Three great games for spooky season
These three games (plus five more) are great options for the Halloween season.
If you’ve come here looking for games that will give you a genuine scare, turn away. Board games are not great at doing that. There’s just a cardboard reality there that you can’t overcome. There are a few, certainly, but if you’re looking for something to give you a fright, consider a role-playing game — there are some great options out there, I’m sure. But if you’re in for it — if you want a game that just has a bit of the spooky to it — these games might be exactly what you need this October.
If you like solving mysteries and escape room games, Decktective could be just the game for you. If trick-taking’s more your speed, Jekyll vs. Hyde and Vamp on the Batwalk are two good options that play things in very different ways. And there are even more suggestions here that we’ll spend a little less time on — a shortlist, if you will.
Decktective
Take your pick. There are so many of these now, and while the ones I’ve played are not genuinely scary, mystery is in the air. The Decktective series is spun out of the Deckscape series, which are escape-room-ish card games, but they differ in that you’re not trying to reach a certain point that ends the game, you’re instead progressing through the game, gathering clues, then attempting to solve the mystery at the very end. I really like that twist.
There are, of course, plenty of great mystery games. Why have I picked Decktective over those? I like Chronicles of Crime, and Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective is a classic, but Decktective just offers something a bit different. Most cooperative mystery games have players reading aloud, and all information is shared with players equally. That’s the case with the Deckscape series, too, but Decktective shifts the format.
Players will be drawing cards, each of which has some information about the mystery. To reveal cards on your turn, you must have a certain number of cards in an ‘archive’, and the archive requirement for playing a card can go up significantly. The archive starts at just one card, so you will be forced to make some difficult choices early in the game. Thematically, that means you’re spending time following a lead, and it means there are leads and evidence you won’t be able to chase down. You’re constantly having to weigh whether information is truly relevant or merely an interesting note. Information on some cards is duplicated elsewhere in the game, and you won’t need every piece of information to solve the mystery. How will you know what to reveal and what you must keep secret? Figuring that out is what makes the game work.
At the end, when answering questions, you do have an opportunity to reveal some of the information present on the cards you’ve discarded, but you don’t get to look back through those cards. You’ll rely on your memory for the cards you discarded to the archive, which might be jogged as other players discuss the mystery — or maybe you’ll forget all about the cards you discarded, and you’ll accuse the wrong suspect.
Finally, I’ve not mentioned the thing that makes gamers raise an eyebrow and sit up in their seat a little bit: There’s a three-dimensional crime scene you’ll be investigating, and it’s constructed out of cards and the game box. Isn’t that just the coolest?
Designed by Martino Chiacchiera and Silvano Sorrentino, published by DV Games. Decktective is for one 1 to 6 players.
Jekyll vs. Hyde
Two-player trick-taking is a genre that stands in an interesting position. Many trick-taking games thrive with four players or more, perhaps owing to their traditional game past, especially with games that involve partnerships. Two players is decidedly more rare, with Fox in the Forest, Claim and Sail being the games that come to mind among a sea of trick-taking games.
Jekyll vs. Hyde takes the two-player trick-taking idea in a nice direction. The two players assume the roles of Jekyll and Hyde, both of whom have a different goal. Dr. Jekyll, reasonable as he is, will try to remain controlled and level, and the player in this role will aim to win about as many tricks as the wild Mr. Hyde. Mr. Hyde will run wild through the city, so the player will attempt to either win or lose more tricks than the other player — balance is absolutely not the goal here.
At the end of each round, you’ll move a pawn along a track a number of spaces equal to the difference between each side’s tricks won. (Take the absolute value — it doesn’t matter if Mr. Hyde wins or loses more tricks than the opponent, just that it’s one of the two.) That representation of Dr. Jekyll’s descent into madness is where the game’s mechanics connect best with its theme. If the pawn reaches the end of the track before the end of the third round, Mr. Hyde has won. However, if it never reaches the end of the track, Dr. Jekyll has maintained control, however tenuous his grasp, winning the game.
If you’ve played Jekyll vs. Hyde and enjoyed it, you might consider some other two-player games from the designer, Geonil. I enjoyed both Hipparchus and Ptolemy, and The Yellow House is an interesting trick-taking game about Vincent Van Gogh. He also designed Jekyll & Hyde vs. Scotland Yard and The Phantom of the Opera, both of which I’m hoping to land on the table during this slightly spooky season.
Designed by Geonil, published by Mandoo Games. Jekyll vs. Hyde is for two players.
Vamp on the Batwalk
I don’t know if you noticed, but trick-taking games? I like ‘em. A lot. I’ve written about them at some length, and they feature a lot in the newsletter week-to-week. Last week, I wrote about three great new trick-takers I’ve played. I think we all had to expect a trick-taker to appear here, but two? Spooky, indeed. And this one, which is all about fashionable vampires walking the catwalk, amps the thematic spookiness up ever so slightly.
Vamp on the Batwalk is a trick-taking game in which the cards in your hand face away from you (think the classic card game Hanabi) and the back of your cards has the card’s suit. Thematically, this is because you’re a vampire, and the game’s material says that “you can’t see how good you look in a mirror.” It’s a fun little thematic moment.
In Vamp on the Batwalk, you’re operating with very limited information — but unlike most trick-takers, you know what everyone else has in hand. There’s one suit of cards for each player in the game, and the ranks only range from 1 to 5, plus each suit has a garlic card and a star card. This means you can try to suss out your options, given what’s been played already and what you can see. Garlic cards and star cards add a nice twist, as star cards beat any rank card, and garlic cards beat star cards. But the biggest twist is that if you, as a player following, play the same number as the lead card (off-suit, of course, which will happen frequently), the highest-ranked card of your followed suit becomes the new lead card. It can throw off your ideas significantly, which is perfect for a game with as much joyful chaos as this one.
The opportunities for a fully deductive choice are rare, though, so you’ll be making best-guesses as to the cards in your hand. That may mean you’re making a choice that you know is suboptimal, and you might be convinced you’ll lose. That might be because of information you can see but other players can’t, and if somebody picks a worse card in the trick than you expected (all because they, too, don’t know what they have in hand), you might find yourself unexpectedly celebrating. Don’t celebrate too much, though. It’s unseemly for a vampire to celebrate like that, and you might just reveal more information than you realized.
I’ve not mentioned the best part here: As you gain points (for winning tricks, mostly, but there are one or two other cases in which you’ll gain additional points), you get to move a vampire standee down a catwalk, which is present on the back of the game box. I love it when games use their boxes in interesting ways, and having a score track with fashionista vampire standees is delightful. After three rounds, the player furthest down the catwalk wins, but if one player reaches the end by earning 10 points, the game ends immediately.
Designed by Jon Simantov, published by Jellyfish Game Studios. Jellyfish Game Studios provided a copy for review. Vamp on the Batwalk is for 2 to 6 players.
Five more great spooky games
Dracula vs. Van Helsing is a one-on-one card game in which you’re moving cards in five different areas of a map. Dracula will try to convert those map areas into vampire-infested wastelands (or paradises, I suppose, depending on your perspective), while Van Helsing is trying to prevent the spread. Designed by Maxime Rambourg and Théo Rivière, published by Mandoo Games.
Mysterium is a classic cooperative game: One player acts as the ghost of someone murdered, communicating messages through surreal art, and the other players are attempting to find meaning in those messages in order to narrow down a list of suspects, locations and murder weapons. It’s a weird one, and it’s such a good game. Designed by Oleksandr Nevskiy and Oleg Sidorenko, published by Libellud.
Nocturne is a game about magical foxes casting magical spells. What’s not to love? It’s a somewhat puzzly, strategic set collection game, and the art is really quite nice. Designed by David Iezzi, published by Flatout Games.
If the Halloween season is about pretending to be somebody you’re not, you can do much worse than Spyfall, a quick-playing party game in which all players but one (the spy!) know their shared location, but only the spy knows who the spy is. It’s a very funny time. Designed by Alexandr Ushan, published by Cryptozoic.
Don’t Get Got is probably the greatest party game you can play, and a Halloween party would be an absolutely perfect time to pull it off the shelf. It’s a game designed to be played while you’re doing other things — like playing other games. Each player is given six missions, which will describe little things that require interacting with other players. Maybe you’re trying to get somebody to remark on your shirt or fix your hair. These are made up, but it’s in the spirit of the game. I can’t go revealing other players’ secret missions, can I? Designed by Zoe Lee and James A. Vaughan, published by Big Potato Games.
Thanks for joining me this week at Don’t Eat the Meeples! I’m always fascinated by this idea of spooky season, and while it did sort of feel like it started in September, I think there’s good fun in playing some of these games that take the eerie, spooky and paranormal and harness them to make great games.
Next week: It’s probably a little bit of a grab bag, as we have houseguests. We’ll see!
Me and my partner love the sherlock constulting games, so might have to give decktective a shot!
Love all of these suggestions, thanks!