Horrified is back in its fifth iteration, this time taking on the long-running and increasing relevant TTRPG progenitor with Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons.
Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons is arguably one of — if not the — best boardgame that I’ve played this year. However, the issue with being a standout best is that you attract a little bit more scrutiny on the negatives. In short, though: Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons is a 1-5 player co-operative game about hoarding items, carefully moving around a board and defeating monsters — it’s a fantastic use of the D&D IP, from its characters, NPCs and locations right through to the monsters.
As with other iterations of Horrified, it comes with its own little twists. In this case the twists are the monsters being really specific and characters having a themed special action, and that each of these uses a D20 to add a degree of luck and randomness to gameplay. Aside from these, you can read our original Horrified review, or our review of Horrified: Greek Monsters, to get a grip on the gameplay.
“Horrified is nothing short of being the best kind of fun you can have around a table with friends.” is what we wrote about the original Horrified back in 2020, heck, our title was “Prospero Hall’s Horrified is the most compelling cooperative game since Pandemic“. Incredibly high praise, however, as the series has continued to evolve its become a little obvious that it’s got room to evolve and refine in both the ‘turn set-up’ and ‘manual’ departments.
Pandemic is the best example for how to play a game of Horrified, and there’s a couple more things that these continued iterations of Horrified could learn from it: Firstly, Pandemic‘s map is familiar, we all know the general shape of the world, however, even still, when new things are added to the board their location is clearly indicated on the card. With Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons (with it’s 20+ locations) it becomes a bit of a chore to place out citizens (most rounds) and items (all rounds) as they only have where they should go written as a name, and the map is not as familiar as a map of the world, let alone indicated visually on the card or token. This could even be easily offset by using the location number system that is employed for the Displacer Beast movement.
Secondly, Pandemic establishes the risk early on in its rules. At no point does Horrified: Dungeon & Dragons make it plain and clear that if you have no items on you when a monster hits you, you’re out for the rest of the game. Nor does it stress that you should definitely take a gamble on using your special action at least once per turn. These are both clear, missed opportunities and could have been a simple boxout early in the instructions.
With that said. Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons is fantastic. There’s a streamlined beauty once its in play, with each player turn followed by a clearly indicated monster turn. One monster has a frenzy token on it, which means that one is slightly more likely to move, and — as with previous iterations — they each feel both daunting and individual enough that you don’t really want them to get to move, and you’ll definitely pick out a monster that you ESPECIALLY don’t want to move.
There are only four monsters here, versus six with the earliest iterations, however the Dragon comes with its own sub-board (lair) to explore, and things like the teleporting Displacer Beast and multi-attack, D20-roll powered eye-stalks of the Beholder are fantastic. I said earlier that citizens, items and the map were themed excellently, and the are, however the standouts are the (unfortunately not named, only named for their class) player characters and their clever special abilities.
Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons is a masterclass in rebranding a robust, well-balanced game system, and having played it a few times — and identified the weak spots in the manual — I can safely say that this one is a keeper, and it’ll be brought out to play again in future.
You can find Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons online at the website of it’s publisher, Ravensburger.
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