HORRIFIED: AMERICAN MONSTERS (2021)

PLAYERS	TIME	DESIGNER	PUBLISHER
1-5	60 mins	Michael Mulvihill	Ravensburger

The town of Cross Creek has been overrun by some of the meanest monsters in American myth. As one of up to five residents turned Investigators, you’ll be working together to track them down and take them out.

To sum this up, it’s pretty much PANDEMIC+.

Each player has a special ability. Each monster (or Cryptid) is a stand in for a disease.

But several things elevate the HORRIFIED games above their virus riddled forefather.

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The items you pick up from around the board are not only used against the monsters, they are also your life points. This can make holding on to them a little difficult when the Chupacabra is bearing down on you.

Also, instead of all monsters being taken out the same way, each has its own little mini game if you’re to defeat it. And you can mix up the monsters each game which gives a nice mix of variability and problem solving.

Game difficulty is handled in two ways. You can choose how many monsters you want to handle each game, and each monster comes with a complexity rating, so you can build up to the more challenging ones after a few games.

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The production of the game is great. Decent cardboard for the boards, standees, and tokens, nice minis for the monsters, and a fantastic and thematic art style throughout the components and rule book.

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The theme of American Monsters might not be for everyone, though my thoughts here apply to the original for those vintage Universal Monsters, and there is the recently released Greek Monsters version too.

And I will say that if you don’t play regularly, the rules for defeating each monster have to be relearned each time, which can eat into the set up.

Overall, HORRIFIED: AMERICAN MONSTERS is the next step up in co-op games. It’s challenging without being impossible and comes with a decent amount of variability.