Post originally by Old_Scratch at 2004-10-29 16:31:19
Converted from Phorums BB System

> The first problem doesn't seem too bad - surely there is fun in the exploration?<

Well, its pretty prolonged. You basically put a tile down, move in, and read the bad flavor text on a card. The flavor text is exceedingly bad. Then what happens is that your character gets screwed or something good happens to him or her. Its a real lottery in many respects, and after a few games, the exploration becomes a bit of a bore, in my experience. The first game though, it was fun.

> The second problem - do the FAQs and errata fix these?<

Yes, the FAQs and errata have improved the game somewhat, or so it would seem. We haven't played with the rules updates yet, but they address many of the issues I had - such as waiting around and buffing up stats.

> The third problem is the most worrying. Anti-climaxes suck. Can anyone else weigh in on this? My gaming dollar is hovering in the balance.<

I've played this game half a dozen times or so. One session with a Banshee was exceedingly lame. The banshee wandered about on the upstairs while the rest of us were in the basement. It pretty much meandered about aimlessly. The heroes won easily. The Traitor never had a chance and the monster never came into play.

A bug scenario happened where the Traitor was killed off almost instantly. His bugs were easily evaded and there was no chance for the Traitor to destroy the ingredients for the bug spray since none of those locations were in play and the Traitor was killed anyways.

There was a Zombie scenario played a couple of times where the Zombie Master ran amok and killed everyone one by one IIRC.

The worst was the Dragon scenario where the front door busts in and a dragon rampages through the house, utterly devouring all of our characters or setting them on fire. It was very ugly.

In truth, the game flows like this:

Place Tiles. Pull a random card. Proceed clockwise until someone finally draws the correct Omen card.

Game comes to a grinding halt. Traitor leaves room. People read their articles (killing the momentum)

People return. One sides loses very quickly. Often because an object or tile hasn't been revealed.

In truth, the game is not very balanced, a lot depends on luck.

That said, despite the fact that this game doesn't flow well and it has fits and starts, I can't help but point out that the game does have some potential - over fifty scenarios and some randomness to it. The game is very chaotic and unbalanced, and if you can cope with that, then this could very well be a winner for you. Loads of great components (and its the first time I'll complain about too many tokens!!!). If you're not into that sort of chaotic and unbalanced game, then time spent playing Buffy, Angel, Chill, or some other horror game might be more conducive.

We'll play it again I imagine. Despite its problems, it can still be fun.