Horrified: Custom Monsters IV - Michael Myers and Dorian Gray

It's been awhile since Horrified's made it to our gaming table, and this pair of custom monsters turned out to be very surprising! For reference Frankenstien and his Bride (included in the base game) filled out the third opponent slot during this session. Also while I got both Myers and Gray from the BGG Horrified Variants forum, I can't seem to find them any more... but I'm not sure you'd want to!

Michael Myers

This Halloween villain is currently the only "regular" human that we've fought against, and it certainly felt like it. To defeat him you just need to put down 3+ strength item/combo on the "inner circle" of the map which symbolizes placing a trap. Once you have one of these in each of the three colors, you can use your action points to force Mike to walk into them (or he might just walk into them himself) and upon stepping on the third one he basically defeats himself. This turned out to be really easy, so not recommended.

Dorian Gray

The only weakness of this immortal is his painting hidden in his mansion (which is also his starting space). To find it, players need to go to the mansion and spend red or blue items to push forward the search (much like pushing forward the boat for the Creature from the Black Lagoon) until you get the painting at the attic. With the painting in hand, you then need to finish him off with a few more red and yellow items which isn't so bad. Searching that mansion is a nightmare though as it eats SO many items and worse - its on the inner city track and one that is high traffic for monster pathing. A surprisingly difficult monster and one we only beat by the skin of our teeth as our cards were running out.

Horrified: Custom Monsters III - Modern Horror Continued

Here is my review of the second half of the modern horror set of custom monsters for the Horrified board game.

Pennywise

While this shapeshifting monster basically hovers around his (rarely) moving balloon (which is also the space you need to interact with), he is more a target of opportunity than anything else as the specific items required to weaken him might take some time to pop. I really like that to beat him afterwards, all the players must gather on his space which is both very cool and really dangerous. We lucked out getting good movement cards and finished this clown last.

Freddy Kreuger

The Nightmare of Elm Street has a good mechanic of being in the dreamland maze (along with numbered tokens representing each players "dream" space) where he always seems to be within arms reach of attack. Pulling him into the real world requires 3 excellent dice rolls OR being geared up enough to auto-success the dice rolls. Alas for him, once he's flesh and bone and no longer protected by his main power he becomes very easy prey.

The Fly

This scientist turned giant fly was somehow more scary than the previous two and that's possibly because beating him requires MATH! Using item strength values you just have to fill in the simple formulas of (a - b = x,  c + d = z) and then defeat him with a strength x * z item. This made him the "weakest" monster to defeat for us, as our x * z = 3 but he was a fun critter nonetheless.

While Pennywise can potentially be a huge threat as someone would potentially need to tank the clown awhile (monsters move after each player does), this trio was not as bad as the first three and we won without much trouble.

Horrified: Custom Monsters II - Modern Horror

Continuing my review of Horrified's fan made monsters are these three from the modern horror set who turned out to be a very tough trio which almost saw us lose the game!

Jason Voorhees

It must be Friday the 13th for this hockey masked killer to show up and boy did he do a good job in murdering during our game. Given the "Creature's" movement set of traveling through the waterways its kinda funny that to beat him you need to push him back into the water to weaken and drown him. Tough bastard and the first one we focused on here, which might have been a mistake in hindsight but sure felt right at the time as he ended up with the most kills.

Samara Morgan

The girl from the well loves giving her photograph to someone and then teleporting to that person to attack them. Rather than being scary Samara was more a nuisance however and beating her simply is a fetch quest for four pieces of wood to cover her well (using Drac's coffin tokens as wood), because supernatural entities have a problem with wood I guess. Does that mean they're allergic to forests?

Just like the base game's Dracula, she's very susceptible to the explorer hero (mom) who can just warp around and collect the planks for the well. Anyway, until she's imprisoned again she's definitely dangerous to players but that danger can be mitigated by having an enormous stash of gear on the targeted individual. Samara's very focused you see, but that also makes her predictable.

Pinhead

This Hell priest was the quiet "achiever" if you like in our game and while he didn't personally kill many individuals, his power of vacuuming villagers towards him sure helped Jason cut down a great deal of them. Gotta give him a thumbs up for the RPG mechanics of a priest playing a support role! Solving his hell cube to banish him (a custom three dial device) did take some time but once it was just him on the board he had no chance.

This trio was far more scary than the forgotten classics set. Recommended!

Horrified: Custom Monsters I - Forgotten Classics

Horrified is a good game that is easily modded to fit new fan made monsters! Here's a review of three forgotten classics we went up against recently.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

The biggest draw back here is that this "monster" prevents you from using the Professor hero (DL's favorite), because that's his token. I believe this was intentionally done to make the Hunchback (below) a bit tougher. Outside of that Jekyl/Hyde seemed very passive and easy to avoid. Plugging in matching numbers to work out his cure at the hospital wasn't much of an issue either.

Hunchback of Notre Dame

This "monster" is actually the good guy and makes ALL villagers evil! Yes, you can still escort them to their desired destination to get them off the board and get their reward but if they get to move they will try whack you! Clever switch of game play mechanics as you have to disarm the villagers and keep them away from the church (which they gravitate towards). Again, not very challenging though and our police detective (Rose) was having a field day as she can "move to any monster", which in this case, the villagers are. At least until his quest is complete.

Phantom of the Opera

The "scariest" monster of this set (mechanically anyway), because he IS the doom tracker and any time the tracker moves he makes it move TWICE. He stays on his own board though (the theater) and chases after the villager there. If he reaches her its game over, so you need to focus on getting her out early. To fully defeat him you'll then need to get her home, which is a little funny because when she gets out she too will want to kill the Hunchback so... you gotta get on that. :P

An interesting set to be sure, and a nice albeit calmer change of pace from the box monsters (after you deal with the Phantom anyway). If you are looking for opponents that will quicken your pulse though, these three are not it.

Sheet Music Printing Tip

Never print double sided as it is less manageable when you are shifting pages around in your folder, or are performing and want to see everything face up.

Adamastor

Sail for free, just don't expect to survive!

In this free print and play game, you take the role of a captain who must navigate the seas to reach your destination. The map is randomly constructed via random cards populated by small circular spaces and the bigger the map, the harder the game gets.

Other than the map cards, there is also a multipurpose deck of adventure cards that cleverly handles crew morale, traumas, navigation, weather, land exploration and skills. Run out of them, or gain too many traumas and you lose. Expect this to happen a lot, especially in the harder historical variant where you try to sail from Lisbon to Calicut.

Printing in color helps!

Expect to keep the two page manual handy during play as there are a few steps to do per round, but it like everything it gets faster with familiarity. If you like a challenge then this game might interest you. I give it three clouds out of five. You can get it at Boardgamegeek, just scroll down to the files section.

Zombie in my Pocket (Single Player Version)

Small enough to travel with you!

This is my first foray into Print and Play games, which I imagine is as close as you can get to Free to Play in the board game variety. It's free to download, you just have to do some scissoring prep work afterwards before you can play. :)

Note: As alluded to in the title, this review is for the 1 player free version. Apparently there's a paid 1-8 player version available.

Designed to literally fit in your pocket, this is clever little solitaire type card game where in you must explore a house and its grounds to stop a zombie uprising. Exploration is done by flipping over little tiles and a cycling event deck that tells you what you encounter.

Obviously I only printed in black and white.

Combat is a simple math equation, and if you run out of health or run out of time (via the event deck running out 3 times), you lose. If you find the doohickey in the secret temple and manage to bury it in the graveyard you win!

While there's a tiny modicum of choice here (mainly in resting gives you HP but kills time), most of your games will boil down to luck. Just like Solitaire, but more fun. Pretty cool if you are into that sort of thing, but obviously no match for a game with multiplayer. I give it 2 femurs out of 5.