Brightview Haunting
- Board's Eye View
- May 9
- 2 min read
There's a deep connection between horror-themed boardgames and horror movies, and we don't just mean games that are based on specific films or which, like Horrified (Ravensburger) and Funkoverse (Funko Games/Goliath) make use of Hollywood monsters. Last Friday (Pendragon/Ares) and, more recently, Terrorscape (Ice Makes), are games that are very clearly inspired by films in the slasher horror genre but without borrowing directly from particular IPs. The Brightview Haunting, from Typhon Games, follows in that tradition. It's designed by Justin Gale, with art by Irina French and Henning Ludvigsen.
Like Last Friday and Terrorscape, The Brightview Haunting is an asymmetric 1 vs many tussle, where one player controls a demon ('The Whisperer') and 1-5 other players are Exorcists working cooperatively to banish the Whisperer and free its victim. You need to have at least three Exorcists in play, so in a two- or three-player game, the non-Whisperer players will need to control more than one Exorcist. For that reason, we've preferred this as a 4-6 player game.
The Exorcists are moving around the board searching for items with the aim of reducing the power of the Whisperer. What differentiates The Brightview Haunting from similar 1 vs many horror games is the Whisperer's ability to 'possess' Exorcists - effectively switching their side so that they join 'team Whisperer'. Other Exorcist players may try to use items to bring them back to their side. Various items and actions will cause an Exorcist to gain 'Corruption'; as their Corruption increases it hinders their actions and when it maxes out on the track it makes them vulnerable to being possessed...
The Whisperer has a 'control meter' that clocks their power in the game: as the control meter rises, so does the Whisperer's abilities. The control meter only moves one way (ie: it can rise but never fall) so you can expect the Whisperer to grow in power through the course of play, giving each game a distinctive arc and forcing increasingly defensive play from the Exorcists.
In our plays at Board's Eye View some players were initially confused by all the different terms introduced in the rules (absorb, invoke, infuse, warding, disperse, pulse, perception, resonance, etc) but it didn't take long to grasp them all and we soon realised they added to our thematic immersion. And The Brightview Haunting is certainly an immersive and exciting game because it's not just a 'cat and mouse' struggle between the demon and Exorcists but it soon becomes a struggle too for the Exorcists to keep everyone onside.
Typhon Games are unleashing The Brightview Haunting on Kickstarter on 13 May. We'll add a link when the campaign goes live.
