Assorted Tricks and Treats (Part 2): Horror-Themed Board Games as a Halloween Season Week Night Filler

With the explosion in tabletop gaming options, there are lots of choices when it comes to Halloween-themed entertainment.

If your family is like mine, weekends fill up pretty quickly. From September through December, that's especially true. In the weeks leading up to Halloween, there are fall festivals at local amusement parks, hayrides and pumpkin picking at local farms, parties and parades. But since virtually all of those activities occur sometime between Friday night and Sunday afternoon, that still leaves a lot of the week open for additional seasonal entertainment.

As I mentioned in my previous post, spooky movies can definitely be a great way to fill much of that time. That said, tabletop gaming can offer an additional, more active dimension to your toolbox of family fun. And thanks to the recent Renaissance in board games, there are plenty of options from which to choose. In fact, sifting through the choices may be the biggest challenge.

Below, I break out several of the games that my family will be playing (and have been playing) throughout October--as well as a wish list of games that we hope to add to our collection in coming months.

What We're Playing

• Zombie Dice and Martian Dice - These two dice games from Steve Jackson Games are pretty simple and very accessible. (I think we bought the former of the two at Target.) Both are "press your luck" games--one that places you in the role of a zombie trying to gobble up brains and one that places you in the role of an alien invader acquiring livestock for experimentation. There's no role play, so neither game is very "deep"--but the game play is very quick and you can play with relatively large numbers of people. (It can often be difficult to find games for more than 6 players--so these can be especially helpful as filler games at gaming events when people are rolling off other games at different intervals.)
• Gloom - I can't help but think of the Addams Family whenever I play this card game--which is, I'm sure, the creator's intention. A great storytelling game, it puts you in charge of a family of misfits whose dark backstories you get to flesh out as you plot their untimely demise. Whoever can weave the best tale of woe--and sink their family's morale the lowest--wins.
• Dead of Winter - I know there are a lot of zombie games out there, but I feel that this one uniquely captures the dread of a post-apocalyptic dystopia filled with the walking dead and desperate survivors. It eschews all camp and uses clever game mechanics--including the indefinite possibility of player defection--to generate genuine suspicion and dread.
• King of Tokyo - I almost considered leaving this game off the list because I view kaiju as more science fiction fodder rather than horror. That said, when one of the game pieces is a virtual doppelganger for a creature billed as "King of The Monsters"--well, I couldn't really exclude it. That said, this is a fun game and the most kid-friendly option on the list. It allows you to take on the role of a giant kaiju throwing down with other monsters in a winner-take-all battle in and around the city of Tokyo.
• Mysterium - This game had topped my wish list coming into last weekend, and we subsequently snatched it up on a trip to our local game store on Saturday morning. (They're super-nice there--a place called "Mr. Nice Guy Games" in Monroeville, a nearby suburb of Pittsburgh.) Cooperative in nature, this game asks players to take on the role of a group of psychic detectives attempting to solve a murder with the assistance of the deceased's restless spirit. It has a vibe similar to Dixit, as the ghost must use imagery to point the investigators in the direction of the killer. It seemed fun when we saw it played on Wil Wheaton's TableTop series (on YouTube) several months ago--so we're eager to try it out.
• Betrayal at House on the Hill - Last but most definitely not least, here is the entry I most immediately associate with the season--as it may be the best Halloween party game I've played. The idea is simple--several friends walk into a creepy mansion and suffer through a variety of terrifying encounters culminating in one of them ultimately being revealed as a traitor. The mansion is always different--built out by the explorers through the turn-by-turn laying of room tiles--and the circumstances of the inevitable haunting and betrayal are always different. The original game came with 50 different haunt scenarios--terrors ranging from vampires to ghost brides to werewolves--and an expansion added 50 more. When you consider that any player could randomly turn out to be the traitor and that the layout of the house is quite different every time, the replay opportunities are virtually infinite. We've played almost a dozen times thus far, and every game has been completely and delightfully unique.

Some More We Hope to Buy in the Near Future

As I've noted above, there are tons of games out there--and we're still relatively new to the hobby. So this list will continue to grow over time. That said, here are the Halloween-themed games we're most eager to add to our collection as of today.

• Whitechapel - Similar to the last item on my list below, this game pits several investigators against a single opponent playing the role of Jack The Ripper. We almost picked this one up last weekend before we stumbled across Mysterium.
• The Thing, Infection at Outpost 31 - They had me at "The Thing"--as that's perhaps my favorite horror movie. And can you think of a better social deduction scenario? Oof.
• Mountains of Madness - Based on the story by H P Lovecraft, this cooperative game has some unusual mechanics--as players are forced to survive not only an unforgiving Antarctic landscape but also challenges that mimic threats to their sanity. At times, you can't talk. On other occasions, you might be forced to sing or speak only in rhymes. We saw it played on a Dice Tower video (again, on YouTube) and it appeared to be very challenging.
• Fury of Dracula - If I was going to run out and grab a game today, it would be this one. One player takes on the role of Dracula attempting to spread his influence across Europe while avoiding detection; meanwhile, his opponents take on the roles of the vampire hunters from Bram Stoker's famous story (Mina Harkness, Dr. Van Helsing, etc.), traveling by horse and train across the continent in a frantic search to find and kill the vampire king. From what I've seen, it seems to be a well-balanced game that captures the flavor of the gothic horror novel--and therefore an ideal pastime for the later evening after all your trick-or-treaters are in for the night.

So what do you think of our list? Are there even better Halloween-themed games we should be considering? If you can think of any you want to recommend, please let me know in the comments section below.