Horrified: Greek Monsters – A Legendary Remix

Starting with the back lots at Universal Studios, the team at Ravensburger crafted a coop concoction with Horrified. They expanded to cover the whole of the Americas in Horrified: American Monsters, and now they’ve jumped the Atlantic to tackle Greece.

In Horrified: Greek Monsters, you’ll work alone or band with up to four friends to defeat legendary Greek monsters. Horrified: Greek Monsters is best for players 10+ and a game is supposed to last 60 minutes (really it’s twice that).

Setup

Horrified: Greek Monsters sets up almost identically to the other Horrified games. Each player chooses a Hero and puts their standee in its starting location on the board. Deal a Perk card to each player.

The biggest difference in Greek Monsters is the addition of Lairs. Shuffle the four Lair tokens face down and place them randomly at the four locations with the Lair Token icon. Then, select the monsters your team wants to fight (two, three, or four depending on difficulty level). Follow any unique setup instructions on the back of the Monster Mats. Note: Not all monsters use lairs.

Finally, put the Monster Mats in Frenzy order and put the Frenzy marker on the first Monster Mat.

Gameplay

The Hero Phase

In Horrified (like many cooperative games) each player takes a turn, followed by a monster turn where bad stuff happens. Most Heroes have four actions they can take on their turn. This will usually be moving and/or picking up items.

Moves might include escorting Legend characters from one place to another. Delivering a Legend to their desired location rewards the player with a Perk card. Players will also use actions to chip away at the legendary Monsters.

Once the players complete the advance tasks, they need to move to the monster and attack it. Usually this requires a certain number of items adding up to a minimum power threshold.

The Monster Phase

After each player’s turn, Bad Stuff Happens ™. The active player draws a monster card and follows its instructions:

1. Draw and place some number of Item tokens, indicated at the top (In this case, two).
2. Follow the Monster Action.
3. Activate the Monster(s) on the lower left. In this case, it is the Frenzied monster (Flame) and any monster with the pillar icon at the top. In our example above, Cerberus and the Basilisk have the pillar icon, so they will activate. If one of them has the Frenzy token, that monster will activate twice.
4. To activate those monsters, move them one space toward the closest hero or legend (bottom center). If the monster is already on a space with a hero or legend, they don’t move. After movement, if the monster is on a space with a hero or legend, roll three dice (bottom right).

Hit icons on the dice kill Heroes or Legends. A player may discard an item to block a hit to their Hero. Legends, however, cannot block. They die, and are removed from the board. Heroes that die go to the Temple of Nyx to be reborn on the player’s next turn. Whenever a character dies, raise the Terror Marker at the top of the board by one. If the Terror Marker moves past six, everyone loses.

The exclamation point on a die means the monster’s special action triggers. Follow the instructions on the Monster Mat.

The monster deck also serves as a timer for the game. If the monster deck ever runs out, everyone loses.

Avoid attacks, deliver the Legends, and defeat the monsters in their particular ways to win!

Impressions

A Lot is the Same

The first thing you’ll notice when picking up the box for Horrified: Greek Monsters is that it’s definitely a Horrified game. Ravensburger didn’t mess with the formula for the art on the front and for good reason. The contrast is great, the collage of characters is gripping, and it makes you want to tear into the box to see what’s inside.

And when you do that, again, you’ll see that it’s definitely a Horrified game. I played once at a convention and someone saw the board and said “Oh, Horrified.” After a moment they said, “Wait, what Horrified is this?” which should tell you everything you need to know about the art and graphic design. Although the fonts have been tweaked and the icons changed, the formula is the same.

Some Slight Changes

Inside the game, though, the mechanics have shifted a bit. This is definitely the most complex of the Horrified titles. The monster advances range from a memory puzzle (the Siren) to a game of chance (the Cerberus) and more.

Add to this the need to seek out the correct lairs for some monsters, and there are just more steps involved; some more difficult than in previous games.

That being said, players can easily adjust the difficulty by playing with more or fewer monsters. Horrified has always had enough flexibility that it has fit its recommended age range well. We think it can even flex as low as to an eight-year-old as long as they can read.

Final Thoughts

For us at The Family Gamers, games of Horrified run a bit long (about twice the box time). If you, like us, are the kind of gamers that tend to have distractions or be social throughout the game, be prepared to play for a lot more than an hour.

Our recommendation here is simple. If your family likes Horrified, you’ll like Horrified: Greek Monsters. We’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys cooperative games and Greek mythology. For us, Horrified fans with a Greek mythology buff at home? This game is a home run.

You can get Horrified: Greek Monsters directly from Ravensburger, on Amazon, or at your friendly local game store. You can find the original Horrified and Horrified: American Monsters in all the same places.

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Ravensburger sent The Family Gamers a complimentary copy of Horrified: Greek Monsters for this review.

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