Horrified: World of Monsters

• Designer: Prospero Hall
• Publisher: Ravensburger
• Players: 1-5
• Age: 10+
• Time: 60 mins
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

You’re one of Earth’s premier monster experts, and you’ve come to a mysterious arcane-punk town centered around the Void, a doorway between worlds from which terrors of all ilk might erupt.

Horrified: World of Monsters is a standalone game that features gameplay similar to 2019’s Horrified, and in this co-operative game, you’ll face off against the riddling Sphinx, the reclusive Yeti, the ravenous Jiangshi, and the Great Old One itself, Cthulhu. Each monster presents a unique challenge, and you can face them individually or in combination, with players pooling their unique skills to overcome puzzle-like obstacles inspired by monstrous legends and lore to gather item tokens, protect citizens, and avoid attacks.

The inclusion of Cthulhu brings the Horrified line its first multi-phase puzzle, with one puzzle in the realm of World of Monsters and one in Cthulhu’s realm.

In this game, a group of Heroes work together in the most haunted town in the world, battling against some of the most infamous creatures of world history: the Sphinx, the Yeti, Cthulhu and Jiangshi.   Your group will fight against 2-4 of these baddies, who for some reason have decided to descend upon your little town at the same time.  Each Monster has specific and unique defeat criteria – and in order to win, the team must vanquish all the Monsters. The players will lose if they let the Terror Level get too high or if they run out of cards in the Monster deck (meaning they have taken too much time to defeat the Monsters).

The board shows a map of a town that looks suspiciously like all the other Horrified towns, with paths connecting the the 20+ possible locations. Each player chooses a Hero (or is randomly given a Hero) and takes the Reference card for said Hero.  The mover starts on the space listed on the Reference card. The Hero card also tells you the unique special ability of the Hero as well as how many actions he/she gets on a normal turn.  Each player gets one Perk card at random. 

The Item tokens are placed in the bag and 12 are drawn out – each placed on the board at the location stated on the token itself. The group then decides what level of difficulty they want in the game, and then choose 2, 3, or 4 monsters to fight against.  The corresponding Monster mats are laid out in Frenzy Order (this value is seen on the monster mat).  The  deck of Monster cards is shuffled and placed next to the board. The Four Lair tokens are placed at the indicated places on the board.  

Turns are taken around the board, and in each turn, there is a Hero Phase followed by a Monster Phase.  In the Hero Phase, the active player takes actions up to his limit, using any combination of:

• Move – Move to any adjacent space, you may take any number of Citizens with you
• Guide – Move a Citizen into your space from an adjacent one, or push a Citizen from your space into an adjacent space
• Pick Up – Take any or all Items from your current space
• Share – Give/Redistribute items amongst any/all Heroes in your space
• Advance – Use an Item to Advance a Monster’s Task – Any items of the same color can be played together in a single action
• Defeat – If the Monster’s Task is Complete, use the appropriate Items to defeat the monster – Any items of the same color can be played together in a single action
• Special Ability – use the Special Ability on your Hero card
• Reveal a Lair – spend Item tokens worth 3 or more to reveal the Lair and learn which monster is associated with it

Perk cards are special – there is no action cost to play one, and any player can play one in any Hero Phase.  To do so, you discard a Perk card and do what it says. In order for everyone to know what the possible abilities are, players should keep all their Perk Cards face up on the table in front of themselves.

In the Monster Phase, the top card from the Monster Deck is drawn (there are 30 total in the Deck), and the three parts of the cards are done from top to bottom.  First, the large number in the top center tells you how many item tokens to draw from the bag and distribute on the board. Then, read the event in the center of the card; if this involves a specific Monster (it will be color coded to help you identify this), you do the event ONLY IF the stated Monster is in your game.  

Finally, the bottom strip tells you which Monsters move and attack. Monsters always move towards the nearest Citizen or Hero, and they will stop if they reach a space with a human in it. Then, if they end their movement in a space with a human, they will roll the number of dice stated on the Monster Card. The results might trigger the special Power of the Monster (marked on the Monster Mat) or they could inflict a hit on the human target.  Most times, there are multiple monsters noted – if the depicted monster is not in your game, you simply ignore their movement/attack. The cards also refer to a Frenzied Monster – there is a Frenzy token which is shuttled amongst the Monsters in your game, and whichever one has the Frenzy token on it gets to act when the Frenzied icon is seen.

If a Hero is hit, they can choose to lose an Item token per hit.  If they are out of Item tokens or choose not to lose an Item, the hit defeats them.  The terror level increases by one, and the Hero is moved to the Reviving Throne space where they will start their next turn from.  The defeated Hero does not lose any items (and this is why you might choose to be defeated rather than losing an Item). Citizens are automatically defeated if they are hit, and they are removed from the board.  The Terror Level still increases by one when a Citizen is defeated.

Once the Monster phase is over, play moves to the next Hero who then goes through his Hero Phase followed by another Monster Phase…  The game is won by the Heroes if they are able to defeat all the Monsters in the game. The players lose if they either run out of time (no more cards in the Monster deck) or if the Terror Level reaches the maximum (7th space) on the track.

My thoughts on the game

This is the followup game in the series, with the original coming out in 2019 – in the original Horrified, six different classic movie monsters are available (Dracula, Frankenstein and his Bride, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, WolfMan, the Mummy and the Invisible Man).  This game is very similar in the basic rules, so if you have played the original, you’ll be able to jump right into this one.

The monsters are different, and the rules for the monsters are unique as compared to the original version – so you will have acquaint yourself with the special powers and win conditions 

I felt that the original was  a nice entry-level cooperative game, and given the target market (big box shoppers) – this version remains a good fit.   There are some decisions to be made, but a lot of the strategy is streamlined.  Each monster has a fixed set of criteria needed to defeat it, and knowing these from the start of the game really helps keep people on task.  While the identities of the monsters can change from game to game – the way to beat each particular monster never varies.

That being said, I feel like this game is a bit less put together than the original.  The Monsters are not well explained, with some of the rules being found in the rulebook yet others on the Monster cards themselves.  While our gaming group was able to piece everything together (or figure rules out due to our experience with other coop games) – this could be a frustrating thing for someone newer to these sorts of games.

As with most co-op games, there is an element of quarterbacking that you could encounter, but our group was very alpha-free, and we all were able to chime in with our thoughts.  One thing which helped a bit was that there was a monster phase at the end of each player’s turn, and with the changes to the board caused by each Monster phase, there was constant re-evaluation of what players should do.   This is really what good cooperative games require – discussion amongst the players as to the best plan; and you’ll constantly have to be re-assessing your plan in all of the Horrified versions.

Like the original – the rules offer no scaling for different player counts. The game continues to alternate between Player Phases and Monster Phases, but there are just fewer Players on the board.   The number of cards in the Monster deck stays the same, but some of them fizzle as there is no special action caused by the card if the Monster shown isn’t in the game. However, this is no different than if you have 5 players; so essentially no scaling here. Additionally, as there are no extra Investigators in the game, it is harder to collect stuff and trade stuff because the size of the board doesn’t change and you have fewer Investigators to move; each has proportionally more ground to cover.   I suppose you can just see this as a built in difficulty system, and a 2p group should feel good winning against 2 monsters; but man, if you’re new to the game and only have 2p, you are pretty much at a serious handicap to a 4p group of newbies playing the same starting pair of Monsters.

After a few plays of this version, and recollection of my experiences with previous Horrified iterations (all long since removed from the game collection) –  the sweet spot for me remains at 3 players. With 5 players, there were a few turns where players didn’t have much to do – if the Monster card didn’t poop anything out near them (and they had already saved any nearby citizens) – then really you’re just moving to an area where you hopefully can’t be attacked by a monster.  Furthermore, the game has a weird inverse tension. As you partially win the game, it actually tends to get easier – because any defeated monsters are removed from the game – which means fewer monsters move/attack in the monster phase AND more monster card effects can be skipped because there are fewer monsters in play.  

The graphics are well done and each of the monsters has a distinctive look.  The physical bits are a bit less impressive;  the chits and cards are amongst the thinnest I’ve ever encountered.  A number of our cards are already bent or creased from only minimal shuffling.  I still have quibble with the weird nylon-ish bag for the items.  It’s crinkly and never sits up right, and makes me miss a simple black cotton bag.  But, in the end, it does its job by holding the item tokens; so it’s probably not that big of a deal.

This would make a great entry into the cooperative game genre, or if you are used to only roll and move games, this can definitely show you that there is more out there than that.  If you have the original, do you need this?  Well, honestly, if you still have the original, I’m guessing you liked it – and this is a lot of the same.  However, the Chthulu monster is a bit more challenging (as it is a two-step puzzle) and that definitely brings something new to the table for Horrified fans.  As with all the Horrified versions – the monsters are different, and that is probably enough reason to get this as you’ll have new bad guys to defeat.  

You only get four new monsters in this box, but the game is compatible with the monsters from Horrified: Greek Monsters (affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3YnA85T) and you can mix and match those enemies for more interesting and varied setups. [I do not have that version so I cannot report on how they work together…]

Until your next appointment

The Gaming Doctor