What’s The Game About And How To Win

So the “Horrified monsters are trying to defend themselves and pick you and your friends off. While your friends and you make a plan to which monster you’ll take on first.

Depends how difficult you want to make it, you could have a lot of monsters to deal with. My suggestion is start with the “easiest” one first.

Defeat them all and you’ve won the game! If it was too easy, step it up again and face more monsters at once. Too hard? Maybe you should change up the monsters or just give it another go if it was a close matchup.

Should You Buy Horrified By Ravensburger?

Obviously this questions depends a lot about what you are looking for. If you are looking for a challenging strategic cooperative board game to play with a few friends, then this game might be up your alley. My wife and i really liked this game when we first tried it. It took us a game or two to figure out but then we enjoyed challenging ourselves to the point where we really didn’t think we could possibly win.

Potential Buyers

If i could give any future buys a heads up is that after you play through most of the combinations of monsters you fall off with your interest in the game. So for the replay ability sake it really doesn’t hold up past probably 10 hours of game time. Don’t get me wrong, for 10 hours of solid and challenging gameplay, i think its worth picking up. So in my book i would buy this game again if given the chance. I already own the second edition to this game, Horrified : American Monsters. Soon i will be getting Horrified : Greek Monsters, just to be able to beat all the monsters.

Cooperative game

Horrified is a great intermediate cooperative game in my opinion. I say intermediate just because if you’re new to board games, or cooperative games, you might get a little overwhelmed. My wife and I stumbled our way through it the first time and still won but we definitely felt that “lost and confused” feeling.

After the second game was over, we were working like a well oiled machine.

I would recommend playing this game with people who are okay with being a little lost for they’re first game, people who won’t take it too seriously if they don’t exactly know what going on at first. Just makes the process of teaching this game to new players easier for you.

Horrified Map

They map has tons of different locations for you to go to collect items. Make sure you have good coverage over the map so you don’t have to waste time taking turns just to get one item.

The board game itself feels really big, but in reality its just cause of all the monster sheets, cards, tokens, and character pieces all around the board at once. I measured the board itself at 20 inches by 20 inches. After i put all the monster sheets out and all the tokens and pieces, i measured again and it was 28 inches by 28 inches, so you’ll need a good wide area to play on.

I really like the board though cause it’s just a huge piece of art. For me there’s so much to look at and I really enjoy the dark colors. It sets the vibe of a dark and scary camp ground horror game.

I really dig the artwork for all of the different aspects of this game. It gives me a comic book animated kind of vibe. It’s hard to put into words but something about the artwork in this game just personally makes me feel good. Its clean and rich with details that you can just tell they had great artists working on this game.

Playable Characters

Best to keep in that your characters are randomly passed out so its good to get an idea of what each is best used for.

Archaeologist : Special Action – Pick up items from an adjacent space. Great for getting lots of items for monster quests, and protection to trade with fellow heroes.

Explorer : Special Action – Place your Hero in any non-water space. Great character for being super mobile area the map, getting key quest items, and staying out of the danger zone. Drawback is losing an action point so use your moves wisely.

Scientist : Special Action – You may add 1 to the strength of any item you use. Honestly, i would never want the scientist if i was playing. Its good for some of the monsters quests but just not that great for much else. So she’s kinda of “blah character” for me.

Inspector : Special Action – Place your hero in any non-water space with a monster. At first glance i thought this was a terrible special ability, but its great for finishing monsters off. I rank the inspector above the scientist but still kind of “blah.”

Professor : Special Action – Move any hero or villager one space. A defensive character when i played him. I would most of the time get to a safe area and use the rest of my actions to help teammates and our survivors get to where they needed.

Courier : Special Action – Place your hero in any space with another hero. Great for help spreading the items around the map. Just a less powerful Explorer but still pretty handy.

Mayor : Special Action – Bonus Action. Basic but that extra action will lead to effectively having an whole extra turn equivalent by the end of the game.

Horrified Monsters

Dracula – Dracula is meant to be the easiest out of all the monsters, but honestly if he gets some good rolls he can do some real damage to you and your teammates. His special ability can become a problem when it comes to keeping your distance. When it comes to defeating him its pretty straight forward get as many red items early and in my opinion get him down as fast as possible.

The Mummy – The Mummy feels like a time wasting kinda of monster. I usually just save him for last while going around the map just picking up some yellows to help move his scarabs around. Never been scared of this Mummy.

Frankenstein And The Bride – These two are like a buy one get one free package. When they’re rolling well it feels like they never stop getting chances to hit you. It doesn’t matter which you take out first, i would recommend defeating “The Bride” first because of her lower monster dial health. After that Frankenstein feels a lot easier to manage.

Creature From The Black Lagoon – The real thing in my mind that makes “Creature” such a menace is he can move through water so he’s quick to cut you and your survivors off. The quest to defeat him isn’t to hard, just try to have a good about of blue items for your quickest way to his lair.

The Wolf Man – Never group up around “The Wolf Man,” his special ability can really mess up a team if they all group up. You’ll need a variety of blues to get this Wolf man his antidote. Super easy monster quest to get a hold on.

The Invisible Man – This guy can be a real son of a gun, his special ability forces all the heroes to pay attention to all survivors so they don’t get picked off. Which leads to your skull counter shooting up fast.

Monster Setup Sheet

This is really nice that they added on the back of all the monster sheets. It was really helpful the first time around and its great to reference for when you come back over time to remind you of the setup. Love that they added this, i think its something they could have missed, but they didn’t so thats good.

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Gameplay

In my experience, the gameplay for this game is like a big football huddle. First, you scope out where the monsters are to other teammates. Second, you scan the board for survivors to save. Then you all discuss on what to do on everyones turn to make sure as team you all have the best possible turn. Keep in mind in your plan making that the monsters have a turn too.

Players Turn

Every character has a certain number of actions and special abilities. I listed some of the obvious benefits of all the characters special abilities above. Each time you take your turn i would just make the goal to make as much progress towards defeating one of your enemy monsters. I really like how they set up the actions and special abilities for this game, unfortunately i’m greedy and wish they had more characters for even more options and new special moves.

Monsters Turn / Horrified Difficulty

There were sometimes where i felt like the monsters needed a buff. But then i just added more monsters. Now that i think about it, its like the zombie problem. One zombie is fairly easy to deal with on their own. Then you add another one and another, then you got no where to go, and panic sets in. Since you are in full control of how many monsters you play against, you have some level of setting your own difficulty.

Horrified : “Story Mode?” – Idea For Ravensburger

Something that i would say to the creators of the game is maybe adding some kinda of “Story Mode.” Start the “Story Mode” with lets say one monster to introduce the game to new players. Then in the next section bump it up to two monsters. Slowly increasing the difficulty so that theres a linear challenging path. It takes out the decision of having new players pick monsters they haven’t played against yet. Also gives the companies writers a chance to really immerse people into the lore of the game.

Horrified Box Setup

One thing if you read all my posts on board games that you’ll learn is that i like a clean box setup. I like a nice outside of box artwork, cause obviously its a bookshelf decoration. But i’m greedy, i want the inside of the box to be clean and everything to have its spot. When you get big games like Horrified, theres just so much to store in a box. Ravensbuger does a good job with what they have to work with. I’m able to store everything into the box and not having it wanting to burst out. I wish they had maybe a bit of a bigger box, and molded plastic sections for monster figures. Just a bit more room and a little bit of customization i think they would make it perfect. They made it work though so thats always good too.

Horrified : American Monsters & Horrified : Greek Monsters

If you find you like the Horrified Series then i would recommend you check out the other two Horrified games. I have personally only played American Monsters edition (And of course the original version) but i will soon get my hands on the Greek Monsters edition too!

Horrified : Original Monsters – If your interested in playing here the links for you!

Horrified : American Monsters – New Monsters : Bigfoot, Mothman, the Jersey Devil, the Chupacabra, the Banshee of the Badlands, and the Ozark Howler. 

Horrified : Greek Monsters – New Monsters : Medusa, Cerberus, Minotaur, Chimera, Siren, and Basilisk.

What I Would Like To See Added

Some things that i would like to see added to Horrified is somewhat of a short and selfish list. Like i mentioned in the box setup section i would love for a better box setup with some proper places for the monster figures.

I thought that adding more character abilities would be another possibly fun addition to Horrified. In my mind since theres all this mystical creatures running around i would also like some mystical playable characters too. I understand they need to stick to a theme for the game but it might be cool seeing more characters like a parkour character, juggler, pirate, or something funny like a conspiracy theist. I just imagine a big guy in a cargo jacket holding a camcorder and i need it. Then give him a special ability to “Rally The Troops” and let everyone have a bonus action for the round. Obviously Ravensburger could do better on the ideas than me, but you get the idea.

Secret Path Ways?

It would be cool to see secret pathways for players to roam around the map with too. Just to help with some of those items that are across the board and that are just painful for to go get. Maybe a car/motorcycle token that you can ride three extra spaces with for two turns?

Horrified Game Rules

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Thank you for taking the time to look over my review. Horrified is a great series full of lots of fun monsters. I am excited to see where this series goes in the future. Hopefully they keep adding on to the great pool of “Horrifying Monsters!” Thank you for your time, God bless…