Hello ghouls and ghosts of the interwebs!
The League of Gamemakers invites you to play a little game over the next couple days. In the spirit of Halloween, the tradition of trick or treat and the mission of spreading more tabletop:
you can WIN a game!
It MAY be a good game. It MAY have a good BGG rating. It MAY be a game that has been opened and played. It MAY be horror themed. Who knows! It’s trick or treat time! And thanks to the influence that is Kickstarter, we’ll have stretch goals on the prize pool, depending on how many people ring our bell. (see below).
TO PLAY
It’s easy – A few ways to enter on rafflecopter! TWITTER, FACEBOOK and BLOG COMMENTS/TOPICS:
Comment on our trick-or-treat post with one of three options: a mechanism you find wonderfully evil, a design idea you have for a haunted or dark game, or name one of your favorite horror or monster themed tabletop games!
TO WIN
The prize has ended with these results:
Each player earned multiple entries per day!
Every day with 200 or more entries will unleash 1 more spooky prize for another unlucky? winner!
Every 13 entries adds $1 to the prize pool. Be sure to share this for monstrous prize growth!
We’ll cap the total prize value possible at $666. Theme wins over mechanics, but that’s still a lot of victory points possible! Thanks for playing, and thanks for reading all about games and the people who make them at The League of Gamemakers!
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101 Readers Commented
Join discussionLooks like a fun contest! Here’s hoping for some luck!
Thanks for playing! Here’s to a fun holiday!
As for favorite horror themed games – I think this may be Betrayal: House on the Hill for me. I had a game night the other day and we brought out Nevermore, Ghooost and Dead of Winter. All good choices as well. But a dinner party with creepy music and a haunted house discovered as we go and someone turns evil and tries to kill us all??? That’s the perfect spooky game night!
Sweet Halloween contest! Thanks!
You are most welcome! What game would you love to get in the prize pool? Doesn’t have to be horror related
I actually only have 1 Horror game: Arkham Horror. I love that game! Cthulhu doesn’t mess around! Hes out for blood and destruction!
Arkham Horror is a great afternoon of gaming for sure. Sometimes, it drives me mad (see what I did there?) because the balance is off – good intentions then the whole game goes nowhere. But I love the player agency and choices overall.
One of my first game ideas was for a Lords of Waterdeep clone, but the theme was an evil circus that was trying to “recruit” children from their families while they visited.
So.. Something Wicked This Way Comes? Great movie.
Trick or Treat!
My favorite horror themed board game would have to be Mansions of Madness.
I love Mansions of Madness. Maybe that was because I was always the DM. But some of my fondest memories of gaming came from the cemetery map which I set on fire. 🙂
I think Betrayal: House on the Hill for me
My idea is for a quick party game called Thing With Sharp Teeth. In classic horror movie tradition, something is chasing all of you. Players are represented by numbered tokens that start face-down in a random-order line on the table, with the Thing’s token is at one end of that line.
Everyone has a Nice Card and a Mean Card; Nice Cards move a token away from the Thing, Mean Cards move them toward it. The game has just two rounds. In the first you pick a token, turn it over, play one of your cards and move that token. In the second, you pick a token and play your other card. The goal is not to be last in line after all cards are played and the Thng is revealed and eats one (or more!) of the people closest to it.
Of course, in classic horror movie tradition, the Thing might turn out to have been in front of you the whole time, and it eats the first person. So maybe it’s safest to be in the middle….
(Obviously, repeat until just one player is left.)
I just played dead of winter last night and also have played betrayal at house on haunted hill and loved both.
Thanks for the contest! Happy (spooky) Halloween everyone!
Great idea for a contest!
a mechanism you find wonderfully evil,
a funhouse mirror in a women clothing store changing room
Oh! Thanks for the chance!
I think Eldritch Horror would be my favorite.
Thanks for the chance!
Thanks Maggie B! I generally play Arkham Horror but I dig Eldritch Horror too – especially on a phone. Kills a lot of time! 😉
Nice. Thanks!
Betrayal House on the Hill has that perfect spooky element of the unknown of who’s going to turn on you
As far as evil mechanics I think the traitor mechanic is the worst, and that Dead of Winter uses it to ratchet up some of that post-apocalyptic survivor suspicion.
Dead of Winter excels at this to be sure. I like to play it with chance of traitor high – mix in 1 betrayer card to just 1 card per player of the good ones. 🙂
betrayal at house on the hill a very cool game, lots of choices and a lot of fun.
Mechanics in deckbuilding games that destroy or steal cards from your own deck.
Favorite horror themed game is Zombie Dice or Elder sign. Neither are too scary, but just enough to get into the halloween mood!
Thanks for the contest!
Midnight Party! It isn’t my favorite, but Betrayal is going to be on here a lot already. ( Boo )
Betrayal at house on the hill would be my favorite!
Thanks for the giveaway!
I think a game themed after Ray Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes” could be quite excellent. Not sure what the best mechanics would be.
Blind bidding can be very devilish. Bidding high and losing out by one dollar… that’s evil.
Ha! Thanks Sam – yep, I’ve had some games come down to the dollar. That is a fun way to think of an evil mechanism, especially if it’s ‘lose the money win or lose’. too evil…
Dead of Winter is definitely my favorite (survival) horror game. Being tired of typically themed zombie games, it adds extra dimensions (and an evil-scary mechanic) by adding in secret objecting with the possibility of betrayal. Sign me up for another play!
A design idea I have for a horror game is a coop game where each player is controling a unique character with specially abilities/atributes but each character also has a hidden weakness which isnt reaviled until something bad happens which triggers it and reveals it to the other players.
Woooooow, who comes with these ideas? I really like Mansion of Madness and Betrayal at the house on the hill
Betrayal at the House on the Hill has been my favorite horror story-telling game to play this time of year (or any for that matter) Thanks for the awesome contest!
Dread is a tabletop horror game of choice. All the elements of a great ghost story with the tension of puling pieces on a Jenga tower. Genius.
Two of my favorite “evil” mechanics are the Outbreaks in Pandemic and the Traitor from Betrayal at House on the Hill. The Outbreaks can quickly turn your your winning strategy into a desperate fight for survival, especially if they chain. The Traitor allows you to turn on your fellow players, and suddenly turns a co-op game into a vs. game. It also keeps the players from beefing up one player early on, for fear that they will suddenly become the enemy.
Love the contest but my mechanic is when over time in deck building your deck starts to fill with wounds limiting your ability to take actions & forcing one to deal with wounds.
I’ve only played Betrayal House on the Hill once but it was so fun!
Thanks!
My favorite horror themed game is Betrayal at House on the Hill! A close second is Elder Sign.
Sounds like a fun contest. I asked for them to talk about dice placement as a mechanism!
My favorite horror themed game is Atmosfear: The Harbingers. Ever since they got the Gatekeeper on a DVD so you could never predict when he was going to pop up, the game creeps me out just as much every time!
https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1881/atmosfear-harbingers
For horror game I like Betrayal, but the haunt can be unbalanced. The horror type game that I like quite a bit, but have yet to beat, is Ghost Stories. Nothing like pretending to be a kung-fu monks and trying to cleanse a town of evil.
Thanks for mentioning Ghost Stories! Out of all the games mentioned here – this is one I have not yet played. But I’m thinking it’s time to correct that!
Happy Halloween!
A mechanism you find wonderfully evil: Civilization (Avalon Hill’s old game) had a semi-blind trading mechanism where you could pass your “partner” disasters along with the goods they were expecting. Traitorous!
A design idea you have for a haunted or dark game: War over the resources of a frontier planet. Units are double-sided cardboard tokens, with one side for attack and the other for defense. In combat, you pick up all the tokens in the region and toss them — for each attack not countered by an opponent’s defense, kill one of their units. The trick is that dead soldiers could rise again to join battle: each killed unit is replaced with a corpse token. These are also thrown in battle, attack last, and are controlled by the person with the fewest remaining units in the region.
Name one of your favorite horror or monster themed tabletop games: Dread (Epidiah Ravachol), for sure. It’s a role-playing game that uses a Jenga tower to emphasize the feeling of inevitable demise, and does an amazing job of it.
Zolgar demands tribute of board games! In the interest of fairness though he shall play by your puny mortal rules!
Zolgar’s favorite horror themed board game is Shadows of Brimstone, a weird-west horror RPG.
lol Zolgar. Mmmm, Shadows of Brimstone!
A game where a group of people wake up in a laboratory room without any idea of where they are or how they got there. The goal of the game is to escape the laboratory, but as the group travels all the levels they find that one of the members is infected with a deathly virus that can cause an epidemic. The group doesn’t know what member is infected. As the game progresses they find clues and before exit of the lab, them must choose kill the infected or escape as a group. If they choose wrong, only the infected member wins the game and the epidemic erupts.
I’ve been working on a haunted house exploration game called Polter-Heist!
My favorite horror game: Betrayal: House on the Hill. Just plain creepy, but I can’t get enough of it!
Betrayal at House on the Hill is still one of my favorite horror games, but Dead of Winter is giving it a run for its money this year!
demonic possession game idea: 2 player card game where one player is the demon and the other plays the exorcist. You’re battling for the soul of a little girl…
About the mechanic, I will go with the DONT card in Exploding Kittens. The face on someones face when that DONT card just wins the game, specially if played one after the other. Really like the traitor/betrayal mechanic in Dead of Winter, makes the game so tense…
Dead of Winter would be my favorite Monster themed game, and I do consider zombies to be monsters 🙂
For an introverted player like me, social deduction mechanics where you’re forced to lie about your role is the worst, most evil possible mechanic. Never have I been more uncomfortable playing boardgames. Why would you want that, why?!?
Awesome contest!!
I’m a mom to two kids, 8 and 13, so some of my favorite Halloween/horror-themed games are aimed at kids. I’ve always had a soft spot for the physical action in 13 Dead End Drive…
Thanks for this fun contest. 🙂
Nor really horror, but appropriate for this time of year, my 8.5 yr old daughter and I have been getting into the holiday board gaming spirit by playing our PnP copy of Ghosts Love Candy. I hope someone else picks up this game b/c it is a lot of fun.
I’m not big on the horror genre as I’m easily scared, but King of Tokyo is a big hit with family and friends as who doesn’t love to be big movie monsters?
Hoping for a win! I own Betrayal at House on the Hill and am looking at the expansion for King of Tokyo.
Yaaaaay contest! My favorite, most evil game mechanic is the good old :Let somebobody draw three cards, then they have to discard two of them” Nothing worse than having been given three game-changing cards and having to choose *one*! EEEEEVIL!!!
The most deliciously evil game mechanic ever is the Event mechanic in the COIN system. It brings hand management to a whole new level.
Betrayal at the House on the Hill would be my favorite horror themed board game.
My favorite horror themed game is of course Arkham Horror.
Betrayal for me. Love the narrative that changes every game
We like playing Eldritch Horror — not a usual type of game for us as we like Euros but the story is just so much fun to go through!
I appreciate anything Cthulu for the Halloween season. Have Elder Signs and Eldritch at the ready for this weekend!
Great idea good luck to all
Horror themed games that I love would be Betrayal on House on Haunted Hill.
In terms of RPGs, Vampire: The Requiem 2E has been a great read and I highly recommend it.
Thanks for the giveaway guys. Love what you do here!
Great contest! Love to get a free game!
Betrayal at house on Haunted Hill would be my first, it’s my favorite, and followed by Eldritch Horror.
Awesome contest!
We just got DEAD OF WINTER and are playing it a lot, but I still think my fave horror game is Betrayal at House on the Hill.
Most evil element has to be the potential for a secret traitor. Its done well in Battlestar Galactica, but personally I think its even better in Dead of Winter for one evvviiiiil reason. In DoW, there might NOT be a traitor- so it has all of the tension but none of the certainty. Nothing like exiling an innocent man to the zombies afterall.
My favorite Horror themed games have to be betrayal at house on the hill, Dead of winter and Eldritch Horror.
Hope it’s Eldritch Horror
Most evil element has to be the potential for a traitor. When there is definitely a traitor, it’s just a deduction game, but when there’s the POSSIBILITY of a traitor, it makes things so much more complicated / difficult / maddening / EVIL.
hoping its either Dead of Winter or Eldritch Horror. Thanks for the opportunity!
Arkham Horror for me 🙂
Trick or treat!!
And yeah, Betrayal at the House on the Hill is my best horror themed game.
As a decent human being with absolutely no evil intent while walking this Earth, gaming with Evil Intent seems like a good way to experience that sort of existence without, uhm, messing with my karma too much!
I absolutely love Betrayal at house on the Hill. It was my first non-commercial tabletop game and it really opened my eyes to what board games can be.
I’m not sure about a good horror themed game, we normally stay away from them since a lot of my gaming is with younger children, but we do love Dead of Winter and I’ve always had an inkling to try Betrayal at House on the Hill.
Amoeba Wars was,a creepy game but fun!
My favorite horror themed boardgame currently is Dead of Winter. We recently acquired a 2nd edition copy of Fury of Dracula and we’re looking forward to trying it out.
Our play group has really been enjoying Dead of Winter as a horror themed board game, but I want to play Fearsome Floors.
I find the traitor mechanic in cooperative games to be wonderfully evil. Co-op games should be everyone working together, but that possibility of a traitor means you can’t really trust everyone to help you all the time. It breaks up the co-op feel and it’s just wonderful.
Thank you so much for this great contest. Betrayal at the house on the hill is definitely a go to this time of year.
The only horror game I have really played is Dead of Winter; where chances of survival are dismal.
I’ve also designed a small card game called Oubliette: Lurid Ascent for two players that has one player as a human trying to escape a dungeon, and the other as the monster trying to drive them to insanity.
nice!
Eldritch Horror for me. With some good background music and the right people playing it can be a great and unsettling experience.
The best Horror genre game is Eldritch Horror. The best game for Halloween is Betrayal at House on the Hill.
What The Food?! Zombie Rules!
Has always been my Favorite game
Claustrophobia