Reviews: Betrayal at House on the Hill

Title: Betrayal at House on the Hill
Designer(s): Rob Daviau, Bruce Glassco, Bill McQuillan, Mike Selinker, Teeuwynn Woodruff
Publisher: Avalon Hill

Betrayal at House on the Hill was the game which got me back to board-gaming after a close-to-decade-long hiatus. Before that, the limits of my board game knowledge was kept within the confines of Scrabble, Monopoly, and Cluedo (I still love Cluedo though). However, when I saw the replayability and strong story behind this game, I was hooked.

SETUP

Betrayal’s setup is pretty straightforward – you choose your character, set up the entrance and pathway to the upper floor, the upper floor tile, and the basement tile. After that, you pick your character, place your minis at the entrance, shuffle the floor tiles, and you’re ready to escape the house.

Within each box, you have:

• 6 character minis
• 6 double-sided pentagon character cards
• 8 six-sided dice with values of zero, one, and two
• Top, Ground, and Basement floor tiles
• Monster counters
• Survivor’s Handbook (DO NOT READ BEFORE HAND)
• Traitor’s Handbook (DO NOT READ BEFORE HAND)

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The game is for 3 to 6 players, with each player choosing any characters they liked. Usually, we’d randomise our characters to diversify game play. 

Yes, the snake can come.

STORY OF THE GAME

On a clichéd, dark and stormy night, a rag-tag group of people find themselves seeking shelter in the only place they happen to believe exist – a run-down house that looks to be the stuff of nightmares. With little choice (and probably egging from someone who knows no consequence), they step in. The doors shut, lightning strikes, and the worst idea of their lives begins to unravel.

CHARACTERS

Players: Myself, Max a.k.a. The Tiger, Lyn, Lina, Raven Silvers

Each of us took the role of people who have entered this mad house (probably with Sarah’s poking) – a couple of kids, a couple of young adults, a medium / soap-loving aunt, and a professor / priest. Depending on which you’d prefer, each archetype had a different character on either side of the character card.

This was one of the first few haunts we played with Lina’s new set.

PLOT TWIST

For this particular game, it took us about six omens before the haunt started, with our Haunt being United We Stand – a haunt about the traitor and his/her ability to absorb the bodies of their friends. (Or a nicer / less messy way of cannibalism. LOL.)

So I was traitor, and everyone else were supposed survivors – let the games begin.

The first thing the group did was to head straight to the basement, with the exception of Raven, who stayed in the garden.

Here’s why:

• Raven was playing Zoe Ingstrom, the little girl in the character pack. She had found a safe in the swamp and tried to open it. The problem was this – the safe was on top of her so every time she was unable to open the safe, it crushed her character more. In the end, her character died not because of the haunt, but because she couldn’t get the rolls to open the safe and it ended up trapping her.

 

• Lyn, The Tiger, and Lina rushed to the basement (typically something you don’t do in the middle of a B-Horror movie). The first character to go was Lyn – this happened with every game of Betrayal that followed after this session.

 
At the end of the game, the survivors won, though Lyn decided that her characters were going to stay away from the basement for a while.

A game which converted some of my friends into board gamers as well, Betrayal at House on the Hill has immense replayability with 50 different haunts, with each house having a different layout because you shuffle the tiles with every game. It promises fun without fear, and tons of laughter (the right kind).
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Betrayal at House on the Hill is published by Avalon Hill and has an expansion called, ‘Widow’s Walk’. You can find out more about this game here.

“We’ll be fine!” they said.