Betrayal at House on the Hill Board Game Review
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Betrayal at House on the Hill is a semi-cooperative tile-based adventure horror game. The action takes place in a creepy estate full of ghosts and all kinds of horror clichés.
In the first act of the game, 3-6 explorers discover new rooms, find items and experience spooky events. Then, at a certain unexpected moment, the main part of the game begins - Hunting. At the beginning of the Hunt, one of the explorers turns out to be a traitor, and the rest of the explorers (now heroes) must work together to defeat the traitor.
In the first stage of the game, you simply "build" a house by exploring room tiles. Each character has his own card with four parameters: speed, strength, intelligence and knowledge. The first two parameters are physical, and the last two are mental. Each character has a starting value of the parameter, as well as the maximum and minimum possible; they will rise and fall as the game progresses.
Many rooms have icons that dictate drawing a card from the appropriate deck: events, items, or traits. The event cards have an artistic description and some effect - depending on the result of the dice roll, as a rule. Items are useful items or weapons; especially useful during hunting. Omens are items or companions that can also come in handy at some point, but they also play a more important role: every time you find an omen, you make a check to see if the Hunt has started. On 6 dice, you need to discard a value greater than the total number of trait cards already drawn from the deck. By the way, there are only numbers 0-2 on the faces of the dice, so after finding a few signs it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid the start of the Hunt. If this check fails, the script starts.
There are 2 books in the game: Secrets of Survival for Heroes and Traitor's Book for Traitor. There are 50 scenarios in these books. The choice of scenario depends on which trait card was drawn last and in which room it was found. Afterwards, the traitor goes to another room (literally leaves) to review his victory condition while the heroes read their script and discuss strategy. I will not be a spoiler; all I'll say is that you never know what you're going to run into. The scripts have almost all the classic horror stories plus a few completely original stories. The winner is the one who fulfills his winning condition.
Betrayal at House on the Hill literally exudes an eerie atmosphere; It is only necessary to plunge into the plot. I may be biased, since Betrayal is where my fascination with advanced tabletops began ("so what, board games are a hobby?"), but many of my most enjoyable tabletop experiences have been with this game. There are crazy plots, some funny gameplay and a horror atmosphere. Sometimes the Hunt ends in general disappointment; the balance depends on the layout of the house tiles, cash items and the location of the explorers and the traitor. But when everything goes right, Betrayal leaves an unforgettable impression.
I won't lie, the game is far from perfect; For example, the wording of some scenarios raises questions, and sometimes you have to flexibly interpret the rules in certain situations, but usually the game remains a fan game. That's what Betrayal at House on the Hill is all about: pure fandom. Sometimes I'm not in the mood to play a serious thoughtful abstract, a casual card game, words, or heavy euro. Betrayal is an ideal choice in such situations when you want something simple, atmospheric and fun. I am very pleased with the variety of rooms and the different layout of the house from batch to batch. And if you add a bunch of scenarios (with the addition, their number reaches 100!), then the regrabability goes off the scale. As far as mechanics go, all the available actions are simple, and often you just walk around, read the cards and act according to the instructions on them.
Betrayal's cooperativeness is a big plus for the game, because it makes it easy for beginners to learn how to play; everyone can discuss actions together and collaborate. In addition, the entire first act you are occupied only with building a house from tiles and exploring it. We even introduced a home rule that a traitor cannot become a person who sat down for the first time for the game. This eases the threshold of entry, as newcomers won't have to navigate the Traitor's Book on their own.
In 2016, the Widow's Walk app was released for the game. If you liked the base, I highly recommend it; there are tons of new scenarios, cards and rooms.
Although there are many decks that leave a more stable and pleasant impression, the circumstances of my introduction to the game and the unpredictable fan that it delivers make it my most favorite pleasure.