Fango fans, we watch a lot of monster movies. In those movies there’s usually one threat: the baddie that remains the focus of everyone’s attention until they are ultimately dispatched and our heroes, or what remains of them, get a little breather until the sequel. And I suppose we’re supposed to consider most of the worlds depicted in each film being distinct from one another. Despite a few Dracula vs. Frankensteins or Freddy vs. Jasons, each film world exists on its own with no overlap.
Oh, and the whole Stephen King universe, I suppose. But still… there are A LOT of monsters out there, friends. Consider, for a moment, the unending terror of all of these worlds coexisting and the possibility of any one (or more!) of these threats materializing at your doorstep at any given time! It’s enough to make Professor Van Helsing or even Ray Harryhausen go weak in the knees! With their latest cooperative board game Horrified: World of Monsters, publisher Ravensburger suggests this is a very real possibility… no… inevitability! At least, in-game. Let me explain:
Horrified: World of Monsters is the fourth release in Ravensburger’s very popular Horrified series of cooperative board games. Following the original Horrified: Universal Monsters (2109), Horrified: American Monsters (2021), and Horrified: Greek Monsters (2023), where players fought to keep at bay the likes of Dracula, The Jersey Devil, and Medusa, respectively (among others from each particular setting), Ravensburger has cast a wider net and plucked a roster of nasties (and misunderstoods) from across the globe (and beyond!) for the latest entry in the series.
Horrified: World of Monsters lets 1-5 players take on the Yeti, who just wants to retrieve its children, lost among the encroaching human population. Then there’s the Sphinx, whose riddle needs solving before it’ll go away, and the Jiangshi, hopping vampire of Chinese legend, who must be defeated with a mystical sword constructed of ancient coins or players might find themselves fatally short on qi. Last, but certainly not least, is Cthulhu (you knew he’d show up eventually), arguably H.P. Lovecraft’s most enduring and popular creation, who poses a particularly complex challenge for players.
“Designing Cthulhu was super fun,” says designer Mike Mulvihill. “With Cthulhu, we went through so many iterations. We knew that part of Cthulhu’s intrigue is the difficulty for him to even be understood or caught on our plane of existence.”
As with all the monsters in the Horrified series, each one has its own mini game to complete before players can defeat them for good. But, whew! Cthulhu is something else!
“In the first puzzle, you can create the portal opening and push him off our realm into his, but the lore allows us to say that, just because you pushed him back into the corpse city of R’lyeh, does not mean that he is forever defeated,” explains Mulvihill. “So, the second puzzle, where you need to magically manacle him down to his realm in a direct puzzle conflict, fits perfectly.”
Follow Cthulhu into his own realm? Didn’t anyone see Rikki-Tikki-Tavi? You never follow a cobra (or, in this case, an ageless abomination from an incomprehensible dimension) into its hole! Ah, but this is a cooperative game and, with a little teamwork, players stand at least the sliver of a chance of succeeding against the high priest of the Great Old Ones in a final confrontation.
Mike Mulvihill continues: “Finally, we really wanted to include some sort of self-sacrifice to defeat Cthulhu, so the idea of each player needing to give an item to help the final blow felt so thematic and based on lore.”
I’ve played a lot of Horrified and have been pretty successful, for the most part, across the various iterations. But, wow… Cthulhu seems especially difficult, but, honestly, that seems appropriate. The multi-part banishment process for the pulpy blasphemy from beyond the stars is a real challenge and will take some tight coordination with other players.
The gameplay for this new release is just like the others in the series, which you can read more about in our previous article. If you know one, you know them all, but if you’re at all familiar with the others you might be wondering how it makes sense thematically, if that kind of thing matters to you (it does to me), that these creatures from around the globe have all descended on this hapless town.
Each previous release featured a game board depicting a town that existed in its own space: a gothic, probably Bavarian village, a humble little slice of small town America, and an ancient Greek landscape. But if you let your eye wander around the board in Horrified: World of Monsters, you’ll find some unusual and incongruous features: a clockwork tower, a castle, and even an old, rusty airliner not far from some Greek ruins. Ravensburger has set this iteration of Horrified in a Land of the Lost-type neverwhere, at the center of which is the all-important portal to other places known simply as The Void.
“We really wanted to use every inch of real estate on the components to grow the Horrified universe,” says Sam Dawson, Art Director at Ravensburger. “This iteration started as steampunk light, where analog technology meets magic, but then we added the concept of The Void in the center of town. This acts as a gateway to infinite worlds and timelines… to impress upon players that anything is possible.”
It is explained on the cover of the rule book, in a communication from Howard T. Owlman, Historian and Raconteur from the Office of Cryptozoology, that players are members of a secretive organization known as the Stewards of the Shrouded Void, tasked with keeping watch over the portal and sending back any horrors that come through — or, again, maybe just some misunderstood creatures. The Yeti just wants its kids back, after all. In any event, you’re problem solvers of the paranormal variety… the best kind! If only I had been able to sign up for the Stewards instead of the hapless six months I spent in the Boy Scouts. Think of the merit badges!
This new release also brings with it something of a refinement in the Horrified system. As Monster cards are revealed on each turn, certain monsters are activated, based on some colored icons at the bottom of the card. The activation icons in Horrified: World of Monsters have been coordinated with those in the previous release, Horrified: Greek Monsters, allowing players to mix and match creatures from either set. “We have opened the future of Horrified to go beyond specific themes and any intellectual property monsters,” explains Mulvihill.
Now, with The Void in the center of things, it all makes thematic sense. It is presumed that this is the direction Ravensburger will go with future releases in the series. And we already know where Horrified is heading next as Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons was recently announced! We’ll have to see if that compatibility is maintained and, if it is… taking on a Beholder, Cthulhu, and Cerberus in one session? It’ll be a very short session, I can tell you that, but it has my nerd ganglia pulsing!
“Currently, we have ten different monsters that players can mix-and-match across Horrified: World of Monsters and Horrified: Greek Monsters,” says Mulvihill. “Our goal at this point is to make sure fans of our games have access to more monsters moving forward.”
And more monsters is really what it’s all about, isn’t it? Ravensburger assures us with this release that there’s a “world of monsters” out there. How do Mike Mulvihill and the team decide who to unleash on us next? He explains:
“First, I must confess that we have an ever-growing list that includes both entertainment-based and mythological monsters on it. But one of my dream monsters to create a puzzle and mechanics for is Baba Yaga. I think we could do something spectacular with her. I love dark fairy and magic horror, so to me, she is on ‘Mike’s Very Short List of Monsters.’”
I admire a person with a “list of monsters,” and I would like to publicly throw my vote, or at least my enthusiasm, behind Baba Yaga. I’d love a miniature house with chicken legs to move around the board.
And there really is no end of otherworldly creeps from myth and legend for Ravensburger to include. Irish folklore has some real doozies (besides the Leprechaun). How about some Japanese Oni or maybe even some of those disembodied floating heads from Thailand? Dare we wish for Godzilla?
Ravensburger clearly has a hit series on their hands, and they seem to be going full steampunk(ish) ahead. If I can coordinate with my friends to collect the right combination of items at the right time and meet up in R’lyeh, I just might be able to beat Cthulhu before the next release!
All games in the Horrified series are available directly from Ravensburger and wherever board games are found.
