Josh Look's Top 5 Horror Games

You've piqued my interest about Sub Terra. Comments on BGG indicate that the tiles are so dark they are hard to parse, and/or need a blacklight, and/or need marking up with a silver ink pen to see properly. Is that your experience?

And do the expansions add anything to it, the Collector's edition is reasonably priced here ?
But as I can only get a group of three in current times I suspect it wouldn't get played until sometime well into next year.

The game is dark and my eyesight isn't perfect, but we had no trouble seeing the tiles in the collector's edition. Plus they give you a UV light if you want that extra layer of immersion.

Collector's edition is totally worth it. All the expansions are baseline cool, 2 of them are awesome and really offer some options if you want something a little different from the base game. It also comes with a hardcover graphic novel (haven't read yet) and a hardcover designer's diary which despite some heavy ego-stroking is a great read if you're into the design process (which I am). Plus the game plays good with all player counts!

There's a sequel game coming which sheds the horror vibes for Indiana Jones ones. My senses about the availability of the 1st game are tingling. A friendly reminder, I was right about Camp Grizzly.

Recommendation taken, and since I'm baling on an over-priced Kickstarter I feel OK paying half the price for a (recommended) game with three expansions.

And quite interested in checking out Sea Evil but it appears neither it or Cave Evil are available in the UK.

Oh!

It was YOU josh. YOU were the little niggling voice in my head that told me that someone I trusted loved the Bloody Inn. I couldn't remember where I'd got that niggling voice from, but now I remember haha.

I do my best with it, but something about this game is like anti-theme to me. The gameplay itself is what seems to just suck it all out. I try to ham it up and be villainous and gruesome but then it's just play red card for +1 modifier play green card for +1 modifier the end.

mc wrote: I do my best with it, but something about this game is like anti-theme to me. The gameplay itself is what seems to just suck it all out. I try to ham it up and be villainous and gruesome but then it's just play red card for +1 modifier play green card for +1 modifier the end.

Yeah. I'm afraid I'm in the same spot with it. I've only played a couple times, but it's extremely mechanical. The old knock that follows Knizia around is that you could paste any theme you wanted on a lot of his designs, but that's less true than you'd think in many cases. For the Bloody Inn... eh. It's really kind of true. If you find a group that's loose enough to play up the weirdly macabre (and true!) story, then I think it would work better. But both times I've played has been with new players and people get marooned on exactly what you're talking about. I know a couple opinions here have said that the expansion adds a bit more chrome to it and can add some of that theme back in, but it's sadly out of print.

I'm willing to try it a couple more times, but I'd have to say it's pretty far down my list at the moment, even for filler games.

Wait a second...
I thought police were only trouble if you have unburied bodies?

Chiming in that I too, love the Bloody Inn.

I played The Bloody Inn a few times when it came out and thought it was pretty neat. It falls in that 7 range where I wouldn't turn down a game of it but I wouldn't request one either.

ubarose wrote:

mc wrote: Wait a second...
I thought police were only trouble if you have unburied bodies?

Yes, and if you can screw someone so that they can’t get a body buried, then they need to deal with the police. One way to deal with them is to kill them.

I just can't read haha.

So - bury a body in a spot they were hoping to use for themselves. Gotcha.

I still like Bloody Inn, but it does not belong on the list for the reasons you describe, mc. I wouldn't go as far as to call it "anit-theme," which also is not a problem for me, but I originally included it for it's subject matter and the table talk I personally have experienced playing it. Bit as a game, it does not fit the criteria hence taking it off.

I need to make this a living list. There's just so little that actually fits that I feel it deserves to be recognized when something does. If I'm being completely honest, as much as I love Fury of Dracula, it doesn't belong either.

Josh Look wrote: I need to make this a living list.

Or a Top 10.

Josh Look wrote: If I'm being completely honest, as much as I love Fury of Dracula, it doesn't belong either.

I have a long-standing thing with Fury. The premise of the game is just wrong. There's really no chase scene in the original novel. Dracula flees back to Transylvania, but they know right where he's going, so there's no deduction aspect to it. The whole thing is kind of a "What if Bram Stoker decided to do THIS..." Which, I mean, is fine, but it's not really Dracula, nor is it emblematic of the themes which the novel and the earlier films portrayed. It's the same hang-up I have with the Jaws game (another deduction game) where representing the personal stories that are the best part of the film can't really come through in a board game, so it's kind of "JAWS" slapped on to a board game for the marketing impact, rather than the story. Fury is the same way. Thematically, Scotland Yard was kind of the best of the original "Find the dude" games, mostly because it was so neutral.

Don't get me wrong: I've enjoyed almost every game of Fury that I've played. I still own it and have no reason to trade it any time soon. But if we're talking about horror games, it does kind of fall short.