Publisher: Ravensburger
Age: 10+
Players: 1 – 5 players
MSRP: $29.99
Release: Available everywhere
The Horrified series is all about infamous monsters in folklore and pop culture, and few monsters are as popular amongst tabletop games as the Old One himself, Cthulhu!
Horrified: World of Monsters is the fourth game in the cooperative tabletop series, and the first to only feature four monsters. But Cthulhu is also the first multi-stage threat, requiring players to put in twice the work to seal the biggest bad the series has ever unleashed.
Read on for our review of Horrified: World of Monsters!
Eldritch Horrified
In case you’ve missed this series: Horrified is a cooperative action game. Players are investigators and heroes working to defeat monsters and save villagers (or legends or citizens, as the games interchangeably refer to them).
Players take turns using their limited actions to move around the board, gather items, and rescue bystanders. They need to accomplish specific tasks and puzzles as dictated by the monsters to defeat them.
Each monster generally operates the same, activating on certain monster cards after each turn to move and attack. But how the players defeat them is completely different and unique to that monster.
World of Monsters features four monsters, and like previous editions, they’re inspired by real-world folklore: Cthulhu, Jiangshi, Sphinx, and Yeti. WoM continues to use the new Lair tokens introduced in Horrified: Greek Monsters for Yeti and Jiangshi. Yeti makes the lair particularly important, as all three of his children must be guided there before he can be defeated.
Jiangshi requires a mini-Tetris puzzle to discard items and complete a sword using polyomino pieces, while Sphinx has players playing mini-Sudoku to fill in two rows of items with certain number combinations. They’re interactive and interesting without being too complex or challenging — a hallmark of the series.
Appropriately, Cthulhu is on a whole different level of complexity, requiring two monster mats and multiple stages. The first stage has players discarding items to rotate dials to match random symbols.
Sadly the mat doesn’t come with pieces to attach the dials, making them a bit awkward to loosely “rotate.”
Once the Old One has been lured back to the void and the dials sealed, the party then takes the fight to him in R’yleh.
I was excited for a true boss battle in Horrified, but the execution is fiddly and cumbersome — exactly what I don’t want from the series! We had lots of questions about movement, attacks, and actions for his final scenario, as everything about the second stage is a brand new mechanic.
Players can choose to defeat Cthulhu after the first stage as a shorter/easier variant. That actually feels much better, even though it certainly neuters the mac daddy of horror monsters. The recent Horrified games are ruthlessly challenging on Standard difficulty (three monsters), and trying to defeat both stages of Cthulhu alongside multiple monsters felt nigh impossible.
Stewards of the Shrouded Void
World of Monsters has the best production values of the series, no question. The minis are detailed, the player characters are distinct, and the half-steampunk, half-Lovecraftian board oozes charm and spookiness. The back of the player boards feature fun lore notes, and even the bystanders are an eclectic bunch of bartenders, ghosts, clowns, and a fish-in-diving-suit.
Player powers have also grown to be better balanced, with one exception. Getting to use your special action without actually having to spend an action (such as The Guardian’s free Guide action) feels great. The Fortune Teller’s free glance at the next Monster Card is a huge boon. The Buccaneer’s ability to discard an item for +3 actions is so impactful it can win entire games, even with their reduced three actions as a base.
The only real loser is The Investigator. The ability to discard two items to pick one up from the discard can be situationally useful in a pinch, but it also requires an action. In all the games played, we never found it useful compared to the others.
World of Monsters also has the distinct ability to mix with Greek Monsters (but not earlier Horrified games due to the Lair tokens). Players can mix monsters and investigators from either set. Cthulhu can invade Greece, or Medusa can ransack the Void. Though Monster activation symbols are different, the colors are the same, making it easy to mix and match.
Thankfully the rulebook spells out exactly how the compatibility works (without a Void location in Greece, Cthulhu uses the Battlefield, for example).
The Rating
As with other games in the Horrified series, World of Monsters has a recommended age of 10+. The co-op game features open information, making it easy to help younger or newer players. There is no player elimination. When monsters attack a player, they must discard an item or be defeated. A defeated player raises the overall Doom level and forces them to respawn on their next turn.
Even on easy difficulty (two monsters) Horrified can be a difficult game that demands efficient use of turns and actions before the players run out of time.
The Takeaway
While Cthulhu is a fantastic theme for Horrified, and the visuals are fabulous, I don’t think World of Monsters is my favorite of the series. Cthulhu’s double monster mats doesn’t make up for the reduced number of monsters, and we found Cthulhu’s brand-new second stage too fiddly and weird.
On the other hand, full compatibility with Horrified: Greek Monsters is a big plus, and could be the deciding factor for Horrified fans.
Horrified: World of Monsters is available now at major retailers such as Amazon and Target.
