There is a good amount of fun to be had with the idea of a group of heavily armed hunters marching into the wilderness only to realise they have no idea where the monster they are after actually is. That uncertain feeling is what defines Beast, designed by Aaron West and published by Studio Midhall, this hidden movement game throws one player into the role of the monster, while up to three other players attempt to track, trap and kill it before entire villages, and quite a bit of livestock, are ripped to pieces.
If you have read some of my other reviews, Beast falls into my current trend of “Where’s John?” games. In our intro game, I indeed played as the beast, and my friends were the hunters. Beast stood out for me because of the atmosphere. Playing as the beast at times was a little like a game of Werewolf (or Mafia) in which there was a certain delight in the shock on peoples faces as I took another poor sheep off the board.
Beast is one of only two games with hidden movement mechanics that I have played — the other being Sniper Elite: The Board Game — where I could hurt the hunters, and that was great. I had more agency than I am used to. Some games I have seen, and played, in the past year have started to feel like spreadsheet management, and I get enough of that in my day job, but with Beast, the hunting, just like a good social deduction game, never made me feel like that.
The time is limited in Beast, so I had to always be moving to attack that game’s objectives, all whilst trying my best to deny the hunters their round objectives. This inability to just spend a round hiding worked against me equally, as my movement across the board worked for me.
The board, I must note, is double sided, so you can play two-player on one side, and three to four on the other side.
In any game like this, there were moments like this:
“Would John double back?”
“I reckon he would”
“I don’t know, I think he might be here in the space next to you”
“Let’s put a trap down here then”
All the while I’ve moved into a different sector of the board entirely.
On your turn, you can use up to two cards from your hand. The cards are marked with red and blue spots. You can perform one of each card type. This for me was one of the few downsides of Beast. In our game I had a round in which I had useless cards, and only one of them could cause damage. As my beast, a delightful toad/frog thing named Bolganin, had a single point of damage per attack, that round was a dud. And without the ability, based on the cards I had, to upgrade or get my cards back from the discard, I was stuck. One of the hunter players had a card that allowed him to see my hand, and even he said my hand was pants. Sadly, I knew at that moment that I didn’t have a chance for this game.
Killing creatures on the board earns you grudge tokens, and at the end of a game day, or when a card instructs, you can upgrade your character… this is the key to victory, and I will admit, I needed to get my head around that faster than I did. Hunters have the same kinds of plays as you, but each player, whether hunter or beast, will have their own special abilities.
One of the mechanics that I loved, even if it was not in my favour, was the ability to see my tracks. As players moved, if they crossed a path I had taken, I would tell them if I had been in that space and would put a token down. This allowed players to work out which way I might have gone, and I really enjoyed that. I was marking my movement down on a wipeable board that the game gave me to make sure I didn’t miss anything. When you reveal yourself after an attack, or the hunters search your location, you get your used movement cards back and you replay the path you have taken.
Near the end of the game, I was revealed. The hunters moved to my location, and I hid again. Moving, I knew they would instantly find me again. So I stayed put. The next turn though, they couldn’t attack me, even though they had narrowed down that they were literally standing on me, until they pulled a search card. Sadly, the next time round, they did. I died… Screaming. In real life, not the character.
Beast is very intimidating on a first play, as the rule book — as they often are — is very thorough. But, once you start playing, you will quickly get the hang of it. Personalities are the biggest element to the game. I am normally a slow and stealthy player, but this time I tried to shake up my normal pattern and I went aggressive. However, my fellow players were a cautious bunch. There was A LOT of “But, John might do this” talk, and it meant at one point, due to their indecision, that I had to wait close to forty minutes to get another turn… which I then spent just one minute taking. It was the only time I lost my cool. I had to beg for them to do something so we could keep playing the game. Not as bad as Catan, mind, which is a game that I despise, due to the amount of time that the game takes between turns.
I felt that this was largely due to us being new to Beast, and on more plays we would all know what to do. If you are new to the game, if any of you has experience with it before, they should be the beast. If this is your first game, and you are the beast, you can’t exactly ask the others for help, but they can openly ask questions of each other on what to do, which is a boon to them.
With a game or two under your belt I genuinely think that Beast is the strongest one vs many game out there. The quality of the player boards, cards and tokens is amazing. I especially enjoyed the pig and sheep meeples. The artwork is something straight from a Nordic folktale.
One thing of extra note that I enjoyed, was that the lore for each beast clearly shows that in a way, it’s in the right and it’s responding to an invasion of its habitat — just a small bit of social commentary that we noted through our play. Another cool thing to throw classic fairy tales on their head, is that the hunter characters are all women, which was cool.
The component quality, the artwork, the beast and hunter themes, and finally the gameplay all makes Beast succeed because it leans on the theatricality of the setting. Every turn tightens the net, the hunters spread out searching an area whilst asking “Where’s John?”, and then I pop up in a totally different quadrant of the board whilst taking a bite out of a farmer. Give Beast a try and you will not regret it, even in losing, I had a brilliant time.
If you’re interested in buying a copy of Beast, you can find it on Zatu Games.
