Are you ready to come face to face with horrifying monsters? Battle Frankenstein, Dracula, The Creature from the Black Lagoon and more in this cooperative game!
Don’t let the scary monsters turn you away — Horrified is a game the whole family can enjoy!
How Do You Play Horrified?
Horrified is a cooperative game where all players will win or lose together.
To win you must defeat all the monsters. You select your preferred difficulty level by choosing how many monsters you wish to fight at one time: Two, Three, or Four.
Each turn has two phases, the Hero Phase and the Monster Phase.
Hero Phase
On the Hero Phase, you’ll take as many actions as indicated on your character badge. Each character is unique so your number of actions may be different from other players.
During this phase, you can move around the map, pick up any number of items from your Hero’s space, guide villagers, use Items to advance a Monster’s task, take special actions, or defeat monsters.
A player may also play any number of their Perk Cards, these cards are earned by helping Villagers and give the player special actions. These cards can be played on any players turn, not just your own.
Once a player has taken all their actions and played any Perk cards they wished to play, it switches to the Monster Phase.
Monster Phase
During the Monster Phase, players will flip over a card from the top of the Monster’s deck.
This card has three parts which must be resolved:
- A number of items to place onto the board
- An Event that happens, involving a Monster or Villager
- Which Monsters Strike
Players will repopulate the board with items, resolve the event, and move the Monsters. Monsters move the number of spaces indicated on the card toward the closest person (hero or villager) and stop if they enter a space with a person. Monsters in a space with a person attacks one person.
Players roll dice to determine the outcome of the attack. Dice rolled with an attack symbol hit the person. Players then can choose to discard an item to ignore the attack, otherwise they are defeated and moved to the Hospital. Villagers are defeated immediately when attacked and removed from the board.
When a Player or villager is defeated, the Terror Level is increased by one.
Game End
Players continue taking turns until either they defeat the Monsters and win, the Terror Level reaches the maximum and they lose, or the Monster deck is empty and they lose.
What do we think?
If you were looking for the perfect spooky game to play this October, look no further! Horrified is the game you need!
Horrified is excellently themed and mechanically welcoming so your whole family can play together!
You don’t have to be a huge fan of monster or scary movies either. Our family isn’t! As a mom I appreciate that there isn’t anything scary in the game. It stays light and friendly throughout while still being well themed around these classic monsters. There are no cards that depict horror scenes or gore of any kind. Our kids, who tend to have a low tolerance for anything spooky love this game.
It’s important to note too that I don’t see Horrified as a strictly family game. This is just as much fun for an all adult group as it is for the family.
The difficulty level is very easily controlled. You can choose an easier experience by only fighting two monsters or attempt a highly difficult game and fight four. We find that two monsters is perfect for a family game with kids. This gives the group a manageable challenge without overwhelming younger players with a large amount of unique monster rules. This doesn’t mean you’ll win every time though! Two monsters can still be very tricky!
One thing we really appreciated was that players were not eliminated if they were attacked by a monster. They merely reset back in the hospital and can continue playing. Taking a hit from a monster still results in the threat tracker rising, but you’re still able to continue playing just as before.
Easy to Understand with Lots to Do!
The win/loss mechanism is also incredibly easy to understand. There’s not tricky point system, just a very simple: Beat the monsters and win or don’t and lose. Everyone understands what they’re working towards.
The monsters also, for as unique as their abilities and conditions are, each are easily understood. Players can quickly grasp what they need to do to reach their goal, even if they’re playing against a monster for the first time.
From a cooperative stand point, we really appreciated how there was a lot to do so there wasn’t ever a feeling of having a wasted turn or not being able to contribute to the goal. Whether you’re collecting items, helping guide villagers to their destinations to earn Perk cards, or fulfilling monster conditions and vanquishing them, there’s so much to do that no one player can do it all.
Highly Replayable
The biggest surprise to me was just how replayable Horrified is.
Because there are so many monsters, you can create a unique combination to fight against that can also increase the difficulty of the game depending on what combination you create.
We’ve greatly enjoyed each monster in the set — especially The Invisible Man who has a really fun challenge where you are trying to gather evidence from various places around the board to show proof he exists. Meanwhile he’s hopping all over the board stealing things from whichever location has the most items, making it difficult for you and your teammates to gather the items you need to both gain proof and protect yourself from attacks. It’s a lot of fun!
Combining the monsters challenges in different ways helps create that fun play experience that has you asking, “Do you think we can beat Dracula, The Wolf Man, AND The Invisible Man?” (So far, we haven’t been able to!)
Theme & Components
If you haven’t guessed from the above, we think the theme is tops!
The unique monsters make each game fun, and there’s even a ton of fan made monsters you can try and fight! You can find these available on Board Game Geek!
The components are of fine quality. The miniatures have so far held up well, though they are made of thin plastic so could easily break of bend with a heavy hand. Having things stand up and move around the board adds to the table presence and makes playing more enjoyable.
How does it play with two?
Horrified works great at two, though we find three and four to be our preferred player counts. Depending on which monsters you choose and what characters you select, the game can be much more difficult at a lower player count because you have a harder time getting from one place to another.
As mentioned above, there is a lot to do, so it’s great to have multiple people around to help carry the weight. I wouldn’t expect anything different from a cooperative. Luckily, the turns are quick and thanks to the Perk cards that can be played during anyone’s turn, there’s incentive for everyone to pay attention between turns.
(You can even play it with 6, like we did when we didn’t want to leave anyone out!)
Can kids play?
Absolutely! Our son Oliver, (5) is the biggest fan of Horrified in our house and he plays independently — strategizing his moves and everything. He’s already learning what each monster does so being a beginning reader doesn’t impact him too much.
Summary
Horrified is an excellent family game and the perfect choice for those spooky October nights!
Well themed and highly replayable, this is a game adults and kids alike will enjoy playing again and again. We love the unique monster abilities which allows players to create a different challenge each game and that the difficulty level is easily controlled.
We think Horrified would be a great fit for anyone who is looking for that perfect family friendly halloween game and those that love light cooperative experiences.
Thanks to its accessible rules, Horrified is a game you can quickly and easily share with new players young or old!
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Game Info:
Title: Horrified
1-5 Players Ages 10+
Designer: Prospero Hall
Artist: Prospero Hall
Publisher: Ravensburger
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