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stevenacalhoun's Betrayal at House on the Hill (Other)
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| [February 10, 2015 11:39:24 PM]
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Betrayal in the House on the Hill is a board game for 3 - 6 players. It is reminiscent of the movie Cabin in the Woods. Similar to the movie, the game is set in a mysterious house in the middle of nowhere. The players’ goal is to explore the house one room at a time. Every player has four traits that are split in to two categories. There are physical traits, speed and power, and mental traits, sanity and knowledge. These traits help the player in various circumstances.
The house has three floors: the ground level, the basement, and the upper floor. All players start on the ground floor of the house and have access to the upper floor but not the basement. At the beginning of a player’s turn he/she can move tile-by-tile until they reach an unexplored room. To explore the basement the players have to discover specific rooms which allow them to go downstairs.
When the player reaches an unexplored room, a new room tile is drawn and added to the room. Most rooms have one of three icons on it: an event icon, an item icon, or an omen icon. Events are simply things that happen to the player that discovers that room. They can be good things, such as a boost in stats, or bad things, such as taking damage. Items are objects that the player can pick up and keep with them that give them various boosts to their traits or odds when rolling dice. Omens are what make the game interesting. At the beginning of the game all of the players are on the same team, working together to explore the house and gain items. This all changes as more and more omens appear and the Haunt begins.
The Haunt is the point in the game when one of the players becomes a traitor and turns on the rest of the team. When a room with omen is discovered an omen card is drawn and then the player that discovered the room must make a Haunt roll using six dice. To pass the Haunt roll the player must roll a higher number than the number of omen icons currently showing in the house. As more and more omens are discovered this roll gets harder and harder to pass. When any player fails the Haunt roll, the Haunt begins.
What makes Betrayal interesting is that there are about 80 different Haunts. The Haunt that occurs is based on which omen card was drawn before the Haunt roll, and in which room the omen appeared. Haunts range from aliens trying to abduct all the players, to vampires awakening in the basement, to one of the players being revealed as a serial killer. When the Haunt is revealed a set of rules is given to the explorers and a separate set of rules is given to the traitor. Each side has their own objectives to win.
Our first round we had five people playing. The Haunt started after discovering a modest portion of the house. The Haunt revealed that one of the party members was a murderer and that he had kidnapped one of our explorers and buried him alive. We only discovered this after a spirit board spelled out what was happening. We then had to rush to the basement, find out where our friend was buried, and dig him out. The party was able to find out quickly where he was buried, but unfortunately we were unable to dig him out in time to save him.
The second play through we had six people playing and we discovered a large portion of the house before the Haunt started. This time we found that one of our party members had been abducted by aliens and brainwashed into joining their side. She then tried to mind control all of us using alien minions and walk us to the mothership to be abducted. It was the party’s goal to destroy the spaceship before she could accomplish this. We got three hits out of the needed six on the spaceship before the traitor had us all either abducted or killed.
Betrayal does a very good job of making every play through feel unique. The layout of the house is different each time, the events and items found are random, and the Haunt is typically a surprise and throws a fun twist to the gameplay. This type of variability makes the game extremely replay-able and interesting. The game does have somewhat of a balance issue. From the two Haunts that we encountered it seemed like it was very difficult for the explorers to win. If the explorers want to win, they must have a lot of team work and coordination. Since pretty much everything in the game requires a player to roll dice, chance plays a large roll throughout the game. Explorers also must be careful not to lose all of the points they have in any of the four traits. If any of the traits reach zero, then the explorer dies. Betrayal is a lot of fun to play and you can be pretty much guaranteed that every game will be unique.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Feb 10th, 2015 at 23:40:42.
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stevenacalhoun's Betrayal at House on the Hill (Other)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Tuesday 10 February, 2015
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