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Top 5 Most Evocative Horror Themed Board Games

October 31, 2024

Looking through my rather extensive collection, I actually don’t have a lot of horror games. Hundreds of fantasy board games, even dozens of Lord of the Rings games specifically, but probably 20 games appropriate for spooky season. And while many of them like Horrified, or Mr. Jack are fun enough (and probably better games than some of the ones on today’s list–most of which have a flaw or two), I don’t always feel particularly inspired to reach for them when I’m looking for something creepy to play. To make the list here, I’m looking for games that are not only fun, but also NAIL the atmosphere.

5. Escape the Dark Castle

Escape the Dark Castle is not necessarily a great game if you look purely at its mechanics. It essentially boils down to group dice rolling (with nice custom dice) to either defeat monsters or overcome tasks–usually without a lot of mechanical variation beyond the order and targets needed for your dice rolling. It has two things that make this simplicity a non-issue: it is nice and short, and it cashes in on the current craze for retro fantasy art. It is played with a deck of oversized “book” cards, you turn over one at a time (like the pages of a book) to see what fresh horrors (and what method of dice rolling) awaits. Pushing your luck and making simple choices is a lot more fun when you have the incredibly bleak art (healing items in this game are assorted bits of rotten food to give you an idea of the vibe), cool descriptions, and 20 minute play time to keep things moving.

4. The Night Cage

This is actually a pretty novel game, played on a wraparound grid (moving off one edge leads you to the opposite side of the board) where you move a half naked prisoner through tiny crawlspace tunnels searching for keys and exits from your prison. The twist is that each prisoner carries a candle that lights only the 4 orthogonally adjacent tiles, and as you move the tiles that are no longer lit up disappear, freeing their space for new tiles should you move back. It’s cool, it’s creepy (wax eaters roam the maze, eating your candles if you move in their line of sight), and it’s as tense as it sounds as you search for the keys and exits before your draw pile (in a cool “candle” holder) runs out. If there is a flaw, it’s that there are a few rule ambiguities that could have probably been hammered out with a bit more secondary playtesting, but overall this game largely delivers on its premise–an impressive feat considering how cool the premise is.

3. Mysterium

Mysterium isn’t really all that creepy, but it is evocative. Players are mediums in a haunted house trying to determine what manner of murder happened in the past. The premise might be a bit confusing “wait, we are coming up with places, people, and weapons, and THEN we are figuring out which one of those is the “right” one?” but the gorgeous artwork, and all around ghostly VIBES make it work. It’s kind of a Dixit variation so doesn’t break much new ground, but it all works very well even if the end game feels a bit off as it is pretty hard to get enough meaningful guesses to come to solve the final murder.

2. One Night Ultimate Werewolf

Werewolf is already the godfather of all creepy social deduction games, and could have easily made this list. However, by getting rid of the player elimination, need for a moderator, and dearth of information in the early rounds, One Night Werewolf improves on the original in almost every way. Everyone shuts their eyes, and an app tells various players to open their eyes and look at, switch, flip up, etc cards at the table until “morning” when everyone opens their eyes and has to figure out who the werewolves are (or were, as the werewolf cards could have been switched in the night). It’s a fantastic game, and only suffers a bit from new player learning curve. The artwork might be more cute than creepy, but you can’t beat the eyes-shut night phase for lycanthropic atmosphere.

1. Mansions of Madness – Second Edition

I’ve played a ton of Lovecraft games, I own Arkham Horror, Eldritch Horror, even the Railroad Ink: Eldritch Dice expansion…and Mansions of Madness is probably the best game of all of them. Played on an app, you move around a modular board, clicking on points of interest as you discover them to read the app descriptions and make skill rolls/choices as they come up. Mechanically there’s not a lot to sink your teeth into, but where this game shines is the scenario design. Unlike the positively bland (much as it pains me to say it) Journeys in Middle-earth sister game, Mansions of Madness is positively bursting with eldritch creepiness. The walls will bleed, dimensions beyond time and space will crush your mind, and the fabric of reality itself will unravel as you make your way through each scenario. It is by far the longest game on this list (2-3 hour range–which is longer than I prefer at this point in my gaming life), but it’s a game that never feels like it is going that long while you play it. Perhaps another triumph of flavor over mechanics, but proof that putting your focus on atmosphere can pay off nonetheless.

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