We played another round of the board game Betrayal at House on the Hill last night. I’ve grown to really like this game over time — its basic mechanics are simple and straightforward, yet the heavy degree of randomisation with every game means that the experience is subtly different each and every time you play.

I won’t give specific details as unlike many board games, it is absolutely possible to “spoil” Betrayal at House on the Hill. For the unfamiliar, the basic flow of gameplay is split into two distinct sections: a cooperative initial section where everyone explores the creepy old house independently, generating its layout as they explore, followed by the “Haunt”, at which point one or more players are revealed to be a traitor (or not revealed, in some cases!) and given their own objectives to complete that are kept secret from the remaining “good” players. Which of the Haunts you take on in a session is determined by the combination of the room you were in when the Haunt was triggered, and the item you picked up that triggered the Haunt. The combination of these factors is sufficiently random that across several games, I’m yet to play the same scenario twice.

And those scenarios are enjoyably different from one another. In some cases, the traitorous player remains as a figure on the board, moving around and able to use the abilities and items they accumulated during the initial exploration phase. In others, the traitor’s character is removed from the board for one reason or another — perhaps they were killed, perhaps they became an evil spirit, perhaps they were never really there in the first place — and the traitor player instead takes on the role of an “overseer”, controlling all the monsters in the house and making use of special abilities to thwart the attempts of the players to fulfil their objective. Said objective usually involves getting the fuck out of the house that is suddenly trying to kill them, but there are often other things that they need to do first.

The mechanic I particularly like is the use of RPG-style “ability checks” to complete various actions. The way these work is simple: you look at your character’s current value for the stat in question, then roll that number of dice. The dice in Betrayal at House on the Hill are special six-sided ones that only have faces with one or two spots on, as well as a few with nothing at all on. To succeed in your task, you have to roll equal to or over a given number. For example, for a Knowledge 6+ check, you roll the number of dice for your character’s Knowledge stat, and must score 6 or more to successfully complete the task. In some cases — usually items or events — there are variable results according to the score you achieve, with zero normally meaning something horrendous happens. A critical failure, if you will.

The game is strongly thematic, but not at the expense of mechanical elegance. The exploration mechanic works well and produces interesting randomised board layouts each and every time you play, and the various items, events and traps you stumble across in the process make things interesting by perhaps adding shortcuts or hazards to contend with as you explore or run away screaming from a murderous evil thing.

Best of all, it plays pretty quickly — a game takes about an hour or so, meaning our gaming group can absolutely fit a game of it in on a weeknight before people start flagging (or, more frequently, need to get to bed before going to work the following day). I’m hoping it hits the table a bit more often from now on.

Today’s pre-lunch game was Betrayal at House on the Hill, a game that I got a while back and have only managed to get to the table once so far. I was excited to try it again, as I really enjoyed our first shot at it, and was also interested to see quite how differently the 50 different potential scenarios would make it on a subsequent playthrough.

For the unfamiliar, Betrayal at House on the Hill is an interesting board game that starts as cooperative and later becomes asymmetric competitive. In the first part of the game, all the players take on the role of explorers looking around a creepy old horror-movie house, finding items, experiencing strange events and encountering “Omens”. The more Omens that are found, the more likely it is that “The Haunt” begins, and the combination of the Omen found and the place where it was picked up when The Haunt is triggered determines which one of the 50 scenarios you then move on to for the second part.

In the second part, things vary considerably between scenarios. Sometimes the player that becomes the traitor — who isn’t always the person who revealed the last omen, and isn’t always known to the table right away — remains on the board attempting to directly interfere with the efforts of the other players. Sometimes they’re removed from the board and take on more of a “dungeon master” role, controlling hordes of monsters. Sometimes there are a variety of special mechanics to the various rooms in the house. And sometimes it’s a fairly straightforward hack-and-slash sort of affair.

The scenario we played involved the one who found the last omen being caught under the spell of a rat god. His job was to make it to the “Pentagram Room” in the basement, then complete a ritual. Meanwhile, the other players’ job was to stop him, either by killing all his rat minions that spawned around the house, or by killing him outright — though once he got into the Pentagram Room and started performing the ritual, he could no longer be attacked.

The interesting thing about the way Betrayal at House on the Hill handles this asymmetry is that it keeps certain pieces of information secret from each side. There are two separate books, in which the two “sides” find out what their objective is, but not usually what their opponent is trying to do. There might be some hints or special rules that provide a clue, but it’s usually not spelled out explicitly. In this way, part of the challenge of the second half of the game is determining exactly what your opponent is trying to do, and how best to stop it while completing your own objectives as efficiently as possible.

It’s a really cool game with a lot of atmosphere and a great sense of unfolding narrative as the house gradually reveals itself and strange things happen to all the players. And it’s ridiculously replayable, too; even if you play the same scenario twice, the randomly generated nature of the game map and the items and events you’ll stumble across in the process means that it will be a different experience every time.

Plus it plays relatively quickly, which is a blessing for groups like ours that tend to meet on a weeknight when we’re not devoting entire weekends to gaming. In contrast to titles like Arkham Horror, which are magnificently atmospheric and a lot of fun to play but take three or more hours to plough through, Betrayal at House on the Hill plays comfortably in 90-120 minutes, depending on the scenario, making it a good game for those looking for a fun horror fix without having to, say, sit in their friend’s “sweaty balls chairs” for hours at a time.

I had a great time this weekend; hearty thanks to Sam, Tim and Tom for making my “birthstag” celebrations memorable and enjoyable.