Horrified Review – Dracula and Frankenstein Wrecking Havoc in the Same Town

Basic information:

• Genre: cooperation, horror
• Mechanics: action points, cooperation, variable set-up, dice rolling, pick-up and deliver
• Duration: box says 60 min, really 60-120 min
• Player count: 1-5
• Released: 2019
• Age limit: 10+

Everyone knows Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula and mummies. But it is kinda crazy to think that all of these could be at the same time in the same place. That’s the premise of Horrified.

Gameplay

In the game, several enemies are selected to terrorize the city, and players need to destroy them. Each enemy is a unique case, and they have their own enemy boards that tell the players how to beat them. The players need to go around a small village and look for items with which you can progress the defeat process. The challenge is that up to four enemies can run amok in the city at the same time.

The game mechanics are really simple. On their turn, a player can perform actions equal to the number of action points marked on their character token. Actions are simple, such as moving around, picking up items, and defeating enemies. These actions are very straight-forward, so the game is easy to learn. This is definitely one of the strengths of the game.

After each player’s turn, it’s the enemies’ turn. Enemies are controlled by enemy cards. When an enemy card is drawn, more items will be spawned to the city and possibly enemies will be activated. The card tells how many squares the monsters will move towards the nearest player or a villager on the board. If the enemy is in the same square as a player or villager, it attacks by the number of dice shown on the card. If the die shows a hit, the player must discard one item token or their goners. In addition, it is possible that the dice results in a special ability of the enemy, which can be, for example, moving a player to the same square as the enemy.

This “player’s turn – enemy’s turn” cycle continues until one end-of-game condition is met. The game is won if the enemies can be defeated before the enemy deck runs out or too many characters die during the game. So in practice, if a player or a villager dies, the horror level of the village increases, and the players are one step closer to losing.

Different enemies are nicely different from each other. For example, in the case of Dracula, you have to go to different corners of the map to destroy his coffins, and only after destroying them, you can destroy the vampire lord himself. Another example is the Creature from the Lagoon, in whose scenario you first have to steer the ship through the lagoon to find the monster’s hiding place, after which you can defeat the creature itself.

A little related to the previous one, the characters are also different from each other in a nice way. Characters have different amounts of action points to use. In addition, each character has their own special ability. Often, if a character has fewer action points, their special ability is stronger. For example, one character can move wherever they want, but that character only has three actions available. On the other hand, there is one character who has no special ability but five action points in return.

Although the game is fun to play, for some reason it has not stood out compared to other games in my shelf. This can be seen from the fact that even though the game has been in my collection for a long time, it doesn’t get played often. This can be due to many reasons, so this is a really subjective and possibly temporary criticism. The game is always fun to play, so the criticism focuses more on the fact that the game, despite its fun, hasn’t been picked up from the shelf to play that often.

Components

The game looks absolutely captivating! The game box is stylish and despite its horror theme, the game has used colors so that the end result is vibrant. The character images are nice and the monster figures are of high quality. All components of the game also feel durable.

Everything in the game supports the ease and clarity of the game. The cards and the texts on them are clear and straightforward. Likewise, the instruction manual is written very clearly. This is why the game is really easy to teach to new players.

The only negative thing related to the components is related to item tokens lying on the board. First of all, their images are not very interesting. Because only the color of the token matters, the player’s attention is only focused on the color. But the bigger problem is that they are relatively large tokens, and if there are a lot of them in one location on the game map, the item tiles can easily clog the board. It results in that sometimes a certain location cannot be seen properly without moving the item tiles.

Replayability

It’s a pity that there are only six enemies in the game. Due to their small number, the various enemies have been experienced quite quickly. Fortunately, there are still many different variations, because the players can always choose different set of monsters to go against. So every playthrough is a little different. Based on the difficulty level chosen by the players, the game can have either 2, 3 or 4 enemies. There are quite a few different ways to choose four different enemies for the game.

Summary

Horrified is simple fun. The game has a surprising amount of variation thanks to its many enemy combinations and different characters. There should still be a few more enemies, so that the game feels fresh every time you play. Despite its few flaws, the game in its simplicity is a joy to teach new players, and the game is pure eye candy.