The Betrayal on Haunted Hill Board Game Review by Game Board Geek
Locked in an sometime abandoned house with your friends with no option but to movement forward and explore to try and find an escape. Are you friends your enemies? Can yous trust them? What was that sound? Is that a ghost? Can you navigate this business firm of horrors without going insane?
Welcome to Betrayal at House on the Colina, a semi cooperative game released by Avalon Hill Games that touches on every horror movie trope y'all could think of and boasts a crazy amount of replay value.
In this article I am going to exist reviewing Betrayal at Business firm on the Hill and how it stacks upwards today. I will as well be touching on some of the expansions and also the legacy version of the game.
But for those of you in a rush lets become direct to the point!
Expose at House on the Hill Board Game Review
Betrayal at House on the Colina is a game that casts players every bit a group of explorers that are drawn to an old abandoned house. Little do they know that once they enter, the door will lock behind them, forcing them to explore the house to detect a way out.
To add together to the suspense, the house is haunted and non anybody in your grouping of friends can exist trusted.
Players demand to explore the house past placing modular game tiles downwards equally they motility into different rooms, trying to observe items and avoid monsters and other creepy things until an event called 'the haunt' – during the haunt, one player volition betray all other players and one of l different horror scenarios will take identify.
Betrayal at House on the Colina is an amazing board game that is a perfect mixture of cooperation, horror and betrayal that volition satisfy your horror crawling – and is ingeniously made and so that you tin can replay the game multiple times and have a different story every time.
With the utilise of the modular game board, fifty haunt scenarios and dissimilar character choices, Betrayal at House on the Hill is definitely a must have board game on my list.
What's Inside the Box?
The box for Expose is a standard size box – which is great for being able to detect room on the shelf / drawer – wherever you shop your board games.
But don't let that fool you – Avalon has managed to fit a ton of pieces within:
- Rulebook – duh!
- 2 haunted books – these have all 50 scenarios for both the survivors and the betrayer (more than on these later).
- 44 modular room tiles.
- 1 Archway hall tile.
- 1 One thousand Staircase tile.
- 1 Foyer tile.
- half-dozen pre-painted explorer figures.
- 6 two-sided character cards.
- 30 plastic clips.
- 8 die.
- i Plow / Damage Tracker.
- 80 Cards fabricated upwards of Events, Items, Omens and more; and
- 149 Tokens.
Gameplay
The game starts with players each selecting a character that they will play as for the balance of the game. Each character has slightly different stats which may let them to do things like move farther (explore more rooms per turn) or ward off insanity a bit better than other players.
The players all enter an erstwhile (totally haunted) mansion through the front door which leads to the archway hall.
The game is played in two phases that are played completely dissimilar to one another.
Stage ane - Exploration
The showtime phase is the cooperative exploration stage where each player volition take turns moving into unlike rooms of the house – mapping the layout of the mansion and its multitude of rooms as they move.
When a histrion moves into a room, they draw a tile from a pile that relates to that level of the house (basement, ground and first floor) and place it on the board.
In this style the players finer create the game board as they motility throughout the house.
The way this works with modular tiles is brilliant. Every time the game is played, the layout of the house volition be completely different. An awesome affect!
Each room could contain things like items, events or uncover omens of the players doom!
There is are also hidden traps and elevators which could force players to enter other levels of the house.
These are all determined by drawing a card from the related deck.
This phase of the game is finer a manner to set out the layout of the firm and for players to gather as many resource as possible to take into the next phase of the game.
When plenty omens have been found, something will happen that volition cause one explorer to beguile all the others, thus commencement Phase 2.
Phase 2 - The Haunt
As mentioned earlier, the game contains fifty unique story scenarios included in the two haunt books.
1 book is for the survivors and the other book is for the betrayer.
During the Haunt phase, the traitor takes the book related to the betrayal story and leaves the room. The survivors take the other book.
The books volition tell both sides, traitor and survivors, data about the scenario that is going to play out as well as the objectives and win weather for each side – and in that location actually is a story for every horror trope imaginable, from series killers to werewolves.
Near of these stories are brilliant and really ooze the theme they are going for each side has no idea what the other side is upwardly to or their particular objectives in the game. Each scenario includes special, story-specific rules that will dictate how players must work to run across the listed objectives.
In one case everyone has read their side of the scenario, the betrayer returns to the room and play continues.
At this point, the game becomes an intense battle between survivors and the betrayer who each fight to win the game.
The outset side to meet their win conditions equally outlined in the scenario wins!
Game Experience
Betrayal at Business firm on the Hill is a game that I was super excited about playing. At the fourth dimension of release, information technology had major hype due to its crawly horror theme, modular game lath, semi-cooperative gameplay and over 50 unlike horror scenarios players could play through in game.
I had heard and then many stories well-nigh it, I was agape that when I finally played the game that it would not live upward to my expectations.
Only information technology did….
Betrayal at House on the Colina is an awesome game. A lot of thought has gone into the scenarios and the overall theme of the game. It is by far one of the well-nigh deeply thematic games I take played (and if yous are a horror fan – yous will absolutely autumn in honey with this game).
Non only that… but information technology is 1 hell of a lot of fun to play. Which is weird… because the game does have a few pitfalls which in nearly other games would completely ruin information technology for me.
When looking at the games blueprint information technology's chaotic, random, in some cases – only plain unbalanced. This by and large comes down to the scenario that happens during the haunt – while most of these stories are really great, at that place are a few that are confusing or but evidently silly.
Some of the rules during the scenarios are likewise super vague, requiring a few google searches to see how other gamers interpreted them – actually ruining the immersion.
That being said – these are the exceptions to how the game would normally play.
The game can also be quite random – for instance if you are unlucky and describe too many omens before whatsoever items are gathered and the haunt begins, too bad… you're in for a tough time.
The overall component quality is a flake lacking too – Especially the painted miniatures which resemble colorful blobs every bit opposed to actual people, and also the track piece on the grapheme tracker is a fleck difficult to get on / motility (especially after multiple plays).
Pros:
- Features incredible traitor machinery.
- Great diverseness in rooms and "haunts".
- Engaging and fun story to follow along.
Cons:
- Too many rules for different "haunts" can be a bit confusing.
- Overall build of pieces seems low-quality.
- Some haunts are just lame / confusing.
Widows Walk (Expansion)
Widows Walk is an expansion to the base game of Betrayal released in 2016.
The expansion introduces 20 new room tiles too equally an entirely new floor that players can explore in the house – as well as thirty new cards and all-time of all AN ADDITIONAL l HAUNT SCENARIOS .
This expansion finer doubles the size of the original games and increases the corporeality of Haunt scenarios to 100. That is an absolutely insane amount of replay value.
I have the expansion and I'm not going to lie; I am no where near even coming close to playing all of the scenarios – notwithstanding, I have found the expansion scenarios are a bit more than polished than the originals and the rules are a lot clearer.
Betrayal Legacy
Betrayal Legacy turns the base game of Betrayal at House on the Hill into a 13-chapter campaign where players take on the office of families that are drawn to the house over 14 generations (1666 – 2004). Each generation continues from where the previous generation left off and uncovers more terrible truths of the house.
Like all legacy games – decisions players make in the game accept permanent and persistent changes that completely alter how the game is played moving forward. For instance – if your character dies in 1 of the chapters, y'all must play as ane of their descendants moving forward.
You lot can read a bit more about betrayal legacy here in our article well-nigh the best legacy games.
Final Thoughts
Betrayal at Firm on the Loma is one of the all-time horror themed board games you tin can buy. While it does take its flaws, the game is actually fun to play and the huge range of haunt stories means the game really never gets onetime.
The game is easy to prepare and learn and is great for beginner board game players and enthusiasts alike.
Due to its awesome theme, replay value and awesome traitor mechanic – I am a huge fan of Betrayal at House on the Hill and it is a game that sees a lot of tabular array time during my game nights.
I would love to hear what you guys think of the game below in the comments!
Source: https://geekgeargalore.com/boardgames/betrayal-at-house-on-the-hill-review/
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