mansions of madness

Top 5 Horror-Themed Board Games

Published on October 17, 2026April 30, 2026 by KyraLeave a comment

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.

3 Lists of 3 Halloween Tabletop Games

Published on October 29, 2018October 30, 2018 by KyraLeave a comment

It’s that time of year where gamers want to be spooked or maybe fight back against the things that go bump in the night. Happy Halloween, folks. Your uncle Geekly gets a little ahead of himself sometimes, but Halloween must be around the corner.

Since it’s the time for ghosts and goblins, let’s do a three lists of three for board games that use a horror, ghost, or spooky theme. Don’t worry. Uncle Geekly ain’t afraid of no ghosts.

Exploration and Investigation Games

Mansions of Madness 2^nd Edition

Of the three games in this list, no one game combines exploration and investigation as well as Mansions of Madness 2^nd Edition. This app-assisted Cthulhu game (you’ll see a lot more of Cthulhu on this list) can set the right mood for Halloween, but beware that Mansions takes a long time to play. Even short scenarios can take hours. Any time spent with Mansions of Madness is time well spent.

There are plenty of other, shorter games on this list. Mansions of Madness is the main course.

Betrayal at House on the Hill

My family and I play Betrayal at House on the Hill at least once every Halloween. It has a nice blend of horror and suspense genres in its various scenarios. The game can get unbalanced at times, but exploring the house is a lot of fun and perfect for a little spook time.

The Widow’s Walk expansion isn’t necessary, but some famous game designers like Christopher Badell (Sentinels of the Multiverse), Rob Daviau (grand master of all Legacy games), and Jonathan Gilmour (Dead of Winter) chip in with some new haunts. Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate is a standalone Dungeon and Dragons variant to the classic Betrayal, so if D&D is more your thing, it does a great job of combining the two genres.

T.I.M.E. Stories

This one’s a little of a cheat. T.I.M.E. Stories isn’t necessarily a horror game, but it does exploration and investigation better than most games on this list, and the first scenario occurs in an asylum, so that gets a little spooky.

If you’re not familiar with T.I.M.E. Stories, think of it as a mash up of Assassin’s Creed and Quantum Leap. Players get sent a specific time/space by a secret organization and they have finite time to fix something or right a wrong. This setup allows for a lot of various themes and that makes T.I.M.E. Stories more diverse than many other games on this list.

Bust Some Ghosts or Goblins or Zombies Games

Dead of Winter

The goal of a most Dead of Winter scenarios may not revolve around busting zombies, but zombies will be busted along the way. To be fair, the zombies have an easy time overrunning the players, so players don’t usually feel that empowered, but when they do, it’s a great feeling.

Characterization and a good story—thanks to the Crossroads game system—do a lot to separate Dead of Winter from a lot of other horror or spooky games. It’s worth the play, especially if it’s cold outside.

Ghost Stories

Plenty of gamers get frustrated with Ghost Stories. It’s easily the most difficult game on any of these lists—in terms of how brutal it is to the players—and what’s worse is that players are typically lulled into a false sense of security. But Ghost Stories is one of the best ghost themed games on the market.

It almost works like a tower defense game with nightmare fuel bombarding the players each turn. The players assume the roles of Kung-Fu masters. It’s the power these masters possess that gives players that false sense of security I mentioned earlier, but the variable powers work well in this title. I’m glad Ghost Stories is back in print. Just in time for Halloween.

Elder Sign

Sometimes you just want to chuck some dice. There will be other dice games in the third list, but those dice games are quick and don’t offer much in the way of brain burning. Elder Sign combines dice rolling with high strategy.

As the name implies, Elder Sign is another Cthulhu title—I may have to come up with a third one of these for the last list, so I’ll have one Cthulhu game in each list—but Elder Sign feels like the players are going head-to-head against an elder god more than most other games of its type. That’s why it’s on our “Bust some ghosts or goblins or zombies” list. I like to kick Cthulhu’s butt, but to be fair, he usually kicks mine.

Quick, Fun, and Light Games

Zombie Dice

I’ve talked about Zombie Dice before, but it’s a great, quick game where players push their luck as zombies trying to eat brains. Mmm…brains.

Zombie Dice also has a small footprint—it doesn’t take up much space on the table—so you could play it while going Trick or Treating. But not in the street. Never play dice games in the middle of the street.

Don’t Mess with Cthulhu

Yes! I completed the Cthulhu trio. Don’t Mess with Cthulhu is a quick, social deduction game where some players are trying to figure out who’s summoning Cthulhu and other players are trying to summon the elder god.

Luck plays a huge factor in this game, but it’s so silly and fast that you won’t mind. When Don’t Mess with Cthulhu hits the table, my family rarely plays just one game.

King of Tokyo

I had to go a little off-topic again with King of Tokyo. Players control large monsters or kaiju. The gameplay resembles Yahtzee if Yahtzee had a King of the Hill aspect added to it—hence the title King of Tokyo. Sure, the game includes player elimination, but at fifteen to twenty minutes a game, one doesn’t have to wait long before exacting their revenge.

King of Tokyo is another fun party game that’s hard to play just one game of.

There are so many Halloween ready tabletop games I could’ve included. What are some of yours? Are there any categories your uncle Geekly left out of these three lists of three? I won’t answer the loud knock on my door, but you could let me know in comments.

My Favorite Game Mechanic: Mansions of Madness

Published on October 25, 2018October 20, 2018 by Kyra1 Comment

Have I mentioned that the Geekly household likes cooperative games? I have? We’re a family of sore losers and think the other people at the table are cheating. I mentioned that too? Well, we’re also fans of puzzles and like the occasional Lovecraftian horror game. Ha! That’s new.

When I think of those criteria, I think of Mansions of Madness 2^nd Edition, but there’s a specific mechanism that brings out the best in that game: integrating an app.

You know what they say about not being able to beat them. Many games use apps as game night assistants, but Mansions of Madness 2^nd Edition uses the medium to create ambiance with mood-setting background music. It adds character to the game. Not just with the music, but with the variety in each area’s setup and whatever algorithm that tells the app that the players of this game have done specific puzzles in the past, it’s time to mix it up. It even randomizes the solution of each scenario, so someone can play the game more than once and get a different outcome.

Okay. Some of these features aren’t executed as well as they could be, but Mansions of Madness 2^nd Edition harkens a new age in tabletop games. I don’t think we’ll get too many of these type games at once, but there’s enough in Mansions of Madness to make someone excited for a third edition or how other games will incorporate apps in the future.

There’s plenty more to like of Mansions of Madness besides its app integration. The exploration, discovery, and puzzle-solving are well done. The Geekly household likes to rotate who takes the role of narrator each turn so that everyone gets a turn. If there’s another gripe I’d have with Mansions of Madness’s app it’d be that they could’ve included more voice acting (as in various actors or more of it so that a player at the table wouldn’t have to roleplay)—but more roleplaying isn’t a bad thing. Ham on, Hammy.

The Mansions of Madness’s app works well overall. I’m encouraged by what I’ve seen in this game and other games like Beasts of Balance, the One Night Ultimate series, Alchemists, and World of Yo-Ho. This is a trend I don’t see going away soon and if Mansions of Madness is the start of a new wave of games, I’m okay with that as a change-up, but I still like my classic analog games.

That’s what I have as my favorite game mechanism for Mansions of Madness 2^nd Edition. There are plenty more that I could include. What are some of yours? Maybe there’s another tabletop game that uses a companion app better. You can challenge me to a leg wrestle or tell me about it in comments.