Nightmare Horror Adventures is a spooky, two to five player board game where you solve a mystery together. This is an immersive tabletop game where you will be using tiles, cards, a pawn, and a computer to really get into the feel of things. Each player also gets at least one character to read for, along with their description and personality.
Nightmare Horror Adventures wants you to get into character and put on a bit of a show. Your character’s introduction gives you a feel for their personality. Within the game, you will need to read flashback cards and action cards with sections dedicated to specific characters. You will want to keep in the style of your character to give the game life.
The game itself has everyone working together, trying to solve the mystery of who killed your parents. Some of you are cousins, others siblings, but in short a bunch of your parents were found dead in the backyard of this manor house — with one body was missing. None of you have many memories of the day that this tragedy took place, but you do have some clues in your character card about items within the house that you can use to trigger flashbacks.
Flashbacks are the main way that you learn about the story within the game. These flashbacks bring forth information on the adults who have passed, allowing you to fill out little sheets on each individual adult. These sheets have different characteristics like hot-tempered or cool-headed, selfish or selfless. Having this information on these characters will help you solve the mystery in the end.
When it comes to taking turns in the game, everyone works together. You can either enter a new room, explore a corner of the room or go to another room (anywhere in the house) that you have previously been. After you take a turn, you need to hit the Action button on your computer. This timer is counting down until the end of the game, but you are not really sure when the end is.
Nightmare Horror Adventures also has moments where the clock interrupts you — asking everyone to close their eyes and put on the provided mask. Every person within the game has an animal that they are keeping a secret. When they hear their noise, they can take off their mask and read what is presented on the computer. They then need to do that task. These tasks are pretty strange — from grabbing sharp objects and dumping them onto the table to jump-scaring your friends.
The ending of the game also has you all closing your eyes and possible jumpscares happening — if your friends are really into acting that is! I do not want to spoil anything, but Nightmare Horror Adventures has a lot of twists and turns! We ended up having to repeat a lot of moves, costing us a lot of time, due to not exploring rooms fully. This made the game feel like we didn’t have enough moves, but I do believe it was user error.
The story within Nightmare Horror Adventures is one-shot, however, the website allows you to download and print out new cards, which can change the story so that you can play them again and again! This is a really great feature as one-shot games are not everyone’s cup of tea. I feel that Nightmare Horror Adventures is ideal for teens and young adults who want a fun, immersive experience.
You can find Nightmare Horror Adventures on Amazon.
Love board games? Check out our list of the top board games we’ve reviewed.
