Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons review - "Could be the magic item needed to refresh your game nights, but it won't be a critical hit for everyone"

The Horrified series started in 2019 with a game of the same name in which players worked together to fight off classic movie monsters. Its combination of accessibility and variety made it a big hit (one of the best board games, you could argue), and it spawned several sequels all of which were fun enough but, thanks to some confusing rules oversights and a lack of innovation, none were quite as good as the original. The latest iteration is a combination of the game system with the famous Dungeons & Dragons role playing game, which could be the magic item needed to refresh the series, but could also be another quick cash in.

Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons features & design

• Battle iconic D&D monsters using beloved classes
• Great art and dice, but poor plastic miniatures
• Make sure you punch out all the cardboard components

The original Horrified greeted players with a message printed on the reverse of the folded board. Those days are gone, but there’s still a fun monster print to say hello when you open the box lid. This unfolds to display a board that’ll be familiar to fans of the series on which clearly marked locations are connected to each other via passageways and stairwells. The board art is great, and role-players will notice that it resembles an isometric dungeon map dropping from the surface environment of Castle Waterdeep, from D&D’s Forgotten Realms setting, into the catacomb levels below.

There are also several sheets of punch-out cardboard tokens. Most of these are items which you store in the supplied “haversack” - another riff on D&D - a fold-over, velcro-closing bag from which you’ll draw them during play. Among the remainder are various markers and standees which come with plastic bases: coloured ones for player character heroes and clear ones for non-player citizens. If you’re unboxing the game yourself be aware that the punch sheets contain some small, black cardboard crosses which are easy to miss. Make sure you punch them out before you chuck the sprue in the recycling.

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While players have to make do with cardboard standees, the monsters get plastic figures, indicating who the real stars of the show are. There are four, representing a Mimic, a Displacer beast, a Beholder, and a Red Dragon. They’re fine but nothing to write home about – chunky, soft plastics that are serviceable during gameplay but not to scale nor nice enough to paint, although the beholder does have a transparent flying stand, which is a fun touch.

Two decks of cards and two sets of dice round out the components. The monster cards are nice enough, featuring art from D&D’s vast library, although the stylised woodcut-style art of the perks deck is arguably nicer. Nicest of all are the dice, which are marbled or sparkly gem plastics, three six-sided custom monster dice and one iconic d20.

Gameplay

• Roam the board and collect items to use against monsters
• Civillians will appear who need escorting to safety
• Suffer too many monster attacks, or take too long, and you’ll lose

Veterans of the Horrified game system will recognise the core mechanics immediately. At the start of the session you’ll choose two monsters from the four provided and each player will pick one character to play, based on D&D classes like the Fighter or the Bard. You’re working together to beat the monsters, so choose carefully. The board is then seeded with item tokens drawn from the bag: each has one of three colours, a numeric value, and a location on which it must be placed. On your turn you can take four actions from a palette of seven different choices, the two most common being moving from one location to a connected one, and picking up all the items at your current location.

Items are key to winning because they can be used both to protect yourself from monster attacks and, eventually, to defeat the beasties for final victory. As in other Horrified games each monster has a different win condition, and the mix and match approach of facing off against different combinations of foes is where the game gets much of its strategic depth and replay value. The Mimic, for instance, is hidden much of the time but will appear if all the players have an item of the matching color and can be defeated if the active player discards blue items totalling at least six in value. At the other end of the spectrum is the dragon which has an over-complex but impressively challenging set of win conditions that involves spending items to move blocks in a push-pull puzzle grid in order to release the rolling Orb of Dragonkind before facing it.

At the end of your player turn you’ll draw a monster card. This will add some more items to the board, resolve an effect such as removing items from the game or adding one of the citizen standees to the board, and then cause certain monsters to move and attack. Creatures always move towards the closest target and if they end up on a space with an adventurer or a citizen they roll dice which can miss, hit the target, or cause a special effect depending on the monster like the Beholder using a random one of its terrifying magical eyestalks. Players can discard items to avoid hits while citizens are simply killed. Either way, a successful attack raises the terror level, which can lose players the game if it gets too high.

The other major loss condition is if the monster deck runs out, so you’re on a timer to collect the items and defeat the bad guys. It’s a simple core system but - as demonstrated by the amount of sequels it’s spawned - it’s enormously effective. Every turn you’re torn between the need to collect items wherever they’re piling up on the board, and the risk of monsters appearing in dangerous locations and pushing up that terror level. Even if you and your citizens are safe, using additional actions to lure them to their chosen destination for the sweet reward of a powerful perk card is also a temptation. There’s so much to do, only a paltry four actions per player to do it, and as the deck ticks down and the terror ticks up, the tension slowly tightens inexorably.

Most of the new innovations in this edition feed well into this formula. The most obvious are the changes to the board. Rather than all the locations being directly interlinked, they now exist on separate dungeon levels which can be accessed via teleport squares that allow you - or a monster - to reach any other teleport. This makes it easier to zip round the board, meaning you can reach locations more easily, but also that monsters can reach victims faster. This makes for a more dynamic, pressing game than previous entries in the series, although it also makes it slower and a little more confusing to decide what’s “closer” to what, as you will need to in most monster phases.

The other big change is hero powers, and this is more of a mixed bag. Previously, your character had a fixed ability. In this version you use your ability as an action and roll a d20 to see what happens, with higher results getting you better effects. The exact parameters of your powers are flavored by your class inspired by the best tabletop RPGs: the Thief makes it easier to gain and share items, for example, while the Cleric provides protection from negative effects during the following monster phase. But while the random die roll is exciting, especially on a 20, which provides a huge boost, the randomness also reduces your ability to plan. And some classes seem to have much more useful powers than others.

Describing these mechanical changes can’t quite capture the successful Dungeons & Dragons flavor imparted by the whole. That d20 roll might not enrich the game’s strategic depth, but where would a D&D spinoff be without one? Likewise, the class power and monsters successfully reflect their in-game counterparts, particularly the Beholder which loses eye stalks as you wear it down and whose special powers mirror its role-playing ones so nicely that it’s almost a shame you don’t roll them more often. It’s not entirely clear, though, whether all this innovation is properly balanced. The system throws up edge cases with the rules from time to time, and the Mimic’s difficulty varies by player count, from trivially easy solo to almost impossible with the full five.

Should you buy Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons?

As the stepchild of two very successful franchises, the appeal of Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons depends strongly on how you already feel about those franchises. Fans of the original Horrified game, or one or more of its spinoffs, will find some fresh, fun ideas here but perhaps not really enough to justify the purchase of a whole new game.

If you’re new to the Horrified series, though, it’s a different matter, especially if you’re also a D&D player. While this isn’t quite as tight, or as varied, as that original game with its six monsters rather than the four here, it runs it a very close second. So if you really like the D&D flavour, or you want a cooperative experience that’s a bit more wild and wacky than the 2019 release, this is an easy recommendation. Everyone should have some Horrified in their life: the exact blend you favour is very much up to you.

Ratings

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

How we tested Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons

Our reviewer has years of industry experience writing about board games (some of which have been spent reviewing for GamesRadar+), so utilized that depth of knowledge when analyzing this game. After digging into the full rules, they ran hands-on sessions with Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons. They used these to compare with previous entries in the series.

To get an overview of our full process, check this guide on how we test board games or visit the GamesRadar+ reviews policy.

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