Haunting House 2 The Second Story

Haunting House is easily one of our favorite pick up and play games of the last few years.  Players can be young and old and no one is bored.  The Concept is easy to grasp but the strategy can be challenging.  When we heard there was going to be a sequel we were excited.

Gameplay

As it turns out Haunting House 2 isn't a sequel at all.  It's actually an expansion pack for the first game.  It adds a second story to the haunted House!  For those who are new to this game here's a quick overview of the first and how it's played.

The form factor of the game is interesting as it's more akin to dominos than to a board game or card game.  Each player uses cards and a series of tiles laid in the center of the table to play.  The game goes like this:

Each tile represents a hallway within the haunted house.  The goal is to move your pawn through the hallways to the exit.  Here's the problem, half the time you choose your own path, the other half of the time a players path is chosen randomly.  Also, as everyone is playing the positioning of tiles is constantly changing.  So, just when you think you've mapped out the perfect path for yourself an opponent plays a card allowing him to twist a tile 90 degrees leaving you at a dead end. 

For the first round each player is randomly dealt four cards.  On his turn he flips the first card over to reveal the play.  Hopefully cards are flipped that will allow the player to move within the house but if not the card that is turned will usually allow him to reek havoc with other players who are moving in the house. This continues until all players have flipped all four cards.  On the next round each player looks through his cards and picks four and sorts them in the order he wishes to play them for that round.  This is where it gets tricky because the player needs to work out four cards that will help him progress but not leave him totally without recourse if his path is foiled by another player.  Some of the cards include: Rotate 180 degrees, Move Two Spaces, and Secret Passage.

So, not only do you have to work your way through the constantly changing maze you have to keep your opponents from beating you to the exit.  Like I said the simple mechanic can get pretty complex depending on the players.  This game works great with two players but we had the most fun with six. 

The new expansion throws a monkey wrench into the works and makes the game more appealing to hardcore strategy fans while not alienating fans of the original.  First up are the addition of some nasty ghosts that you have awakened inside this house.  These guys can get in your way at every turn!  At the same time there are new automatically turning tiles that constantly reset the board.

With the expansion tiles laid out they are connected to the first floor tiles by the single staircase tile.  Players begin in the back of the second floor and must work their way through the second floor, down the stairs, through the first floor, and out the door.  The new tiles have arrows showing which way the tiles are rotated and they are rotated as soon as a player lands on them.  There are also new disks that are placed on these tiles.  The discs are claimed by whoever lands on the tile.  These discs offer new abilities including trading cards with another player or stopping a rotation from happening.  There are also ghost discs that stop players from entering a room forcing them to take another path.

Some rules have also been slightly changed to make the expansion work better with the classic set.  These constantly rotating tiles, the ghosts, which aren't revealed until someone tries to land on one, and the ability discs take the strategy elements of the game to a new level.  Games run longer and require even more focus by players.  Being a group of hardcore gamers our test subjects loved the game with these new additions.  Casual gamers may wanna stick to playing the original game by itself.

9/10

Presentation

Haunting House 2 The Second Story is comes packaged exactly as the original game did with tiles and other pieces made of good quality materials for multiple uses.  The big box the expansion comes in seems to be a bit of a waste as players will move the new tiles over to the original box where there's plenty of room.

7/10

Overall

This expansion adds more play options, strategy elements, and overall more depth to what was already a great game.  This is an expansion so the original game is required for play.

9/10

Stephen Lackey

Haunting House 2 The Second Story

Published by Twilight Creations

Check out the official website!

Review:

Gameplay 9/10

Presentation 8/10

Overall 9/10