13 Great Halloween Board Games
Halloween is a great time of year for finding themed and suspenseful board games to fill your weekend. Depending on your audience you want to play something entry level, kid friendly, or perhaps, brain eating. If you are looking to add to your spooky fun this weekend with a few board games, here is list of 13 that will make this weekend a memory to cherish.
Zombie Dice
In Zombie Dice, you are a zombie. You want braaains – more brains than any of your zombie buddies. The 13 custom dice are your victims. Push your luck to eat their brains, but stop rolling before the shotgun blasts end your turn! Whoever collects 13 brains first wins. Each game takes 10 to 20 minutes and can be taught in a single round.
Each turn, you take three dice from the box and roll them. A brain symbol is worth one point at the end of the round, while footsteps allow you to reroll this particular dice. Shotgun blasts on the other hand are rather bad, cause if you collect three shotgun blasts during your turn, it is over for you and you get no points. After rolling three dice, you may decide if you want to score your current brain collection or if you want to push your luck by grabbing new dice so you have three again and roll once more.
Cthulhu Dice
Similar in ease and concept is Cthulhu dice. Here you are a worshiper of Cthulhu. You and your friends try to drive each other mad so you can be the last and best worshiper standing!
King of Tokyo: Halloween
In King of Tokyo, you play mutant monsters, gigantic robots, and strange aliens—all of whom are destroying Tokyo and whacking each other in order to become the one and only King of Tokyo.
King of Tokyo: Halloween includes two new monsters for use with the King of Tokyo base game: Pumpkin Jack and Boogey Woogey. What’s more, each monster comes with its own set of eight Evolution cards – first introduced in King of Tokyo: Power Up! – so that each monster can mutate into an even more nightmarish version of itself!
King of Tokyo: Halloween also includes six orange-and-black engraved dice (to fit the Halloween theme, of course) and twelve new Power cards to be shuffled into the deck. These cards are all Costumes, a new type of card that provides a powerful effect, but which can be stolen by any monster that rolls three claws and rips the costume off of you.
Arkham Horror
In Arkham Horror a terrible creature from beyond time and space—an Ancient One—is awakening, roused by dimensional gates that open across the city. Players take on the role of investigators, each with a unique backstory, abilities, and equipment. Joining forces, the investigators must secure the city, encountering its haunted and mysterious locations before the Ancient One awakens. If the Ancient One awakens and defeats the players in the final battle, all of Arkham is doomed.
Betrayal at House on the Hill
Take a deep breath before you enter. It might be your last. In Betrayal at House on the Hill your fear will grow with each tile you place as you investigate a house filled with dreadful monsters and deadly secrets. With 50 fiendish scenarios (including seven new haunts) and dozens of danger-filled rooms, you’ll return to the house again and again – as often as you dare – and never face the same game twice.
Elder Sign
Elder Sign lets players control investigators who must successfully endure adventures within the museum in order to gather clues, items, and the eldritch knowledge they need to seal the rifts between dimensions and prevent the Ancient One’s arrival. A clever and thematic dice mechanic pits their exploration against monsters and the sheer difficulty of staying sane and healthy while investigating the most dangerous exhibits and most terrifying instances of insanity. Elder Sign recreates the Lovecraftian thrills of eerie suspense and mind-numbing horrors in a cooperative game players can finish in one to two hours.
Letters From Whitechapel
Get ready to enter the poor and dreary Whitechapel district in London 1888 the scene of the mysterious Jack the Ripper murders with its crowded and smelly alleys, hawkers, shouting merchants, dirty children covered in rags who run through the crowd and beg for money, and prostitutes called “the wretched” on every street corner.The board game Letters from Whitechapel, which plays in 90-150 minutes, takes the players right there. One player plays Jack the Ripper, and his goal is to take five victims before being caught. The other players are police detectives who must cooperate to catch Jack the Ripper before the end of the game.
Building An Elder God
In Building An Elder God you and your cultist friends have researched the hidden secrets of the universe and dark mysteries of the Great Old Ones to grow a tentacled horror from beyond the evils of space and time. Problem is, some of your research buddies are now growing their own monstrosities. No way do they get to steal your glory. You must ensure your beast is complete first which is why you brought your trusty shotgun. And if your precious, slimy baby is injured you brought your travel copy of the Necronomicon as a little healing insurance. Do whatever it takes for whoever has the first complete beast wins everything. Build a Cthulhu-esque tentacled monstrosity to completion before the other players, using damage cards to blast your opponents’ creatures to slow down their progress so that you can win. Assuming no aversion to a little (goofy) implied violence and the sight of ichor, this is appropriate for friends and families.
Vampires of the Night
Mentioned on GeekDad, Vampires of the Night is a board game for your children. For extra spookiness it can be played in the dark because the pieces glow. In Vampires of the Night you help vampires against the wicked vampire hunter, who has managed to empty an entire sack of garlic throughout the old, abandoned castle. With the help of the little bat, you can magically move the vampires and get rid of the smelly garlic. But, be careful – if the garlic falls into the dungeon, it will spread its nasty smell to the rest of the vampires. With glow-in-the-dark pieces this exciting game can be played all day or from dusk until dawn.
Ghost Blitz
In Ghost Blitz, five wooden items sit on the table waiting to be caught: a white ghost, a green bottle, a cute grey mouse, a blue book and a comfortable red chair. Each card in the deck shows pictures of two objects, with one or both objects colored the wrong way. With all players playing at the same time, someone reveals a card, then players grab for the “right” object but which object is right? If one object is colored correctly say, a green bottle and a red mouse then players need to grab that correctly colored object. This is another great game for kids 8 and up.
Gloom
In Gloom you goal is quite unique. You must help your characters to suffer the greatest tragedies possible before passing on to the well-deserved respite of death. While you try too keep your characters suffering the utmost you instead play good things onto your opponents. Gloom features transparent cards and goth-like art to keep you in your miserable mood.
Ultimate Werewolf
Ultimate Werewolf is an interactive party game of deduction for two teams: Villagers and Werewolves. The Villagers don’t know who the Werewolves are, and the Werewolves are trying to remain undiscovered while they slowly eliminate the Villagers one at a time. A Moderator (who isn’t on a team) runs the game. Ultimate Werewolf takes place over a series of game days and nights. Each day, the players discuss who among them is a Werewolf and vote out a player. Each night, the Werewolves choose a player to eliminate, while the Seer learns whether one player is a Werewolf or not. The game is over when either all the Villagers or all the Werewolves are eliminated.
Booo-opoly – Halloween Monopoloy
I couldn’t resist adding Booo-opoly, a Monopoly re-themed board game, to this Halloween recommendation list. What is more miserable than play dragging on for 4-6 hours while knowing who will win within the first 30 minutes. I think there is a themed Monopoly for everything. Zombies, check. Christmas, check. Ohio State, check. Michigan, check. Legend of Zelda, check. And on and on and on.
