Halloween is over and done with. There’s so much build-up into Halloween that once it’s over, I feel a little sad afterward. While I didn’t have the biggest of Halloween plans, I still felt I had a decent spooky season. Two weeks ago, I went to visit my family for a family board game day. This was the same weekend where I played Hunt A Killer which I wrote about a few posts ago. One other game I brought to play was Betrayal at House on the Hill. Betrayal is one of my favorite board games because it’s supposed to be a scary game, it has elements of Dungeons & Dragons in it, and every time you play, there’s always a new scenario to experience. Speaking of which, I wanted to recap our game of Betrayal because it was unexpected, to say the least.

For those unfamiliar with Betrayal’s mechanics, Betrayal is a game where players start cooperative as they explore this house. Tiles are laid down as players explore new rooms. Throughout the game, players gather items and omens. For every omen gathered, there’s a “haunt” roll. If players roll less than the number of omen cards out in play, the haunt begins. This is where the name Betrayal comes into play. Eventually, once the haunt happens, one or two players end up betraying everyone else quickly turning it into a player-versus-player game.

In this game, my uncle was the betrayer, so it became three versus one. My uncle’s goal was to summon an Elder God and our goal was to either kill my uncle’s character or take his summoning book to the chasm or fireplace to burn it. If our characters died, or the ritual was completed, we lost the game. I thought we were going to lose for sure. My uncle’s stats were all increased and when the haunt started, I didn’t have any items which are valuable during the haunt. As we played through the game, it was clear that the Elder God was going to get summoned. At that point, my uncle’s character died and he got to control the Elder God.

As we were moving through the house, my brother ended up going in front of the Elder God to give me space to carry the book to the furnace. After the Elder God killed my brother’s character, this is when I knew there was one shot at winning. In Betrayal, there’s a mystic elevator that will take you to the upper floor, the ground floor, or the basement. A dice is rolled and depending on what I would roll, it would depend on where I got to go in the house. I needed to roll to allow my character to go to the basement because that’s where the chasm was. Thankfully, I rolled successfully, so the mystic elevator took me to the basement and I tossed the book down the chasm to win the game. If I didn’t roll for the basement, I easily would have been killed by the Elder God. I should add that my character was an 8-year-old girl and the imagery of an 8-year-old defeating an Elder God is awesome.

My uncle clearly had a blast playing Betrayal as it was his first time playing. For reference, the base game of Betrayal has 50 possible haunts. I think I have played Betrayal three or four times, so I know that I have so many haunts to experience. If I play Betrayal again in the future, I may write about the other haunt that I revealed. I might start making tabs of which haunts I haven’t played through so eventually, I can reveal them all.