The parents go out for a dinner or a few evenings at the theater, the little ones stay at home and the babysitter, often more busy thinking about their own interests than the children, stops at home for the night and supervises them. This incipit has been chewed up by many narrative plots, with a greater frequency with regard to horror films. So if you have already experienced these dynamics in some movies, you have never tried them in a board game: today we are going to discover a preview Boogeyman, new game of Escape Studios and Antonio Ferrara, as well as a new chapter dedicated to the fantastic group of Pizza & Investigations.
The game incorporates the same characters seen in Tales of Evil - only younger ones - and puts them inside a house together with the terrible babysitter. Obviously there is no shortage of monstrous creatures to fight: for this the presence of the Black Man, the Boogeyman, who will chase us from time to time trying to catch us all.
The game
Unlike Tales of Evil, which placed the emphasis on exploration, Boogeyman instead offers us in an already open board, consisting of several rooms. Each room will have overlapping tokens inside which, one at a time, will be removed by completing some cards. Each “tower” made up of two counters will have a third one on top depicting a light bulb, which can be switched from on to off. The objective of the players will therefore be to remove them, turning the respective card and completing the event in question.
To start the end of the game, players will have to find a triptych of objects of the same color, hidden under many other tokens to turn that will allow you to take useful objects but, at the same time, will make noise and allow the Babysitter to chase them. The encounter with this will start a dedicated card with some negative event, and also will move the stress counter - as happened in Tales of Evil - forward by one. When it reaches the final value, the game will be over and the party is defeated.
In addition to the Babysitter there will also be the feared Boogeyman, a terrible monster who each end of the round will appear in one of the rooms, he will turn off the light (passing from the light bulb on to the one off, and then to another more punitive deck of cards) and in case of an encounter with one of the children, he will turn the relative Boogeyman card. Even the monster, like the Babysitter, will have a stress counter.
Both the stress counters and those of the appearance of the Boogeyman will also move a couple of other event cards that will change the game: some of these will generate activities Fusion System, actions to be done in real life to keep the game going without malus (such as playing on the ground, with the light off or other activities that are simple to do but still fun to intersect with the game).
Finally, the roll of the dice has been simplified, as has the combat, which is more detached from the game-book mechanics in favor of a more “classic” board game.
The end
After taking the three items, players will be able to start the ending: after checking their personal objective, capable of making you recover a status (you will have three per game, after which you will be stunned and therefore you can only be awakened by another player ), the comic ending will start based on some values within the game, scenes to be done one player at a time that will make you lose (in case of failure) points, cards and status, so as to see who will survive everything.
The game offers four modes: if the one we told you about is cooperative (and can also be played alone), Boogeyman also allows you to play in competitive mode (where 6 players can be children and 1 player the Boogeyman, complete with a deck of additional dedicated cards) and semi-competitive (when the first child loses all status, he will start playing as Boogeyman).
Boogeyman offers gameplay that is much easier to manage than its predecessor: every approach to the game, even if it requires a precise setting of the map, offers a game that is easy to manage, multifaceted and fun. The cards pay homage to the world of pop culture and horror in a witty way and, every single action, even if done properly, could bring disadvantages to the group and the player.
The results of the events are managed by a classic d6 (you can, however, modify the rolls of +1 or -1 with candies, a sort of currency that you will have in play), while the calculation of the spaces of movement and any risks (especially seen that you will know where the Boogeyman has already been and where the Babysitter is) will be vital. Funny interactions between the cards that, in some cases, could lead you to really fun situations to play and fantastic how all the dynamics will be intersected with each other in a precise way.
If there is one thing that we have not been able to experience much, it concerns the ending: the prototype we received only had three stories per comic, against the many more that should be available, and these have somewhat turned off the adrenaline created during the game . We are confident that the retail version will be refined in the final version, and we will certainly analyze it in the review. In the meantime, you can find the Kickstarter at this link.
