Another great year for board games, with titles flying off the presses via crowdfunding and through more traditional development.
With Halloween upon us again it’s time for Tabletop Tribe’s annual run down of creepy horror games, but this year rather than give you a list of our favourite titles, we’re having a look at all the hot new stuff the lucky ones might be getting to their tables this festive Samhain season.
- Monster Slaughter
- Who Goes There?
- Villainous
- Deep Madness
- Werewords: Deluxe Edition
- Zombicide: Green Horde
- Haunt The House
- The Order Of Vampire Hunters
- Arkham Horror 3rd Edition
Monster Slaughter
Publisher: Ankama
Number of Players: 2-5
Play time: 45-60mins+
Age Guide: 14+
Type: Competitive Light Horror
Congratulations to Ankama Boardgames for delivering on their promise to ship this game to its Kickstarter backers by Halloween 2018. Just. For most backers.
This innovative board game, that uses the game box to model the archetypal abandoned-creepy-cabin-in-the-woods, is chock full of just about every character and theme from every teen horror B-movie you can think of.
Players can play as one of a number of monster families (like Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies, Golems/Frankensteins, Mummies etc.) and will compete to mercilessly slaughter the idiot teenagers occupying the cabin.
The Edouard Guiton artwork is incredible, the components seem top-notch — I guess we’ll find out from those lucky backers whether the game play lives up to what comes in the box.
Who Goes There?
Publisher: Certifiable Studios
Number of Players: 3-6
Play time: 110mins+
Age Guide: 14+
Type: Semi-Co-operative Horror
John Carpenter’s The Thing remains one of cinema’s classic horrors. The splatter of gore is matched by the suspense, as an insidious alien infection sees surviving protagonists wallow in suspicion and paranoia.
Who Goes There? is based on the book that inspired Carpenter’s film and does a grand job of replicating that ambience. Players work together to fight the alien horror lurking outside, stripping their arctic base of materials to craft into useful item, to hopefully help survive long enough to make it to the helicopter.
But all the while infection lurks to claim the vulnerable. Just who can you still trust? And who the hell is safe to let on the chopper with you?
The game’s production quality is outstanding — possibly the most beautifully produced social deduction game ever made? Critics have been divided over game play but players are full of praise and keep coming back for more horror.
Villainous
Publisher: Wonder Forge
Number of Players: 2-6
Play time: 50mins+
Age Guide: 10+
Type: Competitive
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the most villainous of them all? Don’t be fooled by the Disney logo — this isn’t just for little kids. The underlying game is enthralling and sophisticated enough to engage any grown-up kid too.
Assuming the role of one of Disney’s classic villains you must outdo your opponents in wickedness and villainy to become the greatest dastardly cad of all time.
Clever card play and great graphics and design (apart from a flimsy plastic centrepiece for tokens) make this a safe buy, and the theme should be familiar to non-gamers.
If you’re thinking this isn’t half… Halloweeny enough to be on this list, you can play as a sorceress or an evil fairy/witch – what more do you want?
Deep Madness
Publisher: Diemension Games
Number of Players: 1-6
Play time: 60-120mins+
Age Guide: 16+
Type: Co-operative Horror
Think Alien crossed with The Abyss. With a smattering of Lovecraft thrown into the mix.
Deep Madness has been arriving on doorsteps over the past month, allowing players to gather a handful of friends and the frayed ends of their sanity and take on an underwater co-operative epic like no other.
Players will combat a combination of horrific beasts, sanity-bending encounters and flooded rooms. It’s no wonder the initial reports are that games are… tricky.
But horror wouldn’t be horrible unless it was actually a threat, eh? Will you crack under all that water pressure?
If you missed the game first time around, you’ll be delighted to know the 2nd printing is live on Kickstarter now. You’ll need to buy it there as rising production costs mean Deep Madness won’t be seeing retail any time soon.
Werewords: Deluxe Edition
Publisher: Bezier Games
Number of Players: 2-20
Play time: 10mins+
Age Guide: 8+
Type: Competitive/Co-operative Light Horror
The original Werewords met with mixed reactions. On one hand the gameplay was loved and lauded, on the other many found the artwork and graphic design to be the biggest enduring horror of the game.
The Deluxe edition, released this year as a Kickstarter, solves the latter problem admirably and tweaks the core rules for the better, so you’re left with is a great game that’s a little like merging Werewolf with 20 Questions.
In a nutshell the Townsfolk team are trying to divine a magic word and the Werewolf team are trying to prevent that (or find and devour the Seer!), and all revealed information is controlled via a companion app that works a treat.
This is a game with wide appeal, tight game play and can support up to 20 party guests. What’s not to love?
Zombicide: Green Horde
Publisher: Cool Mini Or Not (CMON)
Number of Players: 1-6
Play time: 60mins+
Age Guide: 14+
Type: Co-operative Horror
Zombicide and it’s sibling Zombicide: Black Plague have both made our Halloween games lists in previous years. 2018 saw the release of the latest incarnation: Green Horde.
This time around players are facing off against a legion of undead greenskins. Orcs and Goblins make for much tougher foes, and also gather in a large mass (or horde, if you please) off-board to suddenly surge into play as a huge and potentially lethal mob.
On the plus side there’s a catapult for splattering baddies en-masse, so it isn’t all doom and gloom.
Whether you like the idea of greenskin walkers or not, most Zombicide fans agree this incarnation is the best fun yet.
Haunt The House
Publisher: Kids Table Board Games
Number of Players: 2-5
Play time: 30-40mins+
Age Guide: 8+
Type: Competitive/Semi-Co-operative Light Horror
A great family game with a twist on the usual haunted house brigade. In Haunt the House, players are the ghosts trying to scare ghost hunters out of their mansion.
A combination of bluff and hand management will see players collecting points to claim scare rights on the various hunters. It’s basic game play but without being dumbed-down as a “kids game”— kids are smart!
The artwork really captures the Halloween vibe, and with 30-40 minute games it won’t outstay its welcome.
So don your best bed sheet and go haunt that house!
Order of Vampire Hunters
Publisher: Dark Gate Games
Number of Players: 1-4 (5/6 with expansion)
Play time: 90mins+
Age Guide: 13+
Type: Co-operative Horror
In our review of The Order of Vampire Hunters earlier this year, we compared it to the classic Zombicide.
With a campaign system and character progression, which the ageing Zombie-slasher doesn’t provide, this still ranks as our go-to co-op “Us-Against-The-Horde” horror dungeon-crawler.
We won’t go into it in too much detail as we’d advise you to check out our review instead, but needless to say (spoiler alert!) we liked this game, despite its brutal difficulty and the odd corner cut on production quality.
The main problem with this game is actually getting hold of a copy. You’ll have to keep your eyes peeled on eBay.
Arkham Horror 3rd Edition
Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games
Number of Players: 1-6
Play time: 120-180mins+
Age Guide: 14+
Type: Co-operative Horror
Regular readers will know that that the Arkham Horror board game isn’t exactly a smash hit at Tribe HQ. It can be ponderous and yawn-inducingly lengthy, and we feel that Eldritch Horror simply does it all better.
Fortunately developers Fantasy Flight Games delivered the amazing Arkham Horror card game, but we still felt a wee bit jealous of the Arkham Horror board game fans who did enjoy the original.
Come 2018 and enter a brand new version of the board game, which isn’t simply a reskin and reprint of the old game. The third edition has a modular board and changes to the rules that aim to address all the problems many had with it in the first place.
Die-hard fans are viewing the new incarnation as some kind of bastard freak child of a shoggoth, but the rest of us might finally have the version of Arkham Horror we’ve been waiting and hoping for.
