Halloween is a time of traditions: candy, costumes, and, at Saint Lawrence, raucous revels. For those not interested in going out on all-hallows eve, and all the baggage and effort that it involves, long has there been the salvation of holing up and watching horror movies. But there is another option that many might not be aware of: table-top games.
Table-top gaming is at the height of a renaissance. Inspired by high-end German style games, like The Settlers of Catan, these games are typically more complex than the board games we all remember from childhood (and they are called “table-top” games because many of these games don’t involve an actual board.) Among the vast array of games on the market now, there are many horror games appropriate for this Halloween season. I own and play many of these games, which I was exposed to through Wil Wheaton’s brilliant web series “TableTop,” which I recommend to anyone who wishes to learn more about table-top games.
Let’s start small with a subject we all know and love: zombies. Since George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead,” zombies have been closely associated with the horror genre, and table-top games are no different. Steve Jackson’s Zombie Dice is an easy to learn and quick to play game where each of the players are zombies attempting to catch (and eat the brains of) survivors, which are represented by the titular dice. The game quickly becomes a competition to see who can goad their friends into pushing their luck the hardest, and is a fun way to pass the time between busy Halloween events.
For players who crave more intense zombie action, Dead of Winter and Last Night on Earth both feature players assuming the role of human survivors, who must collaborate to survive in the face of a zombie hoard. Last Night gives the players different survival scenarios in a small American town, each with shifting victory conditions, whereas Dead of Winter sees the players leading a colony of survivors, while each player has their own secret win condition that may set them against the rest of a group.
On the more cosmic side of horror, many games exist inspired by H.P Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Arkham Horror and Elder Sign see the players investigating the bizarre happenings of the Cthulhu Mythos, all while attempting to stop the arrival of an Elder God bent on destroying the earth. Unspeakable Words is a quirky word-play game, where players must form words out of a pool of letter cards. The more “valuable” the word, the more likely they are to lose points of “sanity,” and when they run out, they lose, so players must strike a careful balance or risk losing it all.
My own personal favorite for a Halloween-night-in with friends is Avalon Hill’s Betrayal at House on the Hill. The players become a group of friends exploring an old haunted mansion, navigating the dangers of the house and picking up useful items as they go. However, roughly halfway through the game, an event called “the haunt” occurs, and one of the players is revealed to be a traitor who has lured the others into the house in order to kill them. There are 50 different haunts that have the potential to be triggered, each with their own win conditions for the traitor and the heroes, and a theme dripping with horror tropes. The number of haunts, coupled with the randomized tile-based floor plan of the mansion, allows for great variability from one game to the next.
This is just a small sampling of the variety of games available, horror or otherwise. So, if you are searching for something to do during the upcoming Halloweekend, consider picking up a game that has caught your eye and sharing that experience with your friends.