The creak of footsteps on the stairs, the smell of something foul and dead, the feel of something crawling down your back. This and more can be found in this award-winning and highly acclaimed game of strategy and horror. Will you and your friends survive a Betrayal At House On The Hill?
The Basics
Betrayal At House On The Hill, or just Betrayal from here on out, is a 2004 exploration/traitor game published by Avalon Hill. Three to six players all enter a haunted house filled with spooky events, cursed items and creepy happenings. Each game starts with all of the players working together to explore the house room by room. Rather than a traditional fixed board Betrayal has tiles which represent rooms in the house, as players move around they uncover new tiles and start to build up a floor plan of the house that way. At some point during the game the ‘haunt’ kicks in, at which point one player turns on the others and will attempt to kill them, usually with supernatural assistance.
Gameplay
Betrayal has two very different stages to its gameplay, the exploration phase and the haunt phase:
Exploration Phase
The first step in the exploration phase is for each player to select a character they will be playing as during the game. The haunted house ascetic starts coming into play immediately as each of the characters is a horror movie trope, we have a high school jock, crazy scientist and creepy children among other. While all the characters are slightly different no one feels more powerful than the other so it avoids anyone being disappointed, my group tends to just go for whatever character feels right for them rather than checking the stats. Each of the characters have numbered attributes for speed, sanity, might and knowledge but speed is the most important skill in this stage of the game as it dictates how many rooms the plater can move through. All of the stats can go up or down during the game as supernatural events in the house can make the player better or worse over time. The bulk of the exploration phase is players moving through the house, the house is discovered by placing tiles from a central pile onto the relevant floor the player is on. The house has three floors and players are free to explore all three floors but only have access to the ground floor to start with. If a player uncovers a tile with one of three special symbols on then that players turn ends and they have to draw a card which matches that symbol. The games has three kinds of cards Event, Omen and Item. Event cards are something happening to the player in question and, dependant on the roll a dice, will often either increase or decrease certain stats. Item cards are objects that really only come into play during the haunt phrase but Omen cards are by the far the most interesting. Omen cards are similar to Item cards, as often an omen is an item, but more importantly every time an Omen card is drawn then there is a chance the haunt can activate. When an Omen card is drawn the player must roll six of Betrayal’s unusual dice (unlike standard dice the dice in Betrayal only have zero, one or two pips). If the number rolled is less than the number of Omen cards the nothing happens (phew) but roll more then the haunt begins. This is wonderful mechanic as it adds tension to a the opening phases of the game which would be lacking otherwise, the haunt rolls start off almost as an afterthought but as time passes they more and more edgy. The number of cards keeps going up and there comes a point where the haunt must be on the next roll and that’s when this game really shines.
Haunt Phase
Once a player has triggered the haunt the players consult a table to decide who is the betrayer and what haunt will be played. This is a very well thought out process on the part of the game designers as it ensures the room tiles and items to be used in the haunt will be present. Most of the time the player who triggered the haunt is the betrayer but it can sometimes be more specific such as the most sane player. That person then becomes the betrayer who’s quest is often to kill the other players, who are then referred to as heroes. The game offer over 50 haunt scenarios for people to enjoy and they rely heavily on classic horror monsters and situations. Dracula, Frankenstein, zombies and witches are all covered here and the ability to take control of these monsters is definitely a lot of fun for the betrayer. The haunts also cover more general movie set ups like The Thing or Hollow Man so it’s a good mix of styles. It’s clear a lot of love has been put into getting all of the classics into the game and the implementation of how these monsters can compliment the gameplay is handled well. The betrayer and the heroes each have a separate rule book which explains what each needs to do to win, how monsters work and other rule clarifications. These rule books are very similar but there is certain information the heroes know that the betrayer doesn’t and vice versa, there isn’t a great deal of strategy in Betrayal but what there is can be found here. Decided what to verbally declare around the table and how to best go about defeating the betrayer can be crucial in winning or losing this game. Having read the books the players all return to the table and exploration can continue but, more importantly, players and monsters can all attack each other and are competing to complete their win condition. Players will die if their stats drop below a certain level but the combat is simple enough to follow and are based on dice rolls only for the most part.
Overall the gameplay in Betrayal is very solid but the exploration phase can drag somewhat in the final few rounds especially if haunt rolls continue to be under the Omen card number for too long. However exploring the house in general is great fun and the cards are always well written and play into the haunted house theme. The game really comes into its own during the haunt, as the heroes bravely try and defeat the darkness a real sense of over the top drama starts to happen. All the haunts I have come across have been fairly balanced but the floor layout can give either side an advantage but with 50 haunts in the book then there is plenty of replay value.
Board & Components
Betrayal is currently just over £30 on Amazon right now which is probably the mid range of board game pricing these days but you do get a hell (see what I did there) of a lot of components for your money. For starters the game comes with 44 room tiles for the house which are made of decent quality cardboard and are quite detailed, the six character cards are of equal quality and are all doubled sided. On top of this nearly 150 small (about the size of a 5p) tokens are provided which represent monsters, wall switches, item piles and all manner of stuff. Throw into that dice, character figures, plastic tabs, Omen cards, Event card, Item cards, three rule books and a damage track as well and you can see the value for money. Clearly some sacrifices had to be made to keep costs down and this does mean the painting on the character figures isn’t the best. They are serviceable certainly but not outstanding, so much so that I ended up having mine repainted. Despite this complaint the overall quality of the components is good, although they are more functional for the most part, but most care has been spent on the room tiles which are the most important element.
Theme
The theme is definitely the best thing about Betrayal, while the gameplay is solid and the components are decent, its the theme is what really sets this game apart from similar ones. The designers know what kind of game they were aiming for and filled it with B horror movie clichés. Almost everything on the cards is a double entendre; a spear pulses with power and the walls feel warm and moist. This adds a great deal of comedy to a game which is clearly a pastiche to those kind of movies, anyone with an interest in horror movies or creepiness in general is going to get real kick out of reading the content on the cards out loud (which is a big part of the game) in their best Vincent Price voice. The haunts are also in keeping with theme offering a small opening and ending statements to be read at various stages and the majority of the scenarios are more played for laughs rather than shocks. The game is a real delight to play through from start to finish and never gets too serious despite the subject matter. It’s a game which really embraces the ridiculous and I love it so much for that.
Final Thoughts
I really like Betrayal, as a fan of B horror movies the theme was always going to appeal to me and my gaming group. While the theme is pulled off really well the actual game is also a lot of fun to play, the ever changing nature of the ‘board’ means things will always be different every time and the sheer amount of haunts means it will take a long time before you see the same haunt twice. However it won’t suit everyone the lack of real strategy will annoy some and those wanting a serious tactical approach will find little of that in Betrayal. Like the movies it lovingly mirrors blind luck has just as much to play as well laid out plans. The randomness of the board layout and the timing the haunt happens can improve the chances of the betrayer or the heroes winning the day, I can see how this would also upset certain people. Prime example of this is in one of our recent games we had to light candles to perform an exorcism, the candles could only be lit in certain rooms which contained fire. By sheer luck two of such rooms were right next to each other so it was a simple job to light these candles and move them around. The heroes comfortably won the day but if those rooms had been at different ends of the board it would have been a massive struggle. The 50 scenarios the game has will no doubt differ in quality and an average game group will never get close to seeing all of them. Of the 5 scenarios I’ve personally played (Frankenstein’s Legacy, Hellbeasts, Invisible Traitor, The Star Sickness and Poltergeist for those who care) only one of them has felt like a bit of dud and that was The Star Sickness which has a hidden traitor mechanic. The game doesn’t handle this hidden traitor gameplay well and while having a tiny board game version of The Thing sounds cool it just doesn’t work very well in practice. All of these are tiny complains about a game which knows exactly what kind of game it wants to be and revels in it over the top horror theme. Get this with the right group of people, who want to have a bit of fun rather than pound each other into submission, then you’ll struggle to find a game which offers more enjoyment or content for your buck than Betrayal At House On The Hill.
Rating:
4 out of 5 Gravedigger’s biscuits
Grave Diggers Biscuit 