Long story, short

This is a great cooperative family game for ages 5 and up. The components are awesome, the ghosts are adorable (not scary), and the little ghost meeples fit on the tips of my sons fingers for added fun.  Playtime is quick and doesn’t exceed my son’s attention span.  It scales well with player count and even has more advanced rules for when things get too samey or easy.  Highly Recommended!

The Premise

You’re a bunch of ghost fightin’ treasure hunters (duh!), hunting for treasure in a haunted house, fighting ghosts along the way.

The Rules

It’s roll and move. Get in, get all the gems out of the house one at a time, and get all of your group out before the ghosts overrun the place.

Whenever a room is occupied by 3 ghosts, the ghosts are replaced with a Haunting.  It takes one hunter to defeat a ghost.  It takes two hunters in the same room to defeat a Haunting.  You defeat them by a roll of the dice.  If things get so bad that 6 Hauntings are on the board, you all lose.

With the basic rules, I’ve found us evenly matched with the game.  Ghosts arrive by random chance — the roll of a die determines if a new ghost appears, and the draw of a card determines where.

My favorite part is when the ghost shows up on the toilet!  🙂
–Boden

The advanced rules add cards to the draw deck that lock blue or green doors, restricting your movement through the house, making it more difficult to get to the gems and get out in time.

That’s it!

It’s pretty luck-driven, but it works. The artwork is fantastic, the theme is kid-friendly, the components are fun to play with, and you win or lose together.  It’s also pretty affordable if you can find it on sale (I paid $19).  Overall it’s a winner.  Even if it plays itself out, it has helped the two of us bond over boardgames and that’s pretty cool.