Horrified: Universal Monsters

Got this as a birthday gift for 11 year old nephew. It was close to Halloween so the theme and timing were in sync. Played it with my brother and other nephew aged 6. My brother is pretty good at picking up game rules quickly so he helped teach us all how to play and we had fun! The game is complex but the rules were easy enough to grasp so the kids caught on quickly and even I did too. There are a lot of variables and you can pick different combinations of monsters as opponents. Each monster requires different methods and strategies to defeat them and you can raise difficulty by playing against more monsters as you get better at the game and seek more of a challenge. It was fun working together as a team and even though we started in the “easy” mode, it was not a slam dunk… it was definitely a challenge. Seemed to be a hit with my brother’s family and I think they will play it a lot.

I love Horrified and I’ve been playing it for awhile trying different monsters and heroes. At the moment I have only played alone so I haven’t had a chance to play with friends. Still it is fun and challenging game that I highly recommend.First I must say that Horrified is, in many respects, very similar to another popular co-op game Pandemic. In Pandemic you try to cure diseases whereas in Horrified you are trying to defeat the classic Universal Studios Monsters. What makes it different from Pandemic is that each monster must be defeated in a different way, but all of them requires turning in color items. For example to defeat Dracula you need to destroy 4 coffins (each 1 at a different location) with red items and then use yellow items to defeat Dracula. The game also introduces villagers that you must protect or ,if killed by a monster, the village Terror track rises bringing you closer to losing the game. In my personal opinion, I do like Horrified a little bit more than Pandemic for a couple reasons:1. Each monsters unique way of defeating them2. The theme itself.3. It offers solo play. I don’t have many friends to play with and I have trouble getting friends to play this game, so I’m happy the game offers a solo mode with few changes that doesn’t severely hurt gameplay experience. Plus it feels awesome to defeat the monsters and save villagers on your own.There aren’t any problems I can think of with the game except maybe the villagers. I really like the villagers in the game, but the issue can be that when they are played they always spawned at the same location. Often locations fit from which they spawn, but the more you play the more you remember the locations they spawn in. Thus you can prepare when they are played. Great for players but doesn’t offer much variety. Only suggestion I can think of to remedy this is dice (any kind) that equals the number of locations on the board each being assigned a number. That way the villagers can spawn in different locations.While playing the game, I have thought of another difficulty setting you can play which I call “Van Helsing.” The maximum difficulty is 4 monsters but instead add a 5th, 6th, or all 7 of the monsters. Game plays normally with these differences:1.Do 2 rounds with the monster deck2. If any villagers die in the 1st round and are drawn again in the 2nd round, do not play them on the board. Instead place 2 items instead of the normal 3 from villager events.3. For 2-5 players: start with 4 (maybe 5) items in your inventory so players don’t get killed easily by one or more monsters at the start of the game. Solo: start with no items.I did actually do this solo with all monsters and manage to win. Not sure how great this would be for 2-5 players but it might work. Give this a try if you like. Otherwise, Horrified is great to have if you like co-op, Pandemic, and horror like games and would be great to play during the Halloween season.

Super enjoyable, and the components are so nice looking (minus the monster figures which could be a lot better quality). Wish the component organizer was better, but I solved that myself. This game is easy to learn and to teach, and because there are different monsters, different characters, and you can use different numbers of monsters, there is really high replayability. As a cooperative game, there’s a lot of communication with everyone else and it still feels competitive because you’re trying to beat the monsters in time. I had expected the game to be dark because of the title and theme, but it really isn’t. The first time I played it with a friend, she immediately went home and bought it herself. Most people will play two games straight of this when they first learn, that’s how much people love this game.

I’m new to the board gaming hobby so I picked this based on the fact that I really like universal monsters and this is easily my favorite game. I love that I can play by myself and that I can switch around monsters to make it easier or more difficult and it’s really fun with a group as well! My husband liked it so much he went out and bought another version the same weekend we played this!