Tag: murder

Betrayal at The House on The Hill – Build-A-Bear but Less Terrifying:

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).

Board game cafes are my life blood when it comes to socialising.

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.

Because who doesn’t want to play as a girl that would be better suited to a horror movie?

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.

It is great fun to just pick up the traitor tome and walk away, leaving your friends to wonder what you’re going to do in order to win.

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).

No-one is safe. Not in this house.

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 😊)

Kindergarten – Mean Girls Has Nothing on These Kids:

People often reminisce about their school days, speaking fondly of teachers, playground games and the friendships they made. I only graduated from school a few years back, but I do the same, especially in the occasional meetups that I have with my old friends – in between the carnage that is university. As a military brat, I went to several different primary schools, but I can confirm that none of them were quite like the experiences of the New Kid in 2017’s indie puzzle game, Kindergarten and its recent sequel – Kindergarten 2.

It’s your first day at your new school and something is… not quite right. Whether it’s the ongoing missing child case, the murderous janitor and his beloved mop or the class teacher’s strange fondness of killing off her students, it doesn’t take a detective to realise that something is amiss at this school. If you want to make it through your first day, you’ll have to face the bully, befriend your fellow classmates, kill those who cause you problems and avoid several different forms of poisoning. You know, normal kid stuff.

Bit creepy there Nugget.

Kindergarten, like many indie games, was a big hit on YouTube. I’ve lost count of how many lets-plays there are of it but despite the content saturation, I think Kindergarten is one of those franchises that deserves every second of screen time it gets and more. At its core, the Kindergarten series are puzzle games. Each mission has a different set of requirements, but they are simple in nature. There are no ridiculously complicated codes to break or extremely vague clues that cause more confusion than assistance.

I think this simplicity mixed with darker themes and side-splitting hilarity is what has allowed it to retain its popularity, with the sequel being met with pure excitement than with mild trepidation, which happens with a lot of indie games. With a cast of goofy, multi-dimensional characters, there’s a lot more depth to Kindergarten than you’d expect to see from it. From Bugg’s dad having left him, to the twisted relationship between Ted and Felix, it can really make you think – as you watch your character get obliterated by the robot girl with a death laser.

Your friendly neighbourhood murderer, I mean Janitor.

Part of the appeal of puzzle games like Kindergarten is the sense of achievement it provides you. Whether it’s dying in a hilarious way, completing a mission or just trying something unexpected, the game actively rewards you for doing so – often the rarer Monstermon cards are unlocked this way. I don’t know whether it was intentional on the game designer’s part or not but this idea of experimenting, learning and trying new things is like what we try to teach kids from a young age (Just without the murder). It perfectly mimics that sense of childish glee that you see on a toddler’s face when they discover Playdough for the first time.

Being able to enjoy things just because they’re funny or ridiculous, is something that you often miss out on if you struggle with mental health issues – especially for depression sufferers. You lose interest in your hobbies; you struggle to smile at something that used to reduce you to fits of laughter and it just all seems… dark. You don’t see the point in laughing or smiling or going out of your way to try and escape the negative spiral you’ve been caught in – you feel you deserve that sadness, that emptiness. It’s a toxic cycle that is extremely hard to break out of. I speak from experience in that department.

WHY THE SPIDERS FELIX.

So, having a game series based around being childlike, messing around and completing the whackiest list of tasks on the planet – like pouring spiders on a child trapped in a hole, is more than just an excuse to laugh. It’s like being handed a get out of jail free card from that negative hole that you’ve been trapped in. Instead of having spiders thrown on you, someone throws you a rope and helps you climb out, even if it’s just for a little while. That time in the light, in the sense of happiness and genuine joy, makes surviving the next bout of darkness that much easier.

Plus, I think we can all relate to a few of the character’s in the game. Although exaggerated, the missions they set you are a lot deeper than you think. Let me talk about a few, from my point of view:

  1. Cindy’s Flower – Throughout this mission, Cindy has you do her bidding. From traumatising poor Lily by pouring a bucket of blood on her head, to potentially beating you to death for not giving her money whilst playing a game of “house”, it’s clear that this is a toxic relationship. Considering that Cindy is extremely young, it makes you wonder – why is this her idea of a good relationship? Why does she have a breathalyser?
  • Nugget’s Nuggets – Simultaneously the most beloved character and the whackiest, Nugget is certainly an odd case. For him to trust you, he asks you to complete various tasks to gain five nuggets of friendship, before he will truly talk to you. Apart from the poisoning you bit and killing off the school bully, he seems desperate for a friend that he can trust – especially now that Billy is missing. He’s lonely. And in this deadly school, that’s a dangerous thing.
  • Cain’s Not Able – In the second game, you meet the brothers Felix and Teddy. Where Felix is bossy, confident and conceited, Teddy is shy, underconfident and eager to please. Their family’s business is wealthy and powerful, so Felix wants the full inheritance rather than having to share with his brother. So, he enlists you to help kill him. Depending on what path you take in the mission, you can help betray Teddy and kill him – ignoring his pleas for his brother to love him, or let Teddy know of the plot and help him seek his revenge. It’s an incredibly dark mission, not so subtly influenced by the bible story of Cain and Able.

The examples I’ve given are just a drop in the ocean of the potential talking points surrounding Kindergarten. So, give it a shot if you haven’t, it’s well worth the time! Plus, Nugget is best boy.

Till next time,

CaitlinRC.