Horrified (Board Game)

Save the town from some famous monsters!

In this cooperative board game, players (1-5) must work to defeat famous movie monsters - the likes of Dracula, the Wolf Man, Frankenstien and his Bride, the Mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon and the Invisible Man (who is somehow the worst). The difficulty is based on how many bad guys you are playing against - two is easy mode while four is the hardest.

You definitely won't win if all are in play.

On a turn, players will be moving and picking up items which are then used at specific places to defeat the two phases of each monster - who obviously have different requirements. Phase one for Dracula is running about and destroying his coffins while for the Mummy its solving a puzzle at the museum. Once the requirements for phase one are met, you can then do the phase two requirement of the enemy - which usually involves getting up to them (not really a problem as they keep hunting people) and using a variety of stuff to defeat them.

Interestingly there is no dice for phase 2. If its your turn and have the gear to defeat the bad guy you can reach, you instantly take him out of the game. Only the bad guys get some dice rolling when making attacks. They do this on their turn, which is dictated by the monster card pulled at the end of every players turn.

If you run out of monster cards, you run out of time and instantly lose. If you let the doom track reach the end (which means the monsters have either been killing the players or the NPC villagers you need to protect) you lose. Beat all the monsters to win!

This is a fantastic, easy to learn game with nice art and decent components but more importantly it sets up and plays blindingly fast, at around a game an hour. My party of four fit four rounds in the space of one evening. Highly recommended, I give Horrified five scarabs out of five.

Insight: The boon cards are usually worth the effort to do the escort tasks of each villager, if they happen to be on the way.