Above and Below: Haunted Back to Arzium, Now With Ghosts!

Red Raven Games has been one of my favorite publishers for years. I’m always excited to try their games because the captivating artwork and imaginative worlds make every playthrough feel like an adventure. Originally released in 2015, Above and Below has been a shining star in my library. Whenever it hits the table, I’m always stoked to return to the fantasy world of Arzium and continue exploring where I left off. Ten years later, we’re heading back to that familiar world. But this time things get a little spookier.

Above and Below: Haunted is a storytelling and village-building board game from Red Raven Games, designed and illustrated by Ryan Laukat. It plays 2–4 players, takes about 60–90 minutes, and is recommended for ages 8 and up.

Setup

Each player starts with a player board, three villagers, a starting house, some coins, and a mystic brew. Set the reputation board in the center of the table with the available villagers, cave cards, and display of buildings. Then place the remaining tokens, dice, adventure cards, and the encounter book within reach. Choose a first player and you’re ready to explore!

Gameplay

Above and Below: Haunted plays out over seven rounds. The player with the most village points wins. During each round, players assign their villagers to perform one of five player actions: Explore, Build, Banish, Hire, or Labor.

Explore

Choose at least two villagers to explore a Basic or Dangerous cave. Roll a die and match the result to the chart on the cave card to find the corresponding paragraph in the encounter book. The player to your left reads that paragraph aloud, including the available choices. You’ll then decide how to respond.

Roll a die for each villager to collect lanterns and compare your total against the explore number for your choice. Meet or beat that number to claim the rewards, or exceed it by two or more to earn a bonus. You can also exert villagers to gain extra lanterns.

Whether you succeed or fail, keep the cave card. Exhaust your villagers (move them to the exhausted area) or to the injured areas of your player board, then add the cave to your village. In Above and Below: Haunted, ghosts may come home with you, too. Place these ghosts on one empty house of your choice.

Exploration can also reward you with Adventure Cards, another new addition to Above and Below: Haunted. Some provide ongoing bonuses, while others send you on a required quest during your next exploration.

Build

Exhaust a villager with a hammer symbol to purchase an available building by paying its cost in coins. Place houses alongside your starting house. Building an outpost requires an available cave card to build on.

Buildings offer various benefits, including resources, income, points, or special abilities. Apply any immediate rewards when you purchase a building. Finally, replenish the display if you purchased a house or outpost.

Banish

In Above and Below: Haunted, ghosts sometimes come home with you. To banish them, exhaust a villager with a quill symbol and return all but one ghost to the supply. Place the remaining ghost on an opponent’s building that doesn’t already have one. You’ll gain a reward based on the type of building you haunt.

If no opponents have an available building, discard all your ghosts without gaining a reward. Each building can only hold one ghost.

Hire

Exhaust a villager with a quill symbol to hire a new villager, paying its listed cost. The first three villagers cost less to hire but bring a ghost to one of your buildings if there’s room. The fourth and fifth villagers avoid ghosts and earn you a mystic brew instead. Exhaust your newly hired villager.

Labor

Exhaust one or more villagers to earn a coin and a good per villager from your houses or outposts. Villagers with a hammer symbol harvest two instead of one. You can keep your goods, add them to your advancement track, or put them up for sale using a free action, which we’ll cover below.

Free Actions

You can also perform free actions before or after your main action without exhausting villagers, as many times as you like.

Put Something for Sale: Place a good in the top-left corner of your player board for other players to purchase. You can only offer one good at a time, but you may remove or swap it during your turn.

Buy from a Player: Purchase a good another player has offered for sale. You can haggle but you must offer at least three coins or mystic brews, or a combination of both. The seller can always refuse.

Refresh Building Row: Pay one coin to replace all four available cards in either the house or outpost row. You can refresh one row per turn.

Use a Boat Token: Exhaust a ready boat to gain one coin. Alternatively, use it during exploration to change a die roll to a six, even after rolling. Each boat can only provide one of these benefits per use.

Claim a New Ingredient: Be the first to collect a particular good and immediately place one of your cubes on its matching space on the reputation board’s ingredient track. Each good can only be claimed once, so get there first! These earn points at the end of the game.

End of Round

Once all players pass, the round ends. Ghosts lower your reputation, and the round marker advances. Next, refresh the available villagers and rest your own. For each bed in your buildings, you can move one villager one space to the left, from injured to exhausted or exhausted to ready. You can also spend mystic brews to move villagers an additional space each. Ready your boats, collect income, replenish goods on buildings, and pass the first-player card clockwise to begin the next round.

End of the Game

Above and Below: Haunted ends after the 7th round. Players then tally their village points from:

1. Advancement Track: Score points for each good on your track, including pearls, based on their position.
2. Buildings: Earn one point for each building, including your starting house. Empty caves don’t score.
3. Reputation: Score points based on your position on the reputation track, plus bonuses for ranking first, second, or third.
4. Ingredient Track: Earn points for each ingredient you claimed first during the game.
5. Card Bonuses: Collect any additional points from your buildings’ special scoring abilities.

The player with the most village points wins!

Impressions

Above and Below: Haunted is a world worth exploring. It carries on the rich, immersive storytelling of its predecessors, Above and Below and Near and Far. Ryan Laukat’s beautiful artwork brings Arzium and its diverse inhabitants to life. Before long, you’ll find yourself naming villagers and imagining their backstories.

Exploration is the heart of this game, and it’s where the artwork, storytelling, and mechanics all come together. While rolling dice to collect lanterns and determine success is simple, the real fun comes from the choices you make along the way.

Do you help a stranded character or continue with your original mission? Do you follow your moral compass or take a darker path with a mischievous grin? After all, it’s just a game! Above and Below: Haunted gives you the freedom to make choices you might never consider in real life, just to see what happens. Sometimes, taking the unexpected path leads to the most memorable stories.

Sure, collecting goods, building your village, and scoring points are important. Someone has to win, right? But for me, the real joy comes from the adventures and stories that unfold along the way. I’d still enjoy the time at the table even if I came in dead last!

Something for Everyone

Above and Below: Haunted offers meaty decisions for fans of Euro-style games who enjoy planning and optimizing their moves. There is chance in the dice, but boats and exerting villagers can offset a bad roll. There’s also strategy in deciding when to commit goods to your advancement track and which ingredients to pursue. Rare ingredients are worth more points, so getting to them first can really pay off.

I love narrative games. The storytelling via the encounter book offers a different kind of enjoyment, even if you’re not squeezing every last point out of your turns.

Above and Below: Haunted works well for kids who enjoy narrative adventures, too. Not every 8–12-year-old will grasp the strategy, but they can still enjoy exploring Arzium and making choices along the way. Plus, kids who love reading and storytelling can take turns narrating encounters, giving them another way to get caught up in the adventure.

Old Friends, New Ghosts

Above and Below: Haunted adds another layer on top of the original; ghosts carry consequences if you ignore them. Banishing ghosts also introduces more player interaction, letting you send one to an opponent’s building while earning a reward. However, doing so costs an action, which you could have spent exploring or building. Do you deal with those pesky ghosts now or risk losing more reputation later?

But all of this additional content doesn’t mean this replaces the original. Above and Below still has plenty of stories left for my group to discover. If you’ve already explored much of the original, Haunted offers fresh adventures and new challenges. And if you’re new to both games but enjoy a little extra strategy and player interaction, I’d lean toward Haunted.

Ready to go spelunking? Arzium is calling, and plenty of adventures await below! Pick up Above and Below: Haunted at your friendly local game store, directly from Red Raven Games, or on Amazon.

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The Family Gamers received a promotional copy of Above and Below: Haunted from Red Raven Games for this review.

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