Sean Winningham
With today being Friday, October 13th, this is the perfect time to start thinking about what you may want to do for this Halloween season (if you haven’t already). From decorations to costumes, there’s so much to get excited about!
If you are new to games, want to get back into playing games, or have never stopped playing games in your life, here are 5 games I’d recommend you either play or try out with your friends this spooky season.
If any of these interest you, find your local gaming store to buy or play (many game stores have demo libraries for you to try out), and let me know which one you decided to play!
Horrified
- Players: 1-5
- Play Time: 60 minutes
- Ages: 10+
- Mechanism: Cooperative, Action Points, Dice Rolling
- Genre: Horror, Movies
- Designer(s): Prospero Hall
- Artist(s): Prospero Hall
- Publisher: Ravensburger
The stakes have been raised. Imagine living in a place so wretched that it’s not plagued by one, two, or even three monsters — but seven of the most horrifying fiends!
In this game, you’ll come face to face with them all as you work together to rid the town of maniacal or misunderstood creatures…before it’s too late.
Horrified includes high-quality sculpted miniatures (Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, Creature from the Black Lagoon). Its innovative, easy-to-learn, cooperative gameplay has players working together against the monsters with varying levels of difficulty. Just as each monster is unique, they require different strategies and tactics to be defeated.
Hocus Pocus
- Players: 2-6
- Play Time: 30 minutes
- Ages: 8+
- Mechanism: Cooperative, pattern building
- Genre: Fantasy, Family
- Designer(s): Prospero Hall
- Artist(s): Ann Marcellino
- Publisher: Ravensburger
Disney Hocus Pocus: The Game, based on the 1993 movie “Hocus Pocus”, players must work together to ruin the Sanderson Witches’ potion three times before the sun rises. Players hold a hand of ingredients of different types and colors and attempt to match all ingredient types or colors in the cauldron.
Each turn, players ask a question about other players’ hands, referring to the ingredient type or color (but not both). (For example, “Who has blue ingredients?” or “Who has newt saliva?”) They then play a card from their hand into the cauldron and draw back up to three cards, ending their turn.
Some ingredient cards have Binx the cat or a spell book on them. When an ingredient with Binx is played into the cauldron, the active player puts the Binx mover in front of any player. That player then lays their cards down so everyone can see them and keeps them there until Binx is moved. If a spell book is played, the active player draws a card from the Spell deck and resolves the card. Spells generally do something to ruin players’ plans.
If you have cards showing all of one color or all of one object in the cauldron, then you’ve stunned one of the witches — and you need to stun the witches three times before time runs out! When stunned, a witch cannot cast spells from the deck.
Players also have four “Tricks” to use based on scenes from the movie; each Trick can be used once per game. For example, “Burning Rain of Death” allows you to discard three potion ingredients and draw three new potion ingredients.
Betrayal At House On The Hill
- Players: 3-6
- Play Time: 60 minutes
- Ages: 12+
- Mechanism: Cooperative, Dice Rolling, Map Addition, Storytelling,
- Genre: Adventure, Exploration, Horror
- Designer(s): Bruce Glassco, Rob Daviau, Bill McQuillan, Mike Selinker, Teeuwynn Woodruff
- Artist(s): Dennis Crabapple McClain, Christopher Moeller, Peter Whitley
- Publisher: Avalon Hill (now published by Hasbro)
Betrayal at House on the Hill quickly builds suspense and excitement as players explore a haunted mansion of their own design, encountering spirits and frightening omens that foretell their fate. With an estimated one-hour playing time, Betrayal at House on the Hill is ideal for parties, family gatherings, or casual fun with friends.
Betrayal at House on the Hill is a tile game that allows players to build their own haunted house room by room, tile by tile, creating a new thrilling game board every time. The game is designed for three to six people, each of whom plays one of six possible characters.
Secretly, one of the characters betrays the rest of the party, and the innocent members of the party must defeat the traitor in their midst before it’s too late! Betrayal at House on the Hill will appeal to any game player who enjoys a fun, suspenseful, and strategic game.
Betrayal at House on the Hill includes detailed game pieces, including character cards, pre-painted plastic figures, and special tokens, all of which help create a spooky atmosphere and streamline gameplay.
Candela Obscura
- Players: 4-7
- Play Time: Varies
- Ages: 16+
- Mechanism: Roleplaying (Illuminated Worlds System)
- Genre: Horror, Paranormal
- Designer(s): Spenser Starke, Rowan Hall, Christopher Grey, Tracey Harrison, Taliesin Jaffe
- Artist(s): Shaun Ellis, Jamie Harrison, Amelia Leonards, Marc Moureau, Stevie Morley, Justin O’Neal, and Doug Telford
- Publisher: Darrington Press
You’re needed, investigators: join the secret society Candela Obscura to confront occult horrors from beyond, keeping hidden the true nature of magickal incursions besetting our world. This quickstart guide takes you on a journey through the new tabletop roleplaying game Candela Obscura as featured in the new monthly anthology series on Critical Role’s Twitch and YouTube channels! Read more about the show in its announcement!
Candela Obscura (bestowed the hashtag #CandelaObscura) is a new tabletop roleplaying game that places you in the roles of investigators working for an esoteric order. In this game of gothic horror, individuals of varied talents are brought together under the organization Candela Obscura. You’ll pursue strange occurrences and encounter dangerous magicks, fighting back against a mysterious source of corruption and bleed. Candela Obscura is the first to use the Illuminated Worlds System, a newly designed system that uses 6-sided dice and lends itself to narrative, arc-driven play.
The full Candela Obscura Core Rulebook will come out in late 2023, but start playing today with this free quickstart guide!
Mysterium
- Players: 2-7
- Play Time: 42 minutes
- Ages: 10+
- Mechanism: Cooperative, Deduction, Hand Management, Storytelling
- Genre: Horror, Murder Mystery
- Designer(s): Oleksandr Nevskiy, Oleg Sidorenko
- Artist(s): Igor Burlakov, Xavier Collette, Oleksandr Nevskiy, Oleg Sidorenko
- Publisher: Z-Man Games
In the 1920s, Mr. MacDowell, a gifted astrologer, immediately detected a supernatural being upon entering his new house in Scotland. He gathered eminent mediums of his time for an extraordinary séance, and they have seven hours to make contact with the ghost and investigate any clues that it can provide to unlock an old mystery.
Unable to talk, the amnesiac ghost communicates with the mediums through visions, which are represented in the game by illustrated cards. The mediums must decipher the images to help the ghost remember how he was murdered: Who did the crime? Where did it take place? Which weapon caused the death? The more the mediums cooperate and guess well, the easier it is to catch the right culprit.
In Mysterium, a reworking of the game system present in Tajemnicze Domostwo, one player takes the role of ghost while everyone else represents a medium. To solve the crime, the ghost must first recall (with the aid of the mediums) all of the suspects present on the night of the murder. A number of suspect, location and murder weapon cards are placed on the table, and the ghost randomly assigns one of each of these in secret to a medium.
Each hour (i.e., game turn), the ghost hands one or more vision cards face up to each medium, refilling their hand to seven each time they share vision cards. These vision cards present dreamlike images to the mediums, with each medium first needing to deduce which suspect corresponds to the vision cards received. Once the ghost has handed cards to the final medium, they start a two-minute sandtimer. Once a medium has placed their token on a suspect, they may also place clairvoyancy tokens on the guesses made by other mediums to show whether they agree or disagree with those guesses.
After time runs out, the ghost reveals to each medium whether the guesses were correct or not. Mediums who guessed correctly move on to guess the location of the crime (and then the murder weapon), while those who didn’t keep their vision cards and receive new ones next hour corresponding to the same suspect. Once a medium has correctly guessed the suspect, location and weapon, they move their token to the epilogue board and receive one clairvoyancy point for each hour remaining on the clock. They can still use their remaining clairvoyancy tokens to score additional points.
If one or more mediums fail to identify their proper suspect, location and weapon before the end of the seventh hour, then the ghost has failed and dissipates, leaving the mystery unsolved. If, however, they have all succeeded, then the ghost has recovered enough of its memory to identify the culprit.
Mediums then group their suspect, location and weapon cards on the table and place a number by each group. The ghost then selects one group, places the matching culprit number face down on the epilogue board, picks three vision cards — one for the suspect, one for the location, and one for the weapon — then shuffles these cards. Players who have achieved few clairvoyancy points flip over one vision card at random, then secretly vote on which suspect they think is guilty; players with more points then flip over a second vision card and vote; then those with the most points see the final card and vote.
If a majority of the mediums have identified the proper suspect, with ties being broken by the vote of the most clairvoyant medium, then the killer has been identified and the ghost can now rest peacefully. If not, well, perhaps you can try again…
