Image taken from https://boardgamegeek.com/image/4848330/horrified

Designers: Prospero Hall, Peter Lee
Publisher: Ravensburger
Artist: Prospero Hall

In Horrified, you are working, either solo or cooperatively, to defeat the monsters that have taken over the city. Each monster has specific conditions that must be met in order for them to be defeated, and each game you can choose how many monsters and which monsters you want to play against.

I really appreciate the simplicity of the game (especially since it’s marketed as a family game), but you can still make the game challenging and slightly strategic. By no means would I call this anything above a light board game, but there’s still some decision making that needs to happen, and timing in this game is important. With varying difficulties (based on the number of monsters) and different complexities for the monsters themselves, there is a lot of control over the type of experience you’ll have, which I love. Each monster has specific win conditions, so mixing and matching the monsters makes for unique games each time you play.

Since I played this solo, I learned through the first game they suggest (against Dracula and the Creature from the Black Lagoon), and then I played a few more subsequent games to try out all the monsters. The complexity levels in the instructions are pretty spot on! As a gamer, I definitely enjoyed the more difficult monsters (the Mummy was my favorite), but the large spread makes this game very easy to play with any group of people.

The instruction book I found very good, the game play time is perfect, the components are nice (the monsters having actual figures is a nice touch), and the set up and take down are what they should be.

Besides the asymmetric monsters, each character (seven total) has unique abilities and numbers of available actions, so there’s a lot of room to experiment (pun intended) with different combinations of characters and monsters.

Overall, this game has a lot of positives. It’s very fun, simple mechanically so it’s easy to teach and get to the table, the game length is good, the player count is great (1-5), good components and a great table presence, slightly strategic, unique, thematic and immersive, and has a lot of versatility and replayability in terms of monsters, characters, difficulty levels, etc.

The main negative I have is that success can be quite luck based. For someone who is a heavier gamer, I can’t say I’ll be pulling it out often for solo play and/or for me and the husband to play, but it’s great for chill board game nights, mixed groups of people, and families, and certainly during spooky season!

I know I said I’ve only experienced this solo, but I have also played with my nieces and nephews and we had a really good time.

If you get spooked easily, though, you may want to heed the words of warning when you open the box. 😉👻

As a bit of a P.S., I do want to add that the fan made campaign for this game on BGG is very fun and creative. It’s definitely something I’ll try to play around Halloween every year. 🎃