How many of us remember Saturday nights, and the classic monster movies coming on late TV? And remember pretending with your friends and wanting to be the hero and defeat the monster? As a kid I did, and now thanks to the folks at Ravensburger games, I get to relive those childhood memories all over in Horrified.
Horrified is a 1-5 player cooperative board game, in which the players are the brave heroes, protecting the village and defeating the monsters who terrorize the frightened villagers. Players can choose from several charachters; the brilliant scientist, the plucky newsboy, or the tough as nails inspector to name a few.
Players work as a team, attempting to end the darkness plaguing the village.Each monster has their own unique requirements to defeat. Players move about the board rescuing villagers, gathering items and defeating the monsters.
To play, set the Board out and choose your difficulty. Select the number of monsters you wish to use. There are 8 classics to choose from, Dracula, Frankenstein and his bride, the creature from the black lagoon to name a few.
Take their player mats, tokens and miniature. Follow the setup instructions for the chosen monsters. Take all 60 item tokens and place them in the provided cloth bag. Shake and deal out 12 tokens placing them in the matching locations on the board. Place the terror marker as indicated by the difficulty level. Give the monster with the lowest frenzy level, the frenzy marker.
Shuffle the perk cards and deal 1 to each player. Shuffle the monster cards into a face down pile. Select the character you wish to play, take their identity card and matching standee. Place your character in their starting location, take all the villagers and set them aside. You are ready to begin.
Each turn in Horrified consists of two phases: the hero phase and the monster phase.
In the hero phase, each hero performs a certain number of actions based on the action number on their identity card. A hero has several actions to choose from; move, guide, share, advance, defeat pick up and a special action. A hero can perform any multiple of actions, including their special action, over if he/she chooses.
Move allows the character to move one space to an adjacent space. Guide allows a hero to move a villager one space either to the heroes space or adjacent space to the hero. Each villager has a safe location and heroes can use the guide action to bring them to that location. Once a villager is safe, their standee is removed and the guiding hero gains a perk card.
A pick up action allows a play to take any number of items from their current location.
A share action lets a hero share any number of items with another hero at the same location.
The advance action allows the hero to advance the task needed to permit heroes to defeat a monster.
A hero can only use a defeat action after all the task requirements are met.
For example, heroes must complete the task of destroying all Dracula’s coffins before he/she can take the defeat action against him.
If the heroes identity card has a special action, that hero may use an action to perform it. After all heroes have completed their actions, the monster phase begins.
The first step is to draw a monster card and follow the instructions. The card details how many new items, if any, are drawn and placed on the board, an event, which monsters activate, and what actions each activated monster performs.
The monsters main actions are to move and attack. The card details how many spaces they can move and how many dice are rolled when they strike.
A monster moves to the closest hero or villager. In a tie, the monster goes after a hero first.
The monster card shows what monster activates and in what order. If the card indicates the frenzy symbol, then the monster with the frenzy token, will activate, regardless if it has already done so.
If the monster ends or starts in a space with a hero or villager, they will strike.
To strike, a player rolls the designated amount of dice. Each die has 3 symbols: hit, blank, and power.
On a hit, damage is dealt. A hit automatically kills a villager and increases the terror level. A hero can counter damage by discarding one item per hit. If a hero still takes damage, he/she is defeated.
When a hero is defeated, the player removes their standee from the board and increases terror by 1.
The hero starts their next turn at the hospital location. They keep all their equipment and perk cards when starting over.
A power symbol allows the monster to activate their special power.
The heroes win when all the monsters defeated. If the terror level reaches the maximum, or there are no more monster cards to draw, the heroes lose.
Horrified is a fun game that can be a great introduction game for new gamers as well as a nice addition for seasoned players.
I think it has a wonderful balance of simplicity and strategy.
The mechanics are easy to follow. It has a high replayability with eight monsters to choose from. There is definitely room for expansions to the game if any are released.
Components are well made, sturdy cardboard standee’s and tokens. The miniatures are a nice addition, but standee’s would have worked just as well.
The artwork is very much in the classic monster movie style and the theme does not feel slapped on.
I really like the asymmetrical play that each monster has and with 8, there are lots of combinations to create unique challenges. In addition, each character plays different as well, especially those with a special ability.
If you are looking for a light, yet challenging game and love the old classic horror movies, Horrified is a great choice.
Rodney Smith of Watch it played has a wonderful tutorial about the game.
Written by Ed Carter
