Both of my children foisted themselves upon us this evening, and Maya had brought 'Betrayal At House On The Hill' with her, so guess what we ended up playing?
Basically this is a co-operative game where investigator wander a mysterious creepy house until something happens and one of a number of randomly determined haunts occurs. This leaves one player as some kind of monster/baddy, whilst the others have to work together to prevent something horrible happening.
I played a wise Professor.
Here we are venturing into the house.
Catherine looks apprehensive. Cei looks confident.
Maya was in charge of the rules, since it's her game.
We wandered around a lot, until Catherine's jock triggered a frustrated ghost bride, who made him her potential suitor. This all got a bit involved, as Maya is still a bit rusty on the rules, and misread one bit, whilst Catherine had to read some secret instructions and completely misread another bit.
A lively discussion ensued, but we kind of got the game back on track.
Sadly despite our being back on track, the ghost won, killing one of the characters, and marrying their spirit.
This does seem to be a game where it really helps to know how to play before you play, as if you get selected as the bad guy you are left following a set of game instructions on your own. If you don't know how the game works it's then easy to miss important elements, and mess things up, and the other players are none the wiser. It's a clever mechanism, for all that.
I got this a few years ago after it was recommended it to me. I have played it about 5-6 times over the last few years with my two children (currently) 10 and 12). It is loads of fun. For the first few games I played the traitor but the last two times a child has done it fine.
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