There are plenty of horror board games you could be playing this Halloween, but precious few are actually frightening. Setting a tabletop game in a haunted house or the world of H.P. Lovecraft does not guarantee an atmosphere of scares. Many have written off the medium entirely, declaring that board games are definitively not scary. I’m here to tell you that’s not true – but you need to make a serious amount of effort if you want to spook out your friends.
Like scary movies, horror board games need to use some key psychological and physiological tricks to create a creepy atmosphere. To show you what I mean, here are some examples of the best board games and tabletop RPGs in the horror genre – and how I use them to instill dread.
Blood on the Clocktower
Last year, I called Blood on the Clocktower the perfect Halloween board game, and I stand by this. It’s an excellent social deduction game for large groups with several hours to spare (say, at a Halloween party).
Blood on the Clocktower can be a silly kind of spooky, where the nightly murders taking place feel more like corny ‘80s slashers than brutal modern movies. However, with a few additions, this is a game with real potential to freak people out.
The night phase of this game is your main opportunity to up the atmosphere. Everyone except the Storyteller who facilitates the game must close their eyes, and the Storyteller silently creeps around the room, waking players up one by one to perform the unique ability granted by their secret role.
With no visual stimuli to focus on, players are at risk of facing one of our species’ deepest, oldest fears – the unknown. They no longer have complete information, and anything could be happening beyond the darkness of their eyelids. Realistically, they know no harm will come to them, but a mind with nothing else to focus on will quickly drift to thinking ‘what if, what if?’.
Keep player chat to a minimum during the night phase if you want to maintain this level of tension. Better yet, play an unsettling horror movie soundtrack as you do your Storytelling rounds. The players will be straining their ears, trying to gather information without the aid of their eyes. An atmospheric bit of music will keep them on the edge of their seats.
Make sure to keep your steps irregular while traversing the room. Hovering beside a player for a little too long doesn’t just prevent metagaming – it’s a certified spine tingler.
For maximum confusion, try wearing a mask and cloak while storytelling. The Storyteller communicates with hand gestures during the night phase, so you won’t be at a disadvantage. Plus, your mask will tap into a psychological phenomenon known as the Uncanny, which is a guaranteed way to disturb and unsettle.
With tactics like these, players will be breathing a sigh of relief when they finally get to open their eyes. And, if they’re anything like the group I ran a game for recently, they’ll be begging you to change the music – it’s just too intense.
Hako Onna
Perhaps you consider it cheating to play spooky music during your board game session. If you want a board game that can inspire terror without outside help from the senses, then Hako Onna is exactly what you’re after.
The art does a lot of the heavy lifting here. Hako Onna can be seen on the box, and she has that J-horror vibe that immediately gets me squirming in my seat. The concept of Hako Onna is pretty gnarly, too – a girl who died stuffed into a tiny box and is now hunting any hapless humans that get trapped in her home.
One person plays as the vengeful ghost, while everyone else plays as her potential victims. The survivors must carefully explore the house, opening boxes to search for means of escape – or of defeating the ghost once and for all. Every choice you make comes at a risk, as if you open a box that Hako Onna is hiding inside, you die instantly and join her reverie of malignant spirits.
A chip-stacking mechanic (or random cards, if you prefer something less brutal) helps create tension on the human turns – if the tower topples or you pull the wrong card, Hako Onna awakes. Human players must close their eyes during her turns, which taps into the fear of the unknown that we already discussed. Every mechanic is designed to maximize dread and uncertainty.
It’s a game with a lot of random elements, so it’s not the most balanced tabletop experience. However, Hako Onna oozes theme. Every card or tile you flip is nerve-wracking, as you never know when the ghost is about to pounce. It’s not the best board game ever made, but it’s perhaps the only one that manages to be scary in its own right.
Ten Candles
Tabletop RPGs like Ten Candles have a much easier job of being spooky. Their mechanics rely on player imagination, which is where the most horrible things of all live. Seeing a monster is never as scary as imagining what you might see, and Ten Candles leans on this concept hard.
The game is played almost entirely in darkness, with ten real candles as your only source of light. Players take on the role of survivors in an apocalypse where all light has gone out – and hungry, unknowable monstrosities wait to grab you in the shadows.
Every time a player fails a skill check, a candle goes out. When only one candle is lit, you collaboratively narrate your last stand, because nobody gets to survive a game of Ten Candles.
This game combines every tip and trick for creating horror into a neat three-hour package. The fear of the unknown haunts your physical, darkened space as well as the story you’re telling. Tension is upped by the ticking clock of the real candles, which can just as easily go out by themselves as they can on a failed roll.
It also creates a space for your imagination to run wild. When a roll is failed, the ‘scene’ changes, and players and GM alike get a chance to add new truths to the world. This means the game can cater to the specific worst fears of its players. The process is also done via ritualistic chanting, which adds heaps to the atmosphere.
For more last-minute Halloween plans, here are the best horror wargames and horror RPGs to check out. Or, for something you can play year-round, here are the best board games for couples.
Source: Wargamer
