It’s the spooky season and it’s time to get some games to the table that match up well with Halloween. I talk about this every year, but I’m taking a little bit of a different tact this year, what game would work well when you dim the lights, maybe only play by candle light with some spooky music setting that mood? Which board games would I pull off my shelf?

Not Alone

You play as the crew of a spaceship that has crash landed onto a planet. You need to survive long enough, signaling the rescue ship to come and get you. But there is something on the land. You are not alone and there is a monster, maybe even a planet that is trying to kill you. Will you be able to survive long enough or will the player who is the monster and the planet finish off the crew members first?

This game works well because as the crew you have a good tension. You are playing down cards to go to different locations all separately from one another. You can coordinate but you need to talk so that the person playing the monster can here you. Will you try and lead them astray as to what you are doing or not? Plus, the monster can always see all the cards you’ve played. And for the monster, can you surprise them and catch a lot of them at once?

Nemesis

Another space horror game, in Nemesis, you are playing what is basically Aliens. There is an alien infestation aboard your ship and you need to deal with it. But you also need to get back to Earth, but only if there aren’t aliens on the ship. And some players will have different objectives. It might be to have another character die even. But you can’t kill, you need to let them die without it being too obvious.

A massive game, Nemesis really focuses on getting a lot of theme into what you do. It’s cooperative, but every time an alien pops up, every time you have to roll for noise to see if you might stumble across one, it could be the queen. Or you might not have ammo for your gun anymore. But you need to press on because you have to find the right room to complete your objective.

Night Cage

You awake to find yourself in a mysterious labyrinth with nothing but a candle. You can’t stand up and if you come across anyone else you can’t get past them. All you know is that there are monsters, keys you need to find to escape and portals to escape from. As you crawl around, the labyrinth twists and disappears behind you when your candle can no longer light it.

Night Cage is the game I immediately thought of for this list. It has horror in spades for such a simple game. You are moving around a grid board placing out tiles for the labyrinth around you that you can see. Every time you remove comes from a stack that is a candle burning down. It is a game that is a race against that candle trying to find a key for everyone and then a way to get them all to the same portal so they all escape. This game really needs to be played in candle light.

Deep Madness

Your submarine submerges as you listen to the message play again. It’s garbled but you can tell something has happened, something very bad. The research facility on the ocean base hasn’t been responding and you and your team are being sent down to find out what has happened. You aren’t sure what you’ll find, but you hope, beyond hope, that it won’t be too bad.

Deep Madness takes the horror to the bottom of the ocean. This cooperative game has you searching through an ocean floor base, fighting monsters, and working together to get what you need to defeat the scenario and possibly get off of this base. This one would be harder in candle light because you need to see everything that is going on, but is still thematic to filled with monsters who are out to get you.

Why These Board Games?

Because I think they provide horror. I am going to do another list coming up here soon for games that give you more of that campy Halloween feel. There games are going to be horror which is something that board games don’t do all that well. Now, you need to provide some of your own suspense and I think doing a proper setting and proper look can create that.

I’d focus on a few things to create that tension. Firstly, keep it darker. Some of these games you can’t go too dark, I’d say Nemesis and Deep madness would be hard if it were too dark. But the Night Cage, you’ll be able to get quite dark with that. Either way, leverage less than normal light and less than normal light sources. Maybe you have a lamp on in the corner to give enough light but the rest of the table has candles around it.

Also think about the ambiance in terms of sound as well. Play spooky music, not Halloween party spooky music, but the stuff at a good haunted house, where doors creak, crows call out, and everything feels like it’s just off. There is enough noise to make it obvious, but still just quiet enough that everything feels out of place when there is a bigger noise.

Which of These Board Games Would Hit Your Table?

Right now the one I really want to get to the table is Night Cage, while the game play is fairly abstracted the tension of the game is a lot of fun. It’s a really enjoyable experience with the lights on, and I can see how in candle light the tension of slipping a tile, figuring out where to put it, hoping it isn’t a monster, it works so well. The candle slowly getting lower and lower as it goes.

Let me know your horror games that you love in the comments below.

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