Horrified

28th May 2021

It's a Friday night and we've met up at Simon's for some impromptu gaming.

Have you ever had the urge to run around being chased by Dracula? Or The Wolfman, or any other of the Universal movie monsters in a cooperative turn based race against time to defeat them? Then welcome to Horrified.

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What's in a game?
Horrified is a cooperative board game in the vein of games such as Pandemic and has some loosely similar rules.

• Board: The main game board depicts what looks like a city but is actually supposed to be a village! It contains a network of roads that link together about 20 suitability inspired locations, such as crypts, museums, docks and laboratories, that's quite a village! It also has a number of linked water based such as a lagoon or a waterfront!
  The board also contains the terror track (Explained below.).
• Monster tiles: There are 6 monster tiles, one for each of the monsters except for Frankenstein's monster and his bride who come as a pair.
  Each tile depicts the special rules for that monster as well as the unique objectives by which it can be vanquished.
  Each tile also has some additional unique game components specific to each board such as coffin markers for Dracula, or the cure for The Wolfman, this includes overlay tiles for some monsters that change a location on the game board.
• Monster figures: The game comes with 7 models to represent the fiendish monsters that the players will be trying to defeat. Among their numbers you'll find Dracula, The Invisible Man, The Mummy and other monsters from the classic Universal movie monsters.
• Character tiles: Just as there are 7 monster models, so there are 7 character tiles. Each character will have a different special ability and 3-5 action points.
• Character standees: Each of the 7 characters will have their own standee.
• Villager standees: No respectable game about nefarious, evil monsters would be complete without hapless villagers for them to prey on. There are 10 villager standees.
• Monster cards: A deck of 30 monster cards used to manage monster behaviour that also serves a countdown timer.
• Perk cards: These cards can be acquired by players and can be played in any player's turn to provide some sort of benefit. There are 20 perk cards.
• Terror marker: Used in conjunction with the terror track.
• Frenzy marker: Used to track which monster is currently frenzied!
• Item tokens: There are 3 types of token, red, blue & yellow, each one is rated in strength from 1-6. Each token also shows in which location on the game board it will appear. Red items are weapons, blue are scientific and yellow are supernatural. Some locations will only get items of one colour, other locations will get differently coloured tokens.
• Draw bag: Used to blindly draw item tokens.
• Dice: 3 identical black 6 siders, but not ordinary ones, 2 sides have an exclamation marks (Power symbol.), 2 have 'hit' symbols and the last 2 sides are blank.

That's it for the most important components, there's no need to list all the small bits that are associated with the monster tiles.
The monster figures seem good quality and stand about 32mm high. All the tiles and tokens are made of suitability thick cardstock, the standees are also fine. The quality of the 2 decks of cards what you'd expect.
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The game's art is universally good, I particularly liked the board which is eye-catchingly coloured in blue and yellow.
All the art used on the monster components is also excellent, wisely drawing inspiration from its iconic source material, this includes the monster figures which are reasonably sculpted for game pieces and easily recognisable by anyone who knows their universal monsters.
Art on the other tiles, character and villager standees is also good, the same is true for the monster & perk cards.
Item tokens only feature monochrome illustrations and that's fine since the tokens are quite small and there will generally be a lot of them. Besides, just how exciting can you make a clove of garlic or a pitchfork look?

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We Warned You!

Setup rules & standees.

The Heroes: Character tiles and their respective standees.

The Monsters: Creature from The Black Lagoon, Dracula & The Invisible Man.

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How's it play?
In Horrified, players are tasked with travelling round the board to collect item tokens and use them to complete tasks to make monsters vulnerable, then they can be defeated. All the while, the players must avoid the monsters and also protect the very hapless villagers.
Setup

• Put out the game board and either choose or randomly select 2-4 monsters, depending on the desired difficulty. The tiles must be placed in a specific sequence according to the value frenzy order on each tile, going from left to right and lowest value to highest, the frenzy marker is placed on the tile with the lowest frenzy order. Although it can move to another monster during play.
  Each monster also has it's own unique setup that may require putting overlays or markers on the game board or even the monster tile itself.
  The monster figures should be placed on their starting space.
  Place the terror tracker on the 0 space.
• Shuffle the monster cards into a face-down deck.
• Either choose or randomly select a character tile for each player. Each player should also take the associated standee and place it in the character's respective starting location.
• Shuffle the perk cards into a face-down deck, deal one to each player.
• Blindly draw 12 item tokens from the bag and place them on to their respective locations on the game board.

Now we're ready to go.

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Dracula & The Creature from The Black Lagoon are the recommend monsters for the first game. Note that 4 coffins must be destroyed to make Dracula vulnerable & a maze that must be navigated in order to weaken The Creature.

The board at game start, note Dracula's 4 coffins distributed throughout the board and the overlay on the camp space at the top of the board which leads to The Creature's maze.

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On to play
When the active player has their turn, it will be split into a character turn and then a monster turn.
Character turn
Let's start with the character's turn, each character will have 3-5 action points to that the player may spend per turn, they can be spent as follows:

• Move: Spending an action point allows a character to move to an adjacent location. Characters cannot move along the water pathways or to the water locations.
  If a character has 1 or more villagers with them on the same location, then they can drag the villager(s) along with them when they move.
• Guide villager: If a villager is in the same location as the active character, then the villager can be directed to move to an adjacent location for the cost of an action point. Conversely, if a village is in a location adjacent to the active character, then an action point can be spent to bring them to the character's space.
  Villagers are affected by the same movement restrictions as characters.
• Collect: The active player's character may pick up all the item tokens in a location for an action point.
• Share items: For a action point, all characters on the same location as the active player mat share any number of item tokens between themselves.
• Objective: If the conditions are correct; for the cost of an action point, the active character may work towards completing the objective required to make a monster vulnerable, this will require spending item tokens, often the effectiveness of the advance will be increased by higher valued tokens. It's very likely that players will have to take this action multiple times to complete each monster's objective.
• Vanquish monster: It takes an action to defeat a monster once it's objective has been met. The active character must be in the same space as the target monster. It will also require spending tokens as specified.
• Special action: At the cost of an action point, the active character may use their special action.
• Perk cards: it does not require an action point to use a perk card. A perk card can be used in any player's turn.

Monster turn
The monster turn is dictated by the monster card which is drawn. Each monster card has 3 elements to it.

• Items: The number displayed at the top of a monster card determines how many item tokens are blindly drawn and placed on to their relevant locations on the board.
• Event: Each card has an event, if it's a villager, then the named villager is placed on the specified location on the board.
  If it's for one of the monsters in the game, then that event is carried out, events for monsters not in the current game are ignored.
• Monster actions: This is the most complicated part of the monster turn and comes in 2 parts.
  The first part lists which monsters are active on this turn (In that order.), obviously only monsters used in the game become active. It also displays if frenzy applies this turn, what's frenzy? More on that below.
  The second part lists how locations they move and how many dice they use in combat.
  Movement: Monsters move towards the closest prey but will target characters over villagers. Only The Creature can use the water paths and locations, the other monsters follow the same restrictions as the characters.
  Combat: If a monster ends it's movement in the same location as a character or villager, then combat ensues, monsters always attack characters over villagers.
  When attacking a character, the active player rolls 1-3 dice as specified.
  Blanks: Every blank that comes up is a miss, good for the character.
  Hits: Every die that comes up with a hit result means trouble the character, a character may discard a item token to negate a hit, multiple item tokens would be needed to negate multiple hits. If a character takes even a single hit, then they are defeated and placed on the hospital space. When a character is sent to the hospital, increase the marker on the terror track by 1.
  Power: Each result power symbol that comes up will trigger the active monster's special power. Probably not good for the character.
  Villager: If a monster attacks a villager, no dice are rolled, the villager is automatically defeated and meets their fate. Hapless! Additionally, if a villager is defeated, then increase the marker on the terror track by 1.
  Frenzy: If the monster card has a frenzy symbol on the monster actions section, then whichever monster currently has the frenzy token on it gets activated, it's possible that a monster may be activated twice!

So that's it for the monster turn, but one last thing needs to be explained.

• Villagers: Villagers are dropped on to the game board by monster cards. Each villager wants to get to a specific location. If an active character manages to escort the villager there, then the player can draw a card from the perk deck.

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Turning the tables on The Creature!

Combat dice.

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Endgame
Horrified has 2 ways to lose.
If the marker on the terror track reaches 7, then everyone flees the village in errrr, well terror!
If, when it comes to a monster turn and there're no monster card to draw, then time has run out and it's game over! Monster overrun everything.
Players win the game by completing the objective for each monster and then vanquishing all monsters.

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Board at a victorious game end.

The terror marker reached 7!

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Overall
Horrified uses some interesting mechanics that set it apart from similar games.
The asymmetrical objectives that need completing for the different monsters is genuinely inspired game design.
Objectives like curing The Wolfman, solving The Mummy's sliding puzzle or proving the existence of The Invisible Man thematically it fits the monsters and mechanically it adds variety and longevity to the game.
The damage mechanic is also an excellent idea; forcing players to choose which item(s) to discard can be a meaningful and painful decision, choosing either to lose an important token that is needed or a high value other token is tough. It also does away with the need to track health or hit points.
Villagers too, are a good addition, keeping them alive can be a burden, but is also vital to keeping the terror track under control. If character manages to escort a villager to safety, then the reward is a perk card. Perk cards can be extremely useful and turn things around when played at the right time, they can be game winners.

Horrified is a little bit less finicky than it's counterparts but that doesn't make it an easy game, whenever we've won, it was only with a couple of actions in hand and when we've lost, it's been by a few actions as well.
Like every other cooperative game I've played, Horrified uses luck - or bad luck more precisely, to provide a challenge to the players, some bad dice rolls or an unfortunate monster card draw can really throw a spanner in the works. Like all those other cooperative games, how players manage the bad luck is important to victory.
Furthermore, every decision has to count, Horrified is a tightly balanced game. Since there are only 30 monster cards, that means that players basically have 30 turns to win, or on average 120 actions to spend. There's scant time to waste.

Horrified is a fairly accessible, fun to play and well presented game. It's one of the best cooperative games I've played and I'm to play it again.