When you finish secondary school, one of the main fears you have is that you won’t be able to cope with the drastic changes it forces upon you. In the UK, you are required by law to remain in some form of education or training until the age of 18. After that, you are deemed an adult by society and mostly left to your own devices, except when bill payments and the tax man come around. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a young person, especially considering you’ve been asking them to make decisions that could impact the rest of their lives, with little to no life experience to back up those choices.
The other big fear is that you will lose all the friends that you made. For many, they were what kept you going in tough times, provided a shoulder to lean on and a place of safety when everyone else seemed out to get you. They want you to succeed and you want only the best for them. Which often means, you must let them chase their dreams, even if you don’t get to see them for a long time. In the case of my friends from school, I only really see them about twice a year. So, the little time I do spend with them, is very important to us all. How do we spend that time? Simple. We spend an afternoon at a board game café, messing around, catching up and claiming to be the princess when in fact we are an evil cat (it makes sense in context, I swear).
It was at our usual place that I came across what is one of my favourite board games now, Betrayal at The House on The Hill. To start, the players choose a character from the selection – such as a demonic little girl, a headstrong jock or a mad scientist. As a team, you explore the house – building it from a pile of tiles and discovering the secrets that lie within. From sinister whispers to a literal madman, each room you uncover leads you closer and closer to the main event. Some tiles have an omen symbol on them. Whenever an omen is triggered, you must roll to see if the “Haunt” begins.
Up until the Haunt, you are all on the same side. Exploring the house, helping one another, discovering the truth as chaos unfolds around you. However, when the Haunt begins, there’s no real way to tell what is going to happen next. With 50 scenarios in the standard game and dozens more in the expansions, no one playthrough of the game is the same. The type of Haunt you experience depends on what room you are in and what omen last occurred, so there are a ridiculous number of combinations to choose from.
The Haunt is where the “betrayal” part of the game’s title comes into play. Depending on the scenario, one of you has turned to the dark side. That player must take the traitor’s tome and read the scenario’s instructions, in private, such that the remaining players are kept in the dark. The rest of the group reads their copy of the scenario, which explains what they need to do in order to survive and escape the house alive. This ranges from performing a séance to put a spirit’s weary soul to rest, to taking down a seemingly immortal axe murderer that is trying to axe them a few too many questions.
It’s a fascinating dynamic, as the game actively encourages you to work together. So, when the traitor reveals themselves and the ghouls of the house start to wreak havoc, it’s jarring and unnerving. I’ve known my group of friends from secondary school for nearly a decade now, so to say we know one another quite well is a bit of an understatement. Yet, when we play Betrayal, we often see a darker side of our normally kind-hearted friends.
I’ll give you an example. In one round, we played in teams of two, pairing the experienced players with the newcomers. As there were only three new players and five experienced ones, it meant that my close friend and I ended up on the same team – such that the two gamers weren’t given any advantages! However, when the Haunt was triggered, we became the traitor. Our character had discovered an ancient sarcophagus in the house and had to reunite him with his loved one – reincarnated in the body of a little girl we had rescued from another room in the house. When reunited with one another, they’d become so powerful that the leaders of the world would bow before them instantly. The world would burn and be remade in their image. The others wanted to stop it.
However, the problem with one of your own team turning on you, is that you are intimately aware of one another’s strengths and weaknesses. There’s a sense of familiarity and trust that is shattered when the players who protected you earlier in the game, are now the one’s holding the knife at the end of an unlit hallway. One of the other pairs had the most intelligent character and had the highest chance of thwarting our plan. So, we chased them down and killed them. It was a ruthless act, but it ended up winning us the game (that and the fact the others kept failing the elevator roll and taking damage from it).
More than anything, I think the reason that betrayal appeals to me so strongly, is that it hints at the darkness in humanity. Sure, zombies and vampires can be terrifying but, in our minds, we know that they aren’t real. The true horror of psychopaths and traitors is that they could be us. For all we know, they could have been stood where we are standing only a few months ago. Human psychology is as fascinating as it is terrifying. We often surprise ourselves with what we are truly capable of, and not always in a good way. So many crime dramas have the least suspicious person turn out to be the killer.
As a core principle, I believe that everyone is inherently good. I do not see the point in anger or cruelty or hate. To me, it feels like needless aggression that takes a toll on all involved parties – be they active participants or merely observers. The sad thing is that these good people can be swayed, manipulated and led astray – to believe in twisted causes and harmful world views, to betray those they care about. Which is why games that have you think from the villain’s mindset, are always intriguing.
Anyways, that’s my two cents on a very fun board game. There are expansion packs and a D&D inspired version of the game so if you’re interested, go find it! I highly recommend it, especially as a late-night bonding experience for a small group.
Till next week,
CaitlinRC (Happy new year 😊)
