SNAP Review – Horrified: World of Monsters

Universal monsters, American cryptids, Greek myths. The Horrified series from Ravensburger has brought us eighteen different monsters…

Nineteen if you include the Bride of Frankenstein!

I could never forget my bride.

Is that even a compliment? You’re not Frankenstein and I’m definitely not the Bride of Frankenstein. Anyway, this series has brought legendary creatures from stories across the world. And they’re not done yet. In Horrified: World of Monsters they’re back with four more monsters from around the world.

Only four?

Yes. But one of them, Cthulu, is a kind of mega monster. Let’s get into it.

Wait! There’s even more! In this review we’re ALSO going to talk about a single additional monster, one from Central European legend: Krampus.

Alright, let’s do this. This is a SNAP review for Horrified: World of Monsters.

AND the Krampus expansion!

Game

Like we said up top, the Horrified game series is published by Ravensburger. This one, World of Monsters, is designed by Peter Lee and Mike Mulvihill, just like the rest of them. 1-5 players can play this cooperative title, and the game says it takes about an hour, but it usually takes longer for us. We think you ought to wait until your kids are at least ten to enjoy this game.

Art

If you’ve seen the art in any Horrified game, you’ll recognize what you have here, too. The players and legends are chip board standees, like usual, and the monsters have great colored minis again. The biggest thing you’ll notice that’s different here is this giant location in the middle: The Void.

Mechanics

So let’s talk a little bit about the mechanics.

Ravensburger didn’t mess with the formula in World of Monsters. Just every other Horrified game, every player has a special power on their Hero tile that only they can do. Beyond that, each player can move around the board, guide legends to their safe spots, pick up items, share those items with other players, and advance goals that are about defeating monsters.

Each character has a certain number of actions they take, and they can be any combination of the actions Anitra just listed, including doing the same action multiple times.

Each turn has a character phase and a monster phase.

First a player will go, take their actions, and accomplish some goals, hopefully. Then, the Monster phase happens.

Flip a card from the monster deck. Draw the number of tokens it shows from the bag and place them in their locations on the board.

Then do the event, whatever it is.

Finally, activate the monsters. The bottom left of the card shows you which monsters attack, the bottom middle shows how far they move, and finally the bottom right tells you how many dice the monster rolls when they attack a player or a legend.

Attacks are simple: Roll the dice and the “bang” actions are hits. Players can discard an item for each hit in order to defend themselves.

The exclamation point is the monster’s special power. If you roll any of these, evaluate the power for each one.

Then, go to the next player.

There’s more to it, but this is the general idea. Your goal in World of Monsters is the same as every other Horrified game: Defeat all the big bads. It’s important to note that you don’t use all four monsters at once: Pick just two, or three if you want a harder game.

The Monsters

Each big monster has a series of special objectives you must complete before you can actually defeat it.

• With the Yeti, you need to escort the Yeti’s children to its lair just like escorting legends to safe spots. Then you can attack and defeat the Yeti.
• The Sphinx has a riddle that you have to beat. Place items in a grid such that they add up to the values on the ends of the grid. Once you have completed this riddle, you can defeat the Sphinx
• Jiangshi must be defeated with a coin sword. Discard items at the Moon Shrine to fill and build the coin sword. Once the players build it, use it by discarding items to defeat Jiangshi
• And finally, Cthulu. The most complicated villain Horrified has ever seen, the Ancient One has multiple steps before you can secure its demise. First, discard items to open three portals. Then, lure Cthulu to the Void in the middle of the board. Finally, go through the portal yourself to enter the Corpse-City R’Lyeh. There you need to bind Cthulu’s tentacles before you can finally gather the necessary items across all players to lock Cthulu in its vault.

Beat all the monsters and save the world (and yourself). Whew!

Combining with Greek Monsters

Ravensburger also did something new and special with this set. In the rulebook, you can find rules to combine any of the four monsters of World of Monsters with any of the monsters from the Greek Monsters game.

There are some one-time rules for setup on the inside of the back cover of the rulebook, and the rest of the rules for combining the sets is here on the back as well. We did this a couple of times while reviewing the game, and we’ll talk about those later.

Krampus

Because first, we need to talk about Krampus.

Krampus is wild. Actually a little bit like the Yeti. Krampus will skulk around the board looking for three innocent children to capture, which are like the legend characters from the regular game. But here, you’re rushing around to get the children and lead them to Saint Nick for protection!

But Krampus can capture the children or even Saint Nick himself, so you might be fighting with Krampus to release the characters stuffed in his sack.

Free the three children, then get them under Saint Nick’s protection. And only then can you discard items and defeat the demon of the season.

Expectations

All right, so let’s talk about some expectations. This is the fourth Horrified, so while I expected some new things, I expected a lot of the same. With the same designers and the same artists, I figured this would be pretty recognizable as a Horrified game once we got it on the table. And, unsurprisingly, I was right!

I agree with you. I expected Horrified, with a new set of interesting monsters.

I was also kind of excited to fight Cthulu. You only need to see the box, or know the legends, to know he’s the biggest and baddest of the big bads. And I wasn’t disappointed at all with the multi-level boss fight, which is something we’ve really never seen in a Horrified game before.

Yeah, Cthulu just looked really cool. I was also excited for the ability to combine both Horrified: World of Monsters with the Greek Monsters set.

Anything Greek for you, huh?

Yeah.

Surprises

[Anitra] So, surprises. I enjoy Horrified, we all do, but I always struggle a little bit to figure out this particular mix of iconography and text. I feel like I’m constantly searching the board to figure out what goes where, and which monster is activated by each card.

[Andrew] I have some of this problem too: I can never remember where the locations are, even at the end of the game I’m still hunting for locations. So every time I’m pulling out an item, I’m always looking at the board for a couple of seconds to figure it out. Once or twice isn’t a big deal, but again, over the course of a game it gets a little old. I suppose if all I every played was Horrified, this would be a little bit easier. But we have a lot of games!

[Anitra] I really liked the idea of combining the Greek Monsters with the World of Monsters, but when we did, this iconography issue got even harder. The back of the rulebook says that orange items become purple – and that’s fine – but blue items now become green and green items become blue?

[Andrew] Even if the combining of sets wasn’t a consideration when Greek Monsters came out, flipping the colors in the next set is crazy. What’s wrong with red or yellow for an item color? Anything to keep from redefining an existing color as a different existing color.

[Asher] I was really disappointed. Combining the sets made it harder, and just kinda overall worse. Even the symbols changed between the two sets. But Cthulu WAS really cool. And really hard.

[Andrew} But I loved Krampus! I loved him. I had no idea what to expect with him but I found the back-and-forth with the children really interesting and super fun. I hope Ravensburger considers more of these one-character boxes, because I think they can really add a lot of interesting variety to any of the Horrified games.

Recommended?

So Asher, would we recommend Horrified: World of Monsters?

If you like Horrified this is another great title with new and different monsters. Cthulu specifically is a really unique twist on the old monster formula. It really makes you have to think through different strategies, especially since it has its own board and absolutely requires all of the players to work together to defeat it.

With the exception of Cthulu, the monsters in this set are a little simpler than the ones in Greek Monsters, so if you tried that and found it a little bit too complicated, this one’s a little easier.

Krampus, though, Krampus is fantastic. He’s a little tough to get your hands on, but if you get the chance, make sure to get him.

We give Horrified: World of Monsters 3½ monsters out of 5.

And that’s World of Monsters, in a SNAP!

Find Horrified: World of Monsters at your friendly local game store, on Amazon, or get it directly from Ravensburger.

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The Family Gamers received Horrified: World of Monsters and Horrified: Krampus for this review from Ravensburger.

This post contains affiliate links, which do not change your price, but help support The Family Gamers.

SNAP review music is Avalanche, provided courtesy of You Bred Raptors?