Halloween night, 1986. Movie monsters find their way off the silver screen and into an old, rundown theater, terrifying the moviegoers!
What Is Spooktacular?
Spooktacular is an area movement game with variable powers for 1-5 players, ages 12 and up, and takes about 45 minutes to play. Players will take the part of the monsters, trying to alternately scare or devour the patrons of the movie theater. The game is currently available to backorder from the Level 99 Games store, with an estimated in-stock date of September 30th and a cost of $60 for the base game.
Spooktacular was designed by T. Brad Talton Jr. and published by Level 99 Games, with illustrations by Javier Roa González.
Spooktacular Components
The game contains the following:
- 20 Monster Boards
- 39 Monsters
- 60 Guest Meeples
- Game Board
- 25 Basic Action Cards
- 62 Unique Action Cards
- Cloth Figure Bag
- 76 Tokens
- 9 Team Member Meeples
The game board represents the movie theater where the action of Spooktacular takes place. The “street” surrounding the board is the score track.
You’ll play as one of 20 different original movie monsters. Rather than miniatures, Level99 has opted for screen-printed meeples, giving them a cartoon style which look great on the table. Some of the monsters get multiple meeples, such as Regoo, a Blob creature that can create copies of itself.
Every monster also comes with its own player board, which gives you instructions for setup and gameplay for that particular monster. Monsters come in 3 different complexity levels: beginner, intermediate, and advanced, as noted on the lower left corner of each board. The boards themselves are thick card, with a linen finish.
On the flip side of the player boards are the movie posters for each unique monster. Just as much fun and care has been taken with those as with the game design itself, as you can see:
The movie theater “guests” that the players will terrorize are represented by small wood meeples that come in 5 different colors.
When getting placed into rooms within the movie theater, the guests will get randomly drawn out of the included drawstring bag. The bag itself is made from canvas, a higher-quality material than you’ll find in bags from most other board games.
There are several tokens included in the game. While many are unique to individual monsters, a few are common to the game. There are room locks for denoting rooms not used for smaller player counts, police cars that double as player score markers, and tickets that award a random number of points when a player has collected a set of guests in all 5 colors.
Every player will start with a common set of 5 action cards, as well as a variable number of cards unique to their particular monster. As with the player boards, the cards have a nice linen finish.
How to Play Spooktacular
You can download a copy of the rulebook here.
The Goal
The goal of the game is to spook and devour guests, and clash with other monsters to earn points.
Setup
Every player chooses a monster, and takes that monster’s player board, the monster’s figure(s), a set of basic action cards, the cards unique to that monster, and any tokens noted in the “setup” area of the player board. Shuffle the basic and unique cards to make a deck.
Place the map board in the middle of the table. Place locks into rooms depending on player count. Choose a starting player, and then assign score trackers from the first player on, going clockwise. Place score trackers on the starting space on the board.
Creates a pile of face-down tickets, 2 per player in the game. Return unused tickets to the box.
Put all the guests in the bag, then put a number of guests into the room equal to the number of doors in the room, minus one.
Starting with the first player and going clockwise, each player follows their monster’s setup steps.
Gameplay
Once everyone has completed their setups, the first player takes their turn. Each monster plays differently, and so each of the monster player boards has a different set of Turn Steps to follow. When it’s a player’s turn, they follow the Turn Steps listed on their board in order.
Turns will often consist of a combination of playing cards from your hand, and using the unique abilities of your monster.
There are a few actions common to all monsters:
- Move. Move your monster or other components from a room through a door to a connected room.
- Spook. For each door in the room your monster is in, choose a guest and move them through that door into a connected room. Then score 1 point per guest moved.
- Devour. Remove the guest(s) in your current room that you’re instructed to devour, and place them next to your player board. If, after devouring, you have a guest of each color, return the set to the bag and receive a ticket. Then, add 3 guests drawn from the bag to the room with the least figures.
Game End
As soon as a player reaches 50 points or the last ticket has been taken, the game end is triggered. Play out the rest of the round. Finally, reveal any tickets and add those to players’ scores. The player with the most points wins. If there’s a tie, victory goes to the player with the most tickets.
Solo Mode
There are rules to add an Automa (an AI opponent) to play against in a solo game, or even use as an additional opponent in multi-player games. Fittingly, the Automa is the killer robot Killtron. Setup and control of Killtron is fairly simple. The monster board is not used; instead, you create three separate decks of 3 cards each, and then follow the steps listed in the solo mode section of the rulebook to control Killtron, much as you would follow the turn steps for your own monster.
Spooktacular is GeekDad Approved!
Why You Should Play Spooktacular
If you’re used to reading game reviews here on GeekDad, you may have been struck by just how short the “Gameplay” section is for this review. But that’s a testament to how easy Spooktacular is to learn, teach, and play. Beyond a few basic rules, everything a player needs to understand how to play his monster is right there on their monster board, clearly spelled out. I only forgot one genreal rule the first time I played, the one about refilling a room after turning in a set of guests. But otherwise, gameplay has gone smoothly for all my sessions. And I appreciate that designer T. Brad Talton Jr. has also made things easier on the players with these monsters by indicating the complexity level for each one right on the monster boards, in order to help players choose the monsters they want to play.
While the basics of the game are simple, there’s a ton of variety and strategy in the gameplay. Each of the monsters in Spooktacular has unique mechanics that will affect how players employ them in their games, which allows for a ton of replayability. The fairly short gameplay time means you can get in a few games of Spooktacular in an evening; just choose different monsters, go through the quick setup, and you’re good to go.
Spooktacular is a game just dripping with theme. The artwork by Javier Roa González really captures that B-movie aesthetic well, and there’s a lot of creativity in the designs of not just the monsters, but their movie posters. The art style for the monsters gives them a fun, family-friendly quality, enhanced by using wood meeples instead of plastic miniatures.
Because of the ease of play and the elegant design, Spooktacular is a great family game to pull out for Halloween. I think that kids younger than the listed 12+ age could certainly play the basic complexity level monsters. Some parents may find the “devouring” of guests to be objectionable for children, but you can also describe it as “collecting” guests instead, as set collection is exactly what you are doing with the “devour” action.
It’s hard to think of many negatives with Spooktacular. The one that really springs to mind is that I would have loved a monster board for Killtron specifically for his Automa, so players don’t have to keep referring to the rulebook for how to play him in solo mode. Of course, this is something that Level 99 could easily print up and add into their webstore or for future editions, for those that intend to play the solo mode. And the sheer variety of different monsters can occasionally lead to some imbalances in the gameplay, depending on how many players there are and which monsters are chosen. Thankfully, Spooktacular plays quickly enough that it doesn’t feel too bad when that latter case happens…and you can just play again, with different monsters!
Spooktacular is a fast-playing, easy to learn game that will see a lot of time on the tabletop, and not just during spooky season. It’s a game with asymmetric gameplay that brings a lot of variety and varying strategies, but is still very accessible for players. And it’s a lot of fun! While certainly not the first game I’ve reviewed where everyone plays as monsters, Spooktacular is so far the best. It’s a fantastic blend of game and art design that most boardgamers are sure to enjoy.
For more information or to make a purchase, visit the Level 99 Games website.
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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.
