Horrified: World of Monsters
- David Fox
- Aug 5
- 4 min read
Anyone who has ever got an Apple OS device to talk to a Windows PC without jumping through an inconceivable number of hoops first is, truly, a genius. Buy into the shiny white technological ecosystem and you're signing yourself up for copy/pasting/emailing files to your own address rather than just dragging them across like you would on a native system. I think it's something that Apple does deliberately to maintain a certain 'mistique'; as someone who works cross-platform, I can tell you it's a right pain in the ***.
I've played two games recently that promise 'compatibility'; this time, let's talk Horrified: World of Monsters, but look out for the review of Kinfire Delve (Incredible Dream Studios) on Board's Eye View soon... Horrified - no colon, no subtitle originally, but let's go with 'Horrified: Universal Monsters' for clarity - was a bit of a revelation when it was released by Ravensburger in 2019, with great production, presentation and game play, all at a very reasonable price point. The principles remain the same with this fourth iteration; so, briefly, Horrified is a cooperative game in which the players are generic B-movie heroes with unique powers trying to defeat a variety of monsters in a village, wherein the villagers are trying to get to certain destinations. The team loses either by reaching level seven on the Terror track or by running out of time, using the monster deck as a timer. To win, each monster requires both a unique condition to be met - usually by combining items strewn around the board - and then a 'killing blow' to defeat.
Boy, did it work well, using an interesting activation mechanism for the monsters which would occasionally do nothing at all but, when 'frenzied', might act twice. The game really kept players on their toes, with a quick defeat rarely far away, especially once the town's inhabitants appeared on the streets at inopportune moments. While potentially prone to 'alpha player' syndrome, I've never really experienced it when playing Horrified. Disappointingly, there were no expansions to the original game, just a standalone sequel (Horrified: American Monsters); then another 'standalone' sequel (Horrified: Greek Monsters) followed by this 'compatible, but only with the previous standalone sequel' sequel. Got it? Good.
I haven't played the two intervening versions of the game - American Monsters and Greek Monsters - but the main criticism I heard was that some monsters were 'underdeveloped'. Maybe the best of the monsters in the initial design went into Universal, with less refined baddies coming to the fore amid pressure to produce a follow up to a successful title. Fans also complained that there was no compatibility between Universal and American and, again, between Greek and either predecessor. Greek, however, changed the iconography to more generic symbols so that future editions - World of Monsters, for sure, but I don't know about the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons version - would be compatible. I must admit, I do find these generic icons harder to interpret than the specific ones from Universal but I guess that's the price you pay for compatibility.
Further concessions have been made in the form of thinner card stock and less impressive production overall, like the standees regularly slipping out of their stands; World's board is also busier and harder to parse. While the rulebook is fine to get going - tho', obviously, I already knew how to play - we're getting down to some D-list creatures which are less compelling, both thematically and mechanically. In ascending order of difficulty, the Yeti needs to be reunited with its three yeti-lings, the Sphinx has a maths puzzle to solve, and the Jiangshi (a Chinese hopping vampire in case, like me, you didn't know) has a polyomino mini-game to complete. I haven't compared the World of Monster deck cards with Universal, but World's monsters seem more swingy: more turns with nothing bad - or even something good - happening but, when bad stuff happens, boy, do you feel it! The Sphinx quickly increases the Threat and the Jiangshi is frequently in your space and in your face.
So what about the other monsters or, rather, monster? Universal came with six; World of Monsters comes with four and the last is the big daddy of public domain IPs, Cthulhu him/it/themself! A multi-stage mission is required to defeat everyone's favourite Great Old One but, here, again, a lack of development shows through, with some shonkily written rules that force one to seek clarification online. My son and I were a little underwhelmed by the big green guy, easily dodging the difficulties presented in his final phase. Assuming we were playing it right, of course.
Which brings me to difficulty. World of Monsters feels harder than Universal overall, tho' the Yeti can be a bit of a soft touch. Whereas we would commonly win on the 'Normal' difficulty of three monsters, three here feels much harder - particularly if the Yeti is off snacking in its cave: see Yeti Snack :-) - exacerbated by the Sphinx gobbling up your items and the Jiangshi devouring villagers and/or heroes. To be honest, I don't mind an increase in difficulty but, with the reduction in variability and the drop in product quality overall, Universal still feels like the keeper whereas World of Monsters is more of a 'something different' diversion which, at the end of the day, makes you appreciate the original all the more.
I haven't covered the minutiae of Horrified: World of Monsters as, if you're reading a review of the fourth game in a series, there's a good chance you know them already. The key question I can't answer is whether it + Greek Monsters yields that extra variability to balance out a three-monster game on a knife-edge. I have a feeling it might and, if you've got Greek, then perhaps World of Monsters might similarly offer that extra sauce you need to keep Horrified coming to the table.
(Review by David Fox)
