Board Game Review 2# – Betrayal at House on the Hill
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This is my review of Jonna’s (from Group 9) analysis of the board game Betrayal at House on the Hill. (The analysis can be found here: http://moonphanter.wordpress.com/2014/09/29/board-game-analysis-betrayal-at-house-on-the-hill/) This is the blog post version of the review, the comment version can be found here: http://moonphanter.wordpress.com/2014/09/29/board-game-analysis-betrayal-at-house-on-the-hill/comment-page-1/#comment-23 – – – The Core Game System: I agree that the core system is the player/character movement. It’s what moves the game’s story forward, and if the players didn’t move around there wouldn’t be any new rooms to the mansion, and nothing would really happen since most events are triggered by entering a room. (It would be a very uneventful game. In fact, I don’t think it even would be a game.) I also agree that the character traits are an important system as well. They affect the players’ ability to move, and having good stats in the different traits equals having good physical and mental strength. There are several events in the game, both card and room based events, where the player may sustain either physical or mental damage depending on the stats of their traits. If the player has low stats in any of these traits, there will be a bigger risk that they will get hurt in that specific area (since they get to throw fewer dice), so it is really important for all the players to try to have as good stats as possible. I think the trait system was a good way to illustrate the fact that it’s easier to withstand physical or mental treats or attacks if you have a strong body or mind, and it gave the game a nice dimension. The risk of having a player character losing their mind (being defeated) due to events that may lower their mental traits, or just not being physically strong enough, added to the tension of the game and the story. The Most Interesting System: I liked the Haunt system too, and thought it was really interesting that there were so many different scenarios that could happen in the game. The fact that the Haunt is picked depending on what room the Haunt revealer was in, and the omen card that was drawn, was really fascinating and a very good way to do it. Having two different factors affecting the Haunt makes it a lot more difficult to foresee what Haunt it is that will be picked, and it’s a lot more difficult to remember what combinations triggers what scenario/Haunt than if the only factor had been the room or the omen card. It’s something that supports the re-playability of the game, and makes it unpredictable even for players that have played the game several times before. This unpredictability of the game is very important for other reasons as well. Just like Jonna said, there would be a risk of players ganging up on one player if they were able to foresee which player it was that would turn into the traitor, and it would have made the game significantly less dramatic. As it is now, the uncertain situation creates suspense and tension, and when the traitor is revealed, the feeling of “betrayal” will be stronger than if everyone had suspected one player all along. It feels like the creators of the game have balanced it really well, and it’s the system that creates the most drama in the game and affects the game situation the most. Along with the Player Movement and the Character Trait systems it creates a really intriguing game, and due to its unpredictability, I believe that it’s very unlikely for players to get exactly the same scenario when playing the game again. Best part of the game: I agree that exploring the mansion and its rooms was the best part of the game. I really liked how the narrative was built up through the game, with every room being like a piece of puzzle for the players to place out, and that the events that could happen were either connected to the room or to a card that were drawn in the room. The element of randomization when it came to the room cards and the other cards gave the game a feeling of mystery and danger, and just like in a horror story you never knew what would happen next. Sometimes you went into a room that seemed harmless, but then got a card that triggered a bad event or vice versa. Other times you went into a room and found an item, and thinking about what kind of room it was, the state it was in, and the item that you got, you could get an idea of a potential backstory for that room. But there were times where the room and the item (or event) didn’t match that well when my group played. One example was when a player entered the “graveyard room” and found a closet and a safe there (where the latter was hidden behind a painting on the wall). The graveyard was obviously outdoors by looking at its card, which showed a graveyard with a fence around it, so it felt rather confusing and strange to find both a closet and a safe there. But since this is a horror game, and there had been happening other weird things to the players before that, I guess details like that can be overlooked. When it comes to the dice in the game, I’m not that sure if I can agree completely with Jonna. I really liked the dice value of 0-2 and for the same reasons, but I didn’t like that you had to throw so many of them sometimes. In some cases a player needed to throw 6 dices, and when my group played we didn’t really have that much space on the table because of the expanding game board, which made it very difficult to find anywhere to throw them without ruining something. It always became a bit of a stressful situation when we had to throw more than 4 dice, and it felt like it could have been done a bit different. I would have preferred if there were fewer dice. Worst part of the game: I didn’t notice the tendency of the character traits becoming either overpowered/underpowered, but it would maybe have been more evident if my group had played the game some more times. I can imagine it being that way though, because we only had one player that increased his character traits a lot while the others pretty much had the same stats throughout the game when we played, but I don’t really know. I didn’t lose or gain that many trait points when we played, so if it was something I thought was strange, it was that I rarely had any chance/risk of gaining or losing any. I think that the worst part of the game was that there were scenarios/Haunts where only one player could really fight and defeat the enemies. When my group played the game, we got a Haunt where the traitor controlled poison ivy vines (with roots that stayed in their respective rooms) and the only way to defeat them was to get a special item that only one player (who had the required item) could get. With this item, the player only needed to be in the same room as a vine or a root in order to destroy it. All of the players that couldn’t get the item didn’t really have much to do, because they could only stun the enemies by winning against them in a “might roll” during an attack. You could say that their role was to merely stay alive and defend themselves until the player with the item had destroyed all the enemies, but since we had explored most of the ground floor where most of the enemies were, there were a lot of places for the players to get away and hide from the vines which made it all rather uneventful. I would have preferred if the players could have defeated the vines, or that they would have come back into the game after two turns instead of just having them stunned for one turn, because I think that every player should’ve been able to defeat the enemies. That way, the players could at least have chosen to try and help fighting against the monsters, instead of not being able to do any permanent damage at all. I do understand the narrative point of view though since the fact that there’s only one weapon to defeat the monsters makes the situation difficult, and if the player were to lose that item (which is possible), the hero players would find themselves in a lot of trouble and risk defeat. So as it is now, there’s potential dramatic tension and feeling of danger in the situation, but there’s also a risk that there will be a group of players with not much to do. (It’s possible that this was the only Haunt in the whole game that had a setting like this though…) Target Group: I agree when it comes to the age recommendation of “12 years and up”. It is probably possible for someone younger to play this game, but the horror theme may frighten or upset them, and keeping track of all the details can turn out difficult. Jonna mentioned that there might be some problems if a younger player becomes the traitor, that they maybe will feel uncomfortable about the other players turning against them, but it’s was a good solution to suggest that they would be able to ask an older player for help. I think that another solution to that problem would be to just pass the traitor role to another player, so that the players that would be distressed playing the traitor can play one of the hero roles instead. (However this requires that there is more than one player that wouldn’t mind being the traitor. Otherwise the suspense of the whole traitor part of the game would be lost.) In general I think that this game works really well for “teens and up”, but a younger player could play this game if they don’t mind the horror theme and the risk of being the traitor. Summary: The only thing I slightly disagreed with was when it came to the best parts of the game, where I didn’t really like the game’s dices as much (mostly because there were too many to throw sometimes) but I agreed on some things. When it comes to the worst parts of the game, I hadn’t noticed the tendency of overpowered/underpowered character traits that Jonna mentioned, so I couldn’t really comment on anything about that. I did agree on that the best part of the game was to explore the mansion though, and I would maybe have noticed the character trait problem if I had played the game more times. For now, I thought that the worst part of the game were the fact that the Haunt that my group got during our session only had one player that could really fight against the enemies, while the others only could stun and run away from them. I would have preferred that every player could at least have been able to do some damage, but maybe not as permanent as the player with the special item. In general I thought that it was a good and well-written analysis, and it covered the different aspects of the game very well.  |
