wretched wander alone between the numbered circles.