October Game of the Month
I'm excited to dive into a spooky dice-rolling game where bravery and strategy determine the winner!
Don’t Go in There!👻
To be fair, they had me interested at a spooky theme! Add in dice rolling and meeples…SOLD! Race your friends to collect the cards you need to score the fewest curses (the number on the creepy hand displayed on the card) while avoiding collecting the most ghosts. The braver your meeple is entering a room, the higher the risk! The rulebook or description would lead you to beleive it is “easy” to learn which is somewhat deceiving. There are little nuisances from which cards are available, how many dice are being rolled, and the special instructions when each room is resolved to consider with every meeple move.
Get the Haunting Ready
👻 Determine the card sets that will be used for the game. The number of sets is determined by the player count. You can randomly pick the cards or select them. All of the cards perform some sort of action during or at the end of the game. Shuffle the cards that will be played and take out the amount of cards stated in the rulebook.
🔦Lay out the floor cards and place the cards being used above the floors while being mindful of special instructions for each floor.
🎲Stand up the dice tower of the haunted house making sure the plastic insert with the stairs is at the bottom to help roll the dice into the tray.
Resolve the Haunted House Floors
When you are ready to explore the haunted house. the person brave enough to place their meeple on a floor goes first. The goal of the game is to collect the least amount of ghosts and curse points.
The closer your meeple is to the top of the floor, the more risk for acquiring ghosts there is, but the placement on the stairs determines the order to choose cards.
Once there are 3 meeples in a room, the last person who placed their meeple resolves the room by rolling the number of dice indicated on the cards.
Make sure there are no special room actions that can be performed before players take turns taking the number of ghosts from the dice roll making sure to subtract from the ghost total the number of flashlights based on the meeple placement for each player. The farther away from the top of room, the less ghosts you take.
Follow the order of meeples in the room to have players choose the cards they would like to take. If you take cards that have an immediate action, take it or if you gain the number of cards that causes a dispel action, play that action. Some cards don’t have an action until the end of the game.
Once the room is resolved by players collecting the cards, turn the floor over and deal the next 3 cards from the deck being played.
These actions continue until all of the cards in the deck have been claimed. Then it is time to determine who was the bravest by gaining the least amount of ghosts and curse points. Perform the end of game actions on any of those cards in your collection. The player with the most ghosts receives an additional curse penalty of 1 point for every 2 ghosts. The player with the least amount of curse points is the winner! This game will have you wanting to play another round immediately just to have a chance to play a different strategy or checkout some of the other sets of cards. Spooky good fun! 👻
