The Horror of It All
By Marc Q
As we pass the spookiest time of year, I thought it might be a nice time to examine some of the many, many horror-themed games available at your Friendly Local Gaming Store!
Horror is a weird little genre for a board game… no judgment, I’m not saying it’s bad in any way, but it’s an unusual idea to play a game that you may find scary. To a large extent, horror games are horror-themed coats of paint on top of interesting mechanics. Exploring haunted houses, for example, doesn’t have any jump-scares like an actual haunted house, or playing a few rounds as investigators communing with ghosts won’t give you shivers, necessarily. The aesthetic of these games often do a lot of heavy lifting. And as much as I dislike Horror as a literary or movie genre, I love a lot of horror games… So let's get into it!
Many gamers first experience horror games through the classic Betrayal At House on the Hill, a game that’s currently on its third edition. While each new version has tightened up the rules and cleaned up some of the issues, the core of the game has remained the same: a group of bright-eyed innocents have wandered into a haunted house, and now have to do something in order to escape. What do they have to do, you ask? Well, that’s the joy of Betrayal… nobody knows! That is, until a certain point in the game when The Haunt occurs, and suddenly everyone learns two things: first, what they need to do to escape, and second, that one of the people who wandered into the house may actually be a traitor and has their own agenda! This simple twist has resulted in some truly unforgettable game nights, and some fantastic, funny, and brilliant stories.
There are a few downsides to the game, none of which will necessarily ruin your experience, but are worth keeping in mind. The traitor and the heroes have their own win conditions. This requires that you have players that are capable of reading rules and understanding them without help from others. And partly because the game is so rules-light, you will occasionally have a busted round where evil/good wins unceremoniously. Not a critical thing, but worth keeping in mind.
If you want a game that’s a little more complicated, and I would argue more elegant and with better rules, I’d point you towards Mansions of Madness. Thematically similar to Betrayal, Mansions is fully cooperative, with a group of investigators intentionally heading into danger, trying to discover clues to find out how to stop whatever unspeakable evil is trying to claw into our dimension from the darkness beyond the stars. The current edition includes rules for a person to play as the house, but honestly I think the game really shines as a fully cooperative game where the house and monsters are controlled through a free App. I would go so far as to say that it’s really the way the game was meant to be played.
Perhaps you prefer your horror to be more puzzle-like? Then may I suggest the line of Horrified games, which are basically horror-themed versions of Pandemic. Plus, being able to pick which monsters you’re going to try and “solve” for any given game gives a huge amount of variability and modularity to the difficulty.
Or maybe you want something on the sillier side? The simple little card game Gloom is all about killing off your family after inflicting as much misery as possible, ideally after causing other players' families to have happy, fun memories (which are bad, because the core of the game is you want your family to be as sad as possible!). You could even try one of the many versions of One Night Werewolf if you have lots of players and want some quick social deduction and misdirection!
As a final recommendation, let me give a nod to Mysterium Park, which I often describe as “Clue, but good.” The basic idea is that one player is a ghost, and everyone else is playing psychic investigators working together with the ghost to try and solve the ghost’s murder. The problem is that the ghost isn’t allowed to talk, and can only give hints to their demise by using big, beautiful, and questionably useful “dream” cards to try and suggest which suspects are innocent. A fantastic little cooperative game which is thematic (more so if you light some candles and play some spooky music!) and easy to get on the table. The original Mysterium is pretty good, but the newer version of Mysterium Park I think is straight up better, and cheaper!
So pick up a few scary games, and have yourself a frightfully good time!