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“Pandora’s Box has been breached!” The warning greets us as we open the top of the box (how thematic!) to Ravensberger’s latest release in the Horrified line of tabletop games, Horrified: Greek Monsters. In this new horror board game, it seems that six monsters from the days of lore and legend have escaped and threaten to plunge the Hellenic world into everlasting fear! But don’t worry… just as Pandora found a little bit of hope remaining at the bottom of that box, we have you and up to four of your friends we can count on to set things right before everything really goes to the three-headed dogs!
In Horrified: Greek Monsters, players will take on the roles of characters like the Ranger, Musician, Hoplite, Shepherd, Actor, Traveler, or Mariner (whose artwork looks uncannily like friend-of-Fango David Dastmalchian!), each with their own special ability, to move around the board, collecting items and artifacts while working together to keep the populace safe and defeat the assorted monsters chosen for each particular session.
Of the six monsters in the game, players need only choose three for “normal” difficulty, or they may add or subtract monsters as their fortitude waxes and wanes for each playthrough. Even within the three chosen creatures, difficulty may be adjusted as some are more challenging.
So, who is in this rogues gallery? Well, there’s Cerberus (the aforementioned three-headed guard dog to the Underworld), The bull-headed Minotaur, the Basilisk, a Siren, a Chimera, and everyone’s favorite Gorgon, Medusa!
Players must complete each monster’s unique “mini-game” to defeat them. This involves using items in the form of tokens of three different colors found on the various interconnected spaces around the board. For instance, to defeat Cerberus, players must be at the door to the Underworld and discard a blue item token in order to take a chance at rolling the dice and matching three glyphs around the edge of the door to unlock it and send this hound back to Hades. If you fail, you can discard green item tokens to reroll as many times as you have green items to spend.
The Minotaur has players reconstructing a labyrinth on his placard, connecting the routes appropriately, while the Basilisk has players running around the board, placing items in temples to bless them, then using those blessed items (and others in their possession) to rid themselves of the chicken-headed lizard (or is it a lizard-bodied chicken?)
Players must put each head (lion, goat, and snake) of the Chimera to sleep before using a collection of blue, green, and orange items tokens to “defeat” it (I’m guessing that means putting it to sleep permanently).
The Siren is defeated by playing a memory game in which players match facedown “tone” tokens on her placard. Medusa must first be guided through mirrors to a specific location, the Statue Garden, before using a collection of green item tokens to defeat her for good.
According to Mike Mulvihill, designer of Horrified: Greek Monsters, the choice of monsters to include was tough, with a pretty deep bench of, let’s face it, just plain cool and iconic creatures. “One of the things we always try and do when making a Horrified game is to come up with different kinds of monsters that will both appeal visually to the players as well as offer new and uniquely challenging mini-games,” says Mulvihill.
“The Chimera is just so visually unique; we were drawn to showcasing a three-headed monster. As for the Siren, her story and power made so much sense with the challenge we wanted. The Basilisk may be the “deep cut” of the game; the concept that only god-blessed weapons could defeat it just felt perfect for a game that also invokes the gods directly in play.”
For any fan of the Greek myths, it must have been difficult to make the necessary cuts, but, as Mulvihill points out, it was all for the sake of gameplay. “By including the Minotaur, we didn’t want a second giant-crushing monster… so the Cyclops and the Titans who were on our short list fell off. Secondly, we knew the Greek Monsters would appeal to a lot of potential new players, so we decided early on that purely water-based monsters and the rules that would be needed to get the Heroes into the water would be left out, so no Kraken! There are a few others that came close. In the end, we curated a final list of the strongest Greek monsters that captures the mythos and had the most diverse gameplay.”
Each round in Horrified: Greek Monsters is divided into two phases: Hero and Monster. In the Hero Phase, players take their turn performing the number of actions their particular character affords them, usually four, with the Traveler character giving an extra (you can get more done as a pink Pegasus, it turns out). “Spending” those actions, players can move to an adjacent space, pick up and share items with other players (it pays to work together, folks, this is a cooperative game, after all), use those items against the monsters, or activate their own unique power as described on their player tile.
One other action lets players guide “Legends” around the board. These unique non-player characters enter the scenario when their card is drawn during the next phase. Legends, such as Orion, Daedalus, Hippolyta, Jason, Arachne, and others have their cardboard standee placed on a starting space, according to the card, but their standee indicates what space they’re heading towards. It’s up to you to guide them there, and it behooves you to do so. Leaving them to their own devices will result in them being devoured by the monsters in play.
If a Legend is defeated, the “Terror” marker is moved up one space. When it reaches the seventh space, it’s all over. You’ve failed and the entire world is plunged into a paralyzing fear. So, be a good citizen, and help Circe get to the Vinyards, ok? You’ll be rewarded, after all, not just by staving off the eternal, paralyzing fear, but with a “Perk” card.
Perk cards give players really helpful special actions and effects that can be played, for free, at any time during the Hero Phase, even if it’s not even your turn. So, keep them face up and discuss them with your fellow heroes. Strategize on how best to use them and when.
Next up is the Monster Phase, where mostly “bad stuff” happens. A “Monster” card is drawn and a number of new item tokens will be placed around the board (this is usually a good thing, though the number can sometimes be zero). Then there will be an effect, usually moving monsters, Heroes, or tokens around the board or triggering monster attacks. Sometimes, the Legends will come out, though, and that’s not so bad.
But wait! There’s more! Along the bottom of the Monster card are several colored symbols. Each monster has three colored symbols on its placard. For each colored symbol on the Monster card that matches the monsters in play, that monster is activated. It moves and attacks if it ends up in a space with a Legend or a Hero. Luckily (?) Heroes are attacked first if both are present and heroes actually have a way of defending themselves.
Hits on the rolled attack dice can be canceled by discarding item tokens. If you have no item tokens to discard, you’re (temporarily) defeated and simply go to the Temple of Nyx and begin your next turn there. Unfortunately, the Terror marker will also move up one, but at least you had a shot. Legends are killed immediately if undefended by a Hero and that Terror marker moves up all the same.
Monsters are a lot to manage and it takes time to get the right tokens to defeat them, but your time is not unlimited. If a player needs to reveal a Monster card and the deck is empty… you guessed it. You lose!
Horrified: Greek Monsters, is, as mentioned earlier, the third in a line of Horrified games from Ravensburger. The first foray in 2019 was simply Horrified and featured a collection of some of the most well-known Universal Monsters, from Dracula to Frankenstein’s Monster and The Bride, The Invisible Man, the Creature, the Wolf-Man, and the Mummy. Each has its own unique and thematic mini-game to defeat them, as in the latest version.
The most charming challenge is not to “defeat” Frankenstein’s Monster and The Bride but to increase their humanity to a certain level and then guide them to each other where they can finally fall in love. Ahh… see? Monsters aren’t all about rending and tearing.
But then there’s the rending and tearing. Dracula, the Wolf-Man, the Creature… they’re pretty ferocious, and it’ll take some cooperation to defeat them.
All of this takes place not on a Greek island, of course, but in what looks like a “typical“ American town, at least the kind you see in the movies. The “Legends“ are various townsfolk who need to get around to their safe spaces, with your kind assistance. “Fritz,” for instance, wants to get to the Laboratory for some reason he won’t disclose. There’s even a standee for Chick & Wilbur (if you know, you know) who need to get to the Dungeon.
2021 saw the release of the next entry in the series, Horrified: American Monsters, where players were up against a number of well-known and some more mysterious cryptids such as Bigfoot (the King!), the Mothman, the Chupacabra, the Jersey Devil (who gets the home state advantage in my games), as well as a couple I’ll admit I’d never heard of: the Banshee of the Badlands, and the Ozark Howler! But I’m always up for learning about a new cryptid because… you never know and it’s good to be prepared (or so they told me during my six months in the Boy Scouts).
New creatures and new mini-games to defeat them within the same familiar framework. This is what promises to keep the Horrified series going for a long time to come.
“We have a cooperative, adjustable game that people of multiple skill levels and gamer’ knowledge‘ can play and play together,“ says Mulvihill. “Here’s the cool thing about having those ‘guidelines’: it allows us to focus on the different monsters themselves and how they work within those pre-set guidelines. From my end, I love the ability to design within that to see what we can alter and manipulate and still focus on story and immersion.”
Indeed, the latest iteration, Horrified: Greek Monsters offers a new twist to defeating the monsters in the form of “Lairs”. No longer are the monsters always at the same location for their end-game battle. There’s an extra little challenge in first discovering where they reside and then dealing with them there.
“This is a perfect illustration of designing within those guidelines,“ says Mulvihill. “In the first two editions of Horrified, monsters had a static home and a static area where you can defeat them. We wanted to play with those expectations, making it so the players see the monsters on the board but don’t know where they can solve their challenges or defeat them. This allows us to do a few things like changing the cooperative nature to chase something other than the monsters. It’s almost like a pre-challenge before the mini-game, which makes the players feel they need to rethink their strategy every time. Also, from a story approach, it works well since the stories of these monsters are always a bit different based on the version you read, and that is reflected in their gameplay.”
What might the Horrified line have in store for future releases? Lovecraftian horrors? Kaiju? Mike Mulvihill isn’t giving away any secrets, but he promises more to come:
“We have released three Horrified games… each more successful than the last … so I leave it to the imagination of the Horrified players and the readers of Fangoria to imagine a future that is very Horrified!”
All games in the Horrified series are available directly from Ravensburger and wherever board games are found. For more board game goodness, check out our rundown of the upcoming Ghost Face: The Game.
