Forty-Three.

I have never been one to consider myself a gamer.  I enjoy games, though I am not very good at them.  We have always been big tabletop game players in my family.  It started when I was younger.  I have fond memories of my Nanny teaching me how to play poker for pennies, my grandfather teaching me how to be a card shark, and my uncle was always a big 21 guy.  We would play a lot of Trivial Pursuit and other games of the like (my mother’s way of trying to make learning fun or just sneak learning into fun time), but my favorite was always Pictionary.  Surprise, surprise. 

Over the years I have branched out from board and card games and got into the more electronic side of gaming.  Hey, I love playing Left 4 Dead and shooting zombies and chopping off zombies heads as a chainsaw wielding cheerleader in Lollipop Chainsaw (I really like zombies), and I recently thoroughly enjoyed throwing myself back into the twisted wonderland of Alice Madness Returns and the steampunk aristocracy of Dishonored.  I happen to be a terrible video gamer though.  I get overly excited and before I know it my character is looking the complete opposite way of that in which it is moving.  I’m a fail.  Though I do enjoy the time I get to spend with my brother as I play and jump a bit into his world.

Tabletop games, however, will always be my favorite.  Halloween is around the corner and there are so many great tabletop games that you can play that help you get into the Halloween spirit.  You can try to survive the zombie apocalypse in Last Night on Earth, or even try to cure a disease epidemic in Pandemic!  My favorite and probably one of the darker games is Gloom (I know I have talked about this game before but I’m doing it again damn it).

Gloom is a tabletop card came.  The game first emerged in 2005 and there have been three expansions since the release of the original game, which I of course own.  In Gloom you find yourself in control of an eccentric family of 5.  In the original deck you may find yourself in control of a family lead by a mad scientist, one in which find themselves plagued by the omen twins, a serial killing clan, or a family made up entirely of failed circus freaks.  My favorite family comes with the Unhappy Homes expansion.  They’re artists.  It’s pretty fucking rad.

Now the object of this game is quite simple; make your family as miserable as possible and kill them all off while making your opponents families has euphoric as possible.  You do this by playing modifier cards on your characters.  These cards have either positive or negative self-worth points.  This is most likely one of the only games where the more negative your score the better you are doing.

My favorite part of this game is the story telling aspect.  Each event card you play helps to weave the story of your family from how they came to be to where they are going.  Not only to you get to create a story for you own family cast but as you play cards on your opponents’ families you get to add to their story as well.  Who said being a lover of all things macabre wouldn’t get you anywhere in life? Well they were wrong because it will help to get you far in this game.  Most people to get into the Halloween spirit watch horror movies; why watch horror movies when you can play out one that you are helping to create yourself?

There are three expansions and in each one you gain another family to play and additional cards that add different rules to the game and affect your story telling.  In Unhappy Homes you gain resident and mystery cards.  In Unwelcomed Guests you gain unwelcomed guests, which add pesky additional members to your family, and in Unfortunate Expeditions you gain expedition cards.  As I said you get new families in each expansion along with new modifiers, untimely death, and event cards; so each expansion adds another player.  If you have all of the expansions you can bring your player count up to 7.  The more players you have the more fun the game.  It’s fun to watch everyone try to remember what is going on with everyone’s families and it’s just a lot of fun to create a story and kill off these misfit families.

There is also a Cthulhu Gloom (which I of course own) which you can play on it’s own without the base game or you can add it to the base game to give yourself 5 more players.  Lovecraft is a horror staple so this Lovecraftian version of this pleasantly morose game should be one of your go to game staples as well.

I really love everything about this game from the transparent card set up, to the strangely wonderfully tragic character cast.  It is a game I highly recommend to any tabletop game lover especially one that is looking for something festive to play this Halloween season.

Over on Geek & Sundry (one of my favorite YouTube channels at the moment) Wil Wheaton hosts a show called TableTop where he gets some of his nerdy celebrity friends to play tabletop games with him and they played this one.   Check out the video below to get an idea/see the game in action.

They also played another of my favorites, Last Night on Earth; next time you’re at Target you should pick this game up.

Friends, who wants to start up a game night?  I’ll bring Gloom! ^_^