Deciding that we should really try other games, my weekend game/gym buddy & I broke out Monster Slaughter. It is sort of a reverse Scooby Doo game: you play the monsters attacking those meddling kids in the cabin. I've had this game since the Kickstarter about 8 years ago and so finally got around to playing.
I did watch a couple play through vids, though they were not entirely helpful. But first thing was setting up the game, which uses the box as the cabin. It gets a bit complicated and I messed up on the cards a bit. Next time we'll do a bit better. The rule book is fairly small, but also fairly incomplete in terms of explaining a few things in a clear manner.
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| almost set up |
Each room gets a pile of cards, with a victim in theory either buried or on top of the deck - I got mismatched interpretations there! There is a time limit, and the moon gets moved forward 1 hour after everyone has played one of their monsters. The game ends either at 8am or when all the victims are killed. You get points based on a few things, and part of this becomes a social deduction game.
You pick both your favorite meal (aka, which victim you want to kill and eat) and if you kill them, you get a brain (brains!). And you also have the order you think the victims will get killed in. These are hidden from the other players. You can help the victims, and a few times of doing that you start to figure out those things a bit. For instance, one of the victims was the 3rd in my order, so I actually played cards to help her out. At that point, the other players can realize that this character is not your first in your list.
Anyway, it moves fairly quickly, and there are only 6 options to deal with. One of them did not make sense until you realize that someone may be trying to kill a victim for extra points. Scaring a victim allows you to move them, so you can thwart the other players.
Each hour there is a new twist to the game as you flip over the moon cards. Remembering those temporary changes can be a bit challenging. The other part I've not figured out is the victim wound tracking. In theory the minis are on a space with a colored cube indicator, and that cube is on the wound track. But, ince you flip over a victim card, the character moves to the room. Keeping track of the color cube with the mini missing becomes difficult. But, d'oh, just realized: we have the character tokens we use for our kill order. There are enough of those for 5 or 6 players, so we can just use one of those sets. Next time we play that will take a bit of cognitive load off!
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| in play |
