Episode 156: Horrified

Horrified is a 1 to 5 player fully cooperative game published in 2019 by Ravensburger Games. In Horrified, players take on the roles of investigators and heroes working together to save their village from the onslaught of one or more classic movie monsters: The Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Invisible Man, Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and his Bride, and The Wolfman.

Gameplay is straightforward: a player takes a turn, then a monster takes a turn, then the next player takes a turn, et cetera. This continues until the players have defeated all the monsters, or the monsters advance the Terror Track to its end, indicating they have terrorized the village into submission.

At the start of the game, players will choose one or more monsters to combat, the number of monsters indicating the difficulty of the game. Monsters may be chosen randomly or selected specifically. After, the board will be set up in various ways based on the monsters chosen, as each monster has a particular way of being defeated – which we will address shortly. Then, a number of item tokens are drawn randomly from a bag and the board is seeded. Each token is identified by one of three colors and a specific location, with items being placed in the appropriate spot when drawn. Items will have several functions: defense against monster attacks, progressing the various ways monsters can be defeated, and finally dealing the death blow when a monster has been made vulnerable.

Monster turns are driven by a card draw. Each card will determine which monsters move, how many spaces they move, and the strength of any resulting attack should they enter a space with a character. Cards may also trigger some monster special abilities, and may cause villager standees to be placed on the board. Each villager is trying to reach a specific location on the board, but if they are killed before they get there the Terror Track will be advanced one space. Players may also be attacked and killed, though in this case their standee is sent to the Hospital space and is made available again on the player’s next turn. This will also advance the Terror Track.

A player’s turn is simple: each character has a number of action points that players will spend to move, pick up any number of items on their space, trade items with other characters on the same space, direct adjacent villagers to move, spend items to advance a monster’s vulnerability, attack a monster, or use their unique special power. Players can take any number of actions any number of times up to their available action points unless otherwise noted.

Players have two primary goals: attempting to move villagers to safe locations, and advancing a monster’s vulnerability. Each monster has a unique puzzle that needs to be solved before it can be defeated, driven by various numbers and color combinations of items that players will need to collect and spend at certain locations on the board. Once the puzzle has been solved, the monster can now be defeated by spending a certain number and color combination of item tokens in its space.

Horrified requires strategic planning, resource management and, sometimes, knowing when to sacrifice a hapless villager for the greater good.

01:24:28 – Review
01:46:35 – Ratings