Doing another series for Final Girl was a no-brainer. The first set of modules in this endlessly customizable survival horror game was a massive success, taking the world of solo board gaming by storm. Our own Justin Bell had nothing but glowing praise when he reviewed the Final Girl base set, and I’m no different.

But a second series brings with it risks. There’s the dreaded sophomore slump, buckling under the pressures of expectations. Could Final Girl add extensions to the house without creating cracks in the foundations?

The Root of All Evil

If you’re looking for a more exhaustive description of Final Girl, I’ll direct you to Justin’s review, but here’s the quick pitch: the entire series is premised around the horror trope of the Final Girl, a female protagonist who manages to survive everything and lead the baddie to their ultimate demise. The roots of the Final Girl can be traced at least as far back as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), but the trope wasn’t identified until the late 1980’s.

Final Girl the game puts you in…

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"If you're going to make a sequel, do it right and make the same damn movie all over again."
-- Joe Bob Briggs, King of the Drive-In Movie

In 2019, Prospero Hall released Horrified, a cooperative game (co-op) that made Meeple Mountain’s Most Anticipated Games of GenCon 2019 list and won two of our Diamond Climber Awards of 2019 (Best Coop Game and Best Thematic Game). In her review, my former Meeple Mountain colleague, Ashley Gariepy, (Hi Smash!) said Horrified was “an incredible cooperative game that is easy to learn and teach and can be enjoyed by gamers and non-gamers alike.”

Let’s see how 2021’s Horrified: American Monsters stacks up against its predecessor, shall we?.

[caption id="attachment_295159" align="aligncenter" width="558"] Horrified: American Monsters[/caption]

How to Play

When I re-read Ashley’s review of Horrified for this review, I realized her descriptions of the setup, gameplay, and challenges were interchangeable with Horrified: American Monsters. If you’re unfamiliar with how Horrified games play, check out Ashley’s very well-written review of the original game and come back to find out more about the American Monsters edition.

The American Monsters

As you may already know (or have just learned from Ashley’s review), the original Horrified featured monsters who appeared…

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The board game industry loves to fixate on popular trends. Whenever a TV show, movie, or book becomes a breakout hit, publishers quickly push out board games trying to cash in on the craze. For example, The Walking Dead sparked a glut of zombie-themed games for a time. Similarly, Game of Thrones led to many backstabbing political games about scheming nobles. Even entire mechanics and genres will get a spotlight, like social deduction games proliferating after The Resistance grew popular. Which is why I’m so surprised that, despite the highly popular Among Us video game, only one board game attempted to translate that experience into tabletop: the topic of today’s review.

Among Cultists—because subtlety is for the weak—sounds like your typical social deduction game at first glance. The bad team, the cultists in this one, know each other and want to kill the other team or hit the round limit. The good team, the investigators, either want to vote out the cultists or score enough points to win.

Investigators earn points by playing cards to location decks, then flipping those cards over hoping to reveal success symbols. It shares similarities to Among Us - players move their character tokens around a map to colored room spaces as indicated on their route cards to take actions. However, the cultists aren't…

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When I was a kid, pop-up books were rather rudimentary, but even then I was enthralled by the possibilities. Today I am thankful for names like Matthew Reinhart and Robert Sabuda, creatives whose efforts have produced some of the pop-up books that grace our kids’ shelves. Few of these intricate productions survive intact, but that is only due to the vigor with which they are engaged and enjoyed in our home. They are popped until they drop.

It should come as no surprise, then, that The Shivers drew my attention. Described as a “Pop-up Tabletop Mystery Adventure” by the folks at Pop Fiction, this inaugural design from Andy Logan is the sort of box that begs investigation—both of the product itself and within the story it aims to tell. Players work together to solve a mystery via the clues dropped all over the pop-up rooms representing the Shivers family house in Fogmoor. 

Before I ever cracked the shrink on the box, though, I trembled at the other side of the coin. The Shivers is also something of a role playing game. One player assumes the responsibilities of the Storyteller, sitting behind the pop-ups leading and guiding the others through the scenario. The intended experience, then, also involves the other players loosely “becoming" the characters represented on their standees in…

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Ever since I was first introduced to Carcassonne way back in 2002, I have been addicted, eagerly gobbling up and incorporating every expansion, mini-expansion, and promo that I can get my hands on. I distinctly remember a point in time when a game of Carcassonne only took 30 minutes to an hour. Now, it’s an all-day affair.

There are times when I miss that rapid-fire gameplay, and I suppose I have nobody to blame but myself. There’s no rule that says I absolutely have to play with everything every single time that I play, but the temptation is too hard to resist.

And that’s why standalone Carcassonne games like Hunters & Gatherers, South Seas, and the subject of this review—Mists Over Carcassonne—are so important (at least to me). Firstly, they serve as out-of-the-box game experiences that allow me to enjoy playing Carcassonne without having to spend time separating tiles into their various expansions. Secondly, they serve as potent reminders that Carcassonne isn’t just a game. It’s a game system. With just a few slight tweaks to the rules and a couple of extra components, it’s almost like you’re playing a brand-new game. One version of Carcassonne may just provide you with new avenues to explore to earn more points, while others give you interesting ways to interact with…

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From the chilling screams of my last horror board game review of Scream to reviewing yet another board game based on a horror property franchise on its deathbed! Fate has led me down a dark and unexpected path today, and we are delving into the heart-pounding world of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, where terror awaits at every corner if you are playing the Trespassers. For that one player sitting on the Sawyer family throne, they might have some new ingredients for the evening family BBQ if things go their way.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Slaughterhouse is a One-versus-All experience armed with five different scenarios which all take place on the same farmhouse board. These scenarios are goals that the Trespassers will need to accomplish before they can escape. It can be something simple, like finding some car parts and gas, or something more complex, like taking photos of the place or gathering evidence. Meanwhile, the Sawyer family’s goal is to relentlessly pursue the Trespassers and slaughter them.

[caption id="attachment_284185" align="alignnone" width="800"] The Sawyer Family loves Grandpa[/caption]

Plenty of Pig’s Blood Here

The Trespassers themselves don’t have any special abilities or asymmetrical powers. The only difference between them is their starting personal item, which can break a rule or two. Trespassers always…

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Meeple Mountain first reviewed this game in 2022 with my colleague Brody Sheard’s detailed video review of My Father’s Work. Now we bring you a written review!

The box for My Father’s Work looks big, heavy, and intimidating. That’s because it is. Coming in at just over ten pounds, it is the heaviest game, by weight, in my collection. Add to that the four hours needed to complete a single game, and I would understand if your first reaction was, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Oh, but you would be missing out on such a good game.

[caption id="attachment_279191" align="aligncenter" width="600"] My Father's Work is a big box.[/caption]

Allow me to open the ancestral gates to our estate and take you on a tour of My Father’s Work. Along the way, I’ll explain why this is one of the best games my gaming group has played in the last few years.

NOTE: Despite the importance and fun of the changing narrative aspects of the game, I am keeping this a spoiler-free review so you can explore the stories, the choices, and the ramifications of those choices for the first time yourselves. 

We’re All Mad Here. I’m Mad. You’re Mad.

It is the early 1800s. You…

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The first time I heard about Steven Rhodes was on Threadless, the clothing website featuring art from hundreds of incredible independent creators. Rhodes has a very iconic style, leaning hard into the recreation of children’s books from the 1970s and 80s. The twist is that for every picture of an innocent-looking child riding a skateboard or digging for treasure, there’s something dark arts-ish going on in the same image.

I spent a lot of time shopping at Threadless, buying shirts and hoodies online then driving down the street (I’m in Chicago, where Threadless is based) to pick up my orders. Although I never bought any of the Rhodes collection for myself, I admired Rhodes’ work from afar.

Cryptozoic Entertainment built an entire series of games around Rhodes’ illustrations, so when I had the chance to review both volumes of the Steven Rhodes Games collection, I raised my hand. The games feature Rhodes’ images throughout, but the games were designed by a collection of other people. The result is a very uneven bag; if you are a fan of the art, my advice is to skip the games altogether, and buy a poster or an action figure from the Steven Rhodes Threadless shop.

There are three bookshelf-sized games in the first volume, a project which raised more…

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Last year, I sung the praises of the ridiculously fun, don’t get caught out in the sun, game The Hunger. When I saw there was an expansion being released for it, I pounced on it like a hungry Louis de Pointe du Lac would a particularly plump rat.

Here’s my report.

Note: this review assumes you’re familiar with the base game. If you’re not, go check out my review of The Hunger and then come back.

What’s New?

Wounds

First, there is the concept of ‘wounds’. At the start of a game where this expansion is included, each player receives eight ‘Wound’ cards which lie on top of a single “You are injured” card. Certain things which take place in the game may result in a player receiving one or more wounds. Once a player is tasked with drawing a wound but doesn’t have one in their supply, they start losing victory points for each wound they can no longer take. Furthermore, if wounds aren’t healed (removed from their deck) by the end of the game, the player will lose two victory points per wound remaining in their deck during end-of-game scoring. Wounds can be healed by hunting humans during a turn in which one or more wounds were played from the player’s hand.

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Deep at the bottom of a series of dungeons, corrupt cultists are working to bring an ancient demon back to the surface, where it has seethed, waiting for millennia for its chance to return. You and your band of Adventurers are the only thing that can stop the devastation and destruction that return will bring.

Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift (known from here on simply as Perdition’s Mouth) is a massive dungeon crawl that does away with two staples of standard Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fare: the Dungeon Master (DM) and dice. Instead of these two seemingly essential items, the game offers a series of written scenarios that are played out across five double-sided boards, and makes use of multiple decks of cards and two rondels that govern both your actions and those of the plethora of bad guys you’ll be up against.

Sound intriguing? It should! Read on as I go into greater detail.

[caption id="attachment_262756" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Perdition's Mouth: Abyssal Rift (Revised Eidtion)[/caption]

Greater Detail, Part One

What, no DM?

Instead of a DM, Perdition’s Mouth presents you with 32 written scenarios that introduce you to the gaming system and guide you through the dungeons.

[caption id="attachment_262757" align="aligncenter" width="388"]

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11:57

I cannot stand the social deduction game Werewolf, nor its dominant variant One Night Ultimate Werewolf. In both, players are assigned secret roles as the denizens of the unfortunate village where the events take place. Perhaps you will be the Troublemaker, swapping player roles while others sleep, or the Insomniac, who wakes up in the middle of the night to check their role. You may well be the werewolf, terrorizing the town and ripping innocents to shreds.

The goal of the game depends on your role, but most of the villagers want to figure out who the werewolf is and execute them. The game alternates between Days, when players discuss and accuse and vote to execute, and Nights, when players close their eyes and specific individuals are prompted to perform actions corresponding to their roles. One player is the Narrator, a thankless position that has been replaced in recent years by an app, who times the Days and leads the other players through the script for the Night phase.

Werewolf is extremely popular, and I’m happy for those who enjoy it. Just don’t make me play. There aren’t many games I would pass up…

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Back The Stifling Dark on Kickstarter

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