Happy Spooky Season, Geekly Gang! Kyra Kyle here. We’re celebrating the season with our list of the top five horror-themed board games. There are way more horror-themed board games than you might think. Heck, there were way more horror-themed board games than I thought there were. I left a lot of great games and some former favorites off this list. So, you know we’ll have at least one honorable mention. Yay! Let’s see the game that just missed this list, before we get to the ones that made our Top 5 Horror-Themed Board Games List.
Honorable Mention: The Night Cage (2021)
The Night Cage just misses this list because I may not have played it enough. Plain and simple. I have yet to play enough of this title, and I’d love to see it hit the table more. The board doesn’t look like much (without the tiles it’s a simple grid), but pulling tiles from the candle-shaped draw pile is so thematic.
Building out The Night Cage’s labyrinth is a lot of fun, too. And it doesn’t hurt that Smirk and Dagger Games produced an accompanying soundtrack for The Night Cage. Talk about going above and beyond with creating a mood. The Night Cage leans heavily into atmosphere. Each game is a tense prison break. You’ll need to keep your wits to survive.
This list was super tough to make. There are a lot of games that could’ve claimed the sole honorable mention spot: Kingdom Death Monster, Abomination, and Dead of Winter are just a few. We could make another list of the Top 5 Cthulhu-themed games. There are so many great horror-themed board games.
5: Cthulhu: Death May Die (2019)
Yes. I’m a Rob Daviau and Eric M. Lang fan. And yes, several other games can scratch the same itch as Cthulhu: Death May Die. Kingdom Death Monster comes to mind; Kingdom Death Monster is another game one could consider an honorable mention for this list. But I prefer Cthulhu: Death May Die. It would be higher on this list if I had played more than a handful of times.
Unique player powers and an ever-changing narrative that seldom plays out the same way twice. Cthulhu: Death May Die adds a bombastic sense of humor to a sometimes overly serious intellectual property. I appreciate that, too. This game needs to hit my table more often. Maybe then it’ll climb the ranks on a list like this.
4: Betrayal at House on the Hill (2004)
I love Betrayal at House on the Hill. It’s one of the first horror-themed board games I ever picked up after returning to the board game hobby. Again, I had plenty of great horror-themed board games to choose from for this list. Betrayal at House on the Hill (Betrayal for short) plays out like the movie Cabin in the Woods. Players search the titular house, a mansion players build as they play the game. Whenever an Omen card is drawn, the player who drew the card makes a haunt roll. If the roll fails, the haunt begins. Typically, one player works on behalf of the house, and the rest fight against the traitor.
Word of caution: Betrayal can crumble under the weight of the haunt. Some haunts prove difficult to understand, and gamers can misplay numerous aspects of the haunt. I played one where I was the traitor, my former teammates attacked me, but my character wanted to perish. The other players played into my win condition. No two haunts are the same, so just because players understand one, it doesn’t mean they’ll comprehend the next one. And many of the haunts are unbalanced. Some favor the explorers, while others favor the traitor. Still, my family plays Betrayal at House on the Hill at least once every Spooky Season. If you want a story and exploration, it’s an excellent pick.
3: Final Girl (2021)
I knew Final Girl would make this list, but placing the game would be difficult. I went with the classic three-spot for a game that fits this bill. Whenever I craft one of these Top 5 lists and have one odd entry in the list, not knowing where to place the game (or insert element here), that’s the one I place at three. Final Girl may be the best solo-only board game on the market. It’s definitely the most famous solo-only board game out there. I’ve played it a few times, and I’m hooked.
I can hear some of you complain that Final Girl has a lot of game for a solo board game. Just look at the picture above. You’d think this game facilitated four or five players. Nope. It’s a solo board game. Yowza! That’s a lot of table space for a solo-gaming experience. I’m getting off-topic, but I’ll just say that massive solo games are good for the hobby. Not everyone has enough friends to play games, or they struggle to find times that work to play with their game group. Quick rant over. If you’re going to play a solo board game, you can’t go wrong with Final Girl. It captures its theme brilliantly. You are a final girl trying to survive until the end of a horror movie. Final Girl may look complicated, but the elements work so well together that you can’t help but pick up the rules quickly.
Plus, Final Girl is the only solo board game to make BoardGameGeek’s Top 100 Games. I know that BoardGameGeek has its flaws, but Top 100 for a solo board game is impressive.
2: Mansions of Madness: Second Edition (2016)
Mansions of Madness: Second Edition does a great job of incorporating an app with a board game. I know. I know. This is yet another controversial pick. Two in a row. Some board gamers are purists. They don’t want to own a game that has an app you’ll need to download to a smart device. But Mansions of Madness: Second Edition is so worth it. The game does accommodate solo play, but part of the joy is teaming up with players to solve various puzzles and unearthing what the followers of Cthulhu have planned.
The Mansions of Madness app will also change details for each scenario between different plays. I played the exact same scenario twice in a row, figured I knew who the cultists were, and attacked those characters, only to realize that the details had changed, and they pointed the finger at different characters. My bad. We lost that game miserably. But the fact this can happen validates Mansions of Madness: Second Edition’s app. I don’t always have the time to invest in a scenario of Mansions of Madness, but whenever I do, it never fails to add a touch of cinema.
1: Horrified (2019)
Horrified has dominated the horror-themed board game category ever since it released in 2019. I have all the variants of this game, and we play every Horrified variant each Spooky Season. Ironically, I’ve played the original Horrified the least. I’ve enjoyed every play of the original, but we prefer American Monsters, Greek Monsters, and the Dungeons & Dragons variants best. Speaking of the Dungeons & Dragons Horrified game, I’m writing this post early and before the next variant, Horrified: Ravenloft, another Horrified game set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, releases. I can’t wait to add the new one to our yearly rounds of plays.
Each Horrified monster behaves differently. Some will openly attack players. Others, like Big Foot, will actively avoid players. Heck, you’ll have to prove Big Foot even exists. The original Horrified has a good mix of various difficulty-setting monsters. American Monsters and Greek Monsters up the ante. World of Monsters gets a little too tough with some monsters. And the Dungeons & Dragons Horrified adds D&D elements. What’s not to love?
Ultimately, pick a genre of monster you would like to face and throw down with that version of Horrified. Prospero Hall does a great job of capturing the essence of most of these monsters. The fact that players take on two or more of these monsters at a time means that you’ll seldom get the same game twice.
By the time you’re reading this, I’ll probably have played all or most of the titles on this list. Like I said, there are so many fantastic horror-themed board games. What are some of yours? Let us know in the comments. Thank you for reading, and wherever you are, I hope you’re having a great day.
