When you explore a haunted house, you know who your friends are, until you don’t!

TLDR: Betrayal at House on the Hill starts as a cooperative board game, with players exploring a haunted house together. Halfway through the game, the “haunting” begins. One player is now the monster!

Betrayal at House on the Hill is a great game. It’s technical and requires a fair amount of reading to learn it – and throughout game play. But once you play it a few times, things speed up. It plays in two phases, each lasting about 30 minutes. For the first half of the game, everyone is on the same team, exploring a creepy old house together.

And then all hell breaks loose.

Suddenly, the haunting begins. One random player is assigned a monster role. The monster wins if all the players are eliminated, while the players desperately work together to destroy the monster. I have learned to beware of shy friends who beg me not to force them become the monster. Twice now, I have watched with horror as a timid board game wallflower turned into a cackling maniac, forcing the rest of us to desperately work together to escape.

The great thing about this game is there are so many different monsters with different powers and win conditions: a mummy, a giant spider, a scientific shrink ray, etc. And every time you play, the layout of the house changes, so every game is very different.

When I play this game, I like to play it two or three times in a row. And it’s super fun.

3-6 players.
1 hour.
Age: 12+
Playable again and again.
Haunts your whole brain.

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