And now pretend that source of evil is one of you.
Betrayal at House on the Hill is a game of exploration, puzzle-solving, and ultimately, cooperation and betrayal. Players select characters, wander through the huge house, find relics and opponents, and fight minor villains until one of them falls sway to the darkness of the house. From that point on, the players break into two teams - one character attempts to bring about the doom of his fellows, and the rest simply try to survive.
The Game
The most basic aspect of Betrayal at House on the Hill is the exploration of the house. Players proceed through a three-story house, placing small room tiles every time they enter a new room. Rooms may contain special rules or the opportunity to draw cards - the chapel might improve a character's sanity, while ruined attic rooms might send a character to the basement with a painful wound.
Players can move according to their speed rating - a fast character may be able to cover six or more rooms in one turn, while a slow one will be limited to two or three. Whenever a character enters an unexplored room, he places a random room tile. If the tile requires the character to draw a card, he or she must stop moving.
The cards that a player could draw come in three flavors - omens, events, and items. The category of card drawn is dictated by the room. Event cards are not generally beneficial - zombie hands grab at ankles, grave dust fills lungs, and mad gardeners swing wildly with blood-crusted shovels. Items, on the other hand, are almost all useful - guns and crucifixes are great to have when you are facing the undead.
Omens deserve a little more discussion. These are the cards that drive the adventure and dictate the nature of the calamity that befalls the characters. The cards themselves are usually helpful, and could be anything from clairvoyant skulls to canine companions. However, each time an omen is drawn, the player must make a haunt roll. A successful haunt roll (or failed roll, depending on how you look at it) starts the haunt. One player turns on his friends, and the hunt begins in earnest.
No two adventures need be the same. Betrayal at House on the Hill comes with two adventure books - the Traitor's Tome for the bad guy, and the Secrets of Survival for everyone else. Once a haunt roll begins the haunt, a table at the beginning of each book tells everyone which haunt begins and which player becomes the traitor. The traitor takes his book, turns to the designated haunt, and leaves the room to read up on his diabolical plot. The survivors turn to the same haunt in their own book, which contains information they need to survive.
The haunts can be widely varied, from mummies stalking young girls to mad bombers. The traitor will not assume the roll of monsters - the game includes markers for werewolves, vampires and other monsters. He may, however, become the mad bomber, the invisible murderer, or some other form of traitor and do his best to destroy the players or otherwise achieve his end goal. The two game books describe winning conditions, and provide for a wide range of possible games.
One element of the game that should be discussed is combat. Each character is depicted on a pentagonal card, with an attribute on each of four sides and a range of scores. The attributes are Might, Speed, Sanity and Knowledge, and are different for each character. For instance, the muscle-bound oaf has high starting Might, while the priest has exceptional Sanity. The professor is unusually knowledgeable, and the plucky little girl is relatively fast.
Small plastic clips slide onto the character cards. These clips begin the game pointed at the character's starting attribute scores, but can climb or descend as the game progresses. For instance, finding the toy monkey can increase attributes (it fights at your side), while a vanishing ghost may reduce your sanity.
Combat occurs frequently. When physical combat begins, each contestant rolls a number of dice equal to his Might score. The piles of dice are compared, and the loser must reduce his Might and/or Speed score by the difference in the two rolls. Since the dice are number from zero to two, high rolls are unlikely, but players can still get easily killed if they allow themselves to be embroiled in too many fights - especially with supernatural killers. Sometimes, combat can also be mental, involving Knowledge and Sanity instead of physical attributes. When any attribute is reduced to zero, the character dies.
The game ends when one side completes its victory requirements. These can vary, and do not always end in death for either side. For instance, one adventure ends in favor of the traitor if he can arrange for the girl (a character introduced on an omen card) to marry the mummy. All the characters who are not the traitor win if they can defeat the traitor, often by killing him, though this is not always enough.
The Contents
There is a lot in this box. Betrayal at House on the Hill contains, on top of the rules and the two game books, enough room tiles to make a mansion with almost fifty rooms. The six painted figures add considerable tactile immersion. There are six double-sided character cards, making for a dozen different characters (though only six can be present at a time). There are 80 playing cards, plus almost 300 tokens to represent dropped items, monsters, and other sundry things. The box also includes eight special dice numbered from zero to three.
The room cards are the real stars of the game. They are well illustrated and decidedly creepy, and help the desperate mood of the game. Rooms such as empty hallways are rare, with most rooms having some special effect. The art is very nice, and lots of fun to see, even if it is a little heavy on the horror.
The miniatures are cool, though you will most likely not be able to use them outside the game. A professor/priest, an athletic fellow, and a little boy make up the male figures, while an athletic woman, an older lady, and a young girl are the female figures. While these are cool, I would have really loved to see some of the monsters as plastic figures. The monsters have round tokens, but I would have been delighted to see little plastic mummies and werewolves.
The preponderance of cardboard tokens must be punched out. This took me a long time, and made me wonder if I had to do them all before I played. The answer is that you do not - just punch out the ones you need when you come to them, and save some trouble. Besides, if they are all scattered around the bottom of the box, it might take a while to find what you need.
The two game books are nicely done. They are printed in two colors, but these two colors are more than enough, since they could have simply done them in black. They carry through with the mood of the game by using stains, rips, and tape to make them both look slightly desperate.
Observations
The best thing about Betrayal at House on the Hill is how fun it is to play. Exploring at the beginning is exciting, and then when the bottom drops out, the game takes on an air of desperation. The traitor does everything he can to ruin everyone's day, and the rest of the players try to live through the madness. In the end, nobody is angry at losing, because Betrayal at House on the Hill is almost more of a role-playing game than a board game. Make no mistake - there are winners and losers, but the cooperative aspect of the game, coupled with the double-blind victory conditions, helps everyone to have lots of fun even as they compete madly to survive.
My only complaint with Betrayal at House on the Hill is a considerable one. The designers tried far too hard to make the game spooky. In all honesty, a few slightly disturbing passages are not going to frighten anyone older than grade school, no matter how many bloodstains litter the hardwood floors. A player's imagination must be involved a lot more than this to scare most adults.
This game would have been immensely better if it were campy rather than serious. A fear level somewhere between Scooby-Doo and Army of Darkness would have been awesome. The actual game did not need to change at all - the same haunts could have been used, but the tone could have been altered. If the art were a little more campy and a little less distressing, the game would be thoroughly accessible for younger kids, and an absolute hoot for the grown-ups.
Melodramatic darkness aside, the mechanics and playing pieces of Betrayal at House on the Hill make for an exciting, attractive, and fun experience. The game can be played inside an hour and is suitable for any players who are about junior-high or older (up to grandparents). It is a great party game, because the simple rules need only be fully understood by one person, with the rest more or less following along.
Summary
Betrayal at House on the Hill is an original and fun game that can be enjoyed by a wide audience. Combining exploration, puzzle-solving and a little strategy makes for an engaging game with tons of reasons to come back. Unfortunately, the heavy-handed dark mood detracts from the experience rather than helping, and would have been nearly perfect if it had been a little more light-hearted.
Style: 5 - A downright pretty game. Gorgeous tiles and cool miniatures. As attractive as games normally get.
Substance: 4 - This is a great game, but the designers really missed the mark with the artificial fear factor. More Goosebumps and less Stephen King would have made this a perfect game.
