Scariest Cooperative Horror Board Games

Horror is not a new addition to board games, especially when some tables just need a bit of fright to go around in Halloween or whenever they feel like wanting to save characters from otherworldly threats, zombies, or killers on the loose. At first glance, board games having a lot of components and being equally tricky to set up can make the idea of horror not as scary - that is, until players find the perfect one that forces them to work together against insurmountible odds.

There are a surprising number of horror board games that not just make players band together but also come with mechanics that constantly test their trust for each other. Some titles even have obligatory mechanics that force players to turn against each other, and games where certain triggers force one or more players to become the bad guys for a change.

Betrayal At House On The Hill

Become The Architect Of The Haunted House To Escape From

Players who want a more traditional haunted house experience can take on the challenge of Betrayal at House on the Hill - only this time, they “build” the haunted house as they explore it. Each room in Betrayal at House on the Hill is randomly drawn, and may have an Item, Event, or Omen - all of which come with different instructions. The room with the Omen card is most important, as failing its requirements will begin the Haunt - where the real “horror” enters the picture.

Depending on the Haunt, the “traitor” player and the other “survivors” have rules to follow and objectives to meet. There are around 50+ Haunt scenarios (dealing with villains like vampires, ghosts, zombies, and others) available, which, when combined with how random the houses can get, means there’s no exact same Betrayal session. Despite comments on how “broken” Haunts can get, it’s precisely this uncertainty that makes the board game terrifying when it counts.

Hako Onna

Horror Where The Villain Has As Much Fun As The Players

Haunted houses are a staple in Japanese horror, and Hako Onna takes this concept and turns it into a rather tense board game. Similar to Betrayal, players who control survivors explore a haunted house as they try to find clues that can weaken “Hako Onna” without attracting her attention. Unfortunately for them, the player assigned as Hako Onna is also making invisible moves alongside them.

The game inevitably transforms into a Phasmophobia-like experience, where the objective is to stay out of the Hako Onna’s way long enough to figure out her weakness. However, the clock is actively against them, as the Hako Onna kills any character that is in the same room as her, and failing Dexterity checks will lead the Hako Onna closer to them.

Ten Candles

Perfect For Players Who Love Tragic Horror

Ten Candles by Stephen Dewey remains a masterful take on horror board games, specifically tackling tragic horror, where what matters amid inevitable death are the moments leading up to it. Set up as more of a collaborative experience, Ten Candles simply requires ten candles, d6s, and index cards. Players create characters with index cards they can trade for rolls or re-rolls under specific circumstances (Vice, Virtue, Moment, Brink). The rest of the game is set up by describing “Them” (the enemies of the story) and slowly establishing “Truths” that permanently affect the story.

The key aspect of the game lies in the presence of the ten candles, each representing a scene. The game ends when all characters die or all the candles are extinguished. It’s the latter that sets up the horrific circumstances of play, as any action can risk the candle going out and ending the scene, and even an outside element extinguishing a candle takes the scene out of play, representing twists in a tragic story. What’s worse is that the game cannot end in the player’s favor - a story that ends with a last survivor standing will end in the “Them” closing in on that player, inevitably ending in their death.

Dread

Fate Lies In A Jenga Tower

For a game that uses a Jenga tower to play, Dread can make for some horrific sessions. Created by Epidiah Ravachol and Nathaniel Barmore, the 2005 indie title is a triple-ENNIE winner (Innovation, Best Game, Best Rules) for its innovative approach to play. At its core, the setup is simple: the Host uses a list of questions to assign characters to a horror “stock” role (Best Friend, Nerd, Cheerleader, etc.), and the Jenga tower is set up.

The horror aspect comes into play whenever a character needs to do an action, as success is only available when a Jenga block is successfully pulled from the tower. Players familiar with Jenga can see where this will go wrong so quickly, as each progressive action will inevitably be much harder than the last. Should the Jenga tower fall, the character fails the action and dies. With how Jenga towers are built, the general expectation when playing Dread is that no character will survive the horrors that await them.

Blood On The Clocktower

A Mafia Variant Made More Horrifying With More Roles

Anyone who’s ever played a social deduction game has likely already heard of Mafia or Werewolf - making 2022’s Blood on the Clocktower a familiar title for genre veterans. The rules are simple - players are divided into good-aligned Townsfolk, good-hindering Outsiders and/or Minions, and the good-killing Demon. As with Mafia, Clocktower features a night period mostly for the Demon to eliminate a player and a day period for Townsfolk to kill the accused with an execution.

Like the original games, Clocktower sessions end when the Demon is executed (Good Ending) or if only two living players remain (Bad Ending). What makes Clocktower quite the compelling experience is how dead characters can still use one vote for the remainder of the game, the addition of unique “statuses” that may lead to misinformation, and how the inclusion of the third-party Outsiders can make sessions involving more than 20 players a test of friendship.

Dead Of Winter: A Cross Roads Game

Where Surviving Winter Is Secondary To Personal Stakes

Any post-apocalyptic story can get messy quickly when personal stories clash, and Dead of Winter: A Cross Roads Game is exactly this. Set in a colony infested by zombies, players take on the role of leaders who must work together to ensure their survival. Unfortunately for everyone, their characters have secret conditions they need to meet to “win” the game.

Gameplay-wise, Dead of Winter is straightforward. Each turn will have survivors do actions such as gathering supplies, attacking (zombies or otherwise), and building fortifications, among others. However, each subsequent action makes it harder for the next player, especially when their actions consume resources, and they always attract more zombies. This will slowly make each round much harder for the team, in addition to players having to pursue their characters’ own personal agendas.

This War Of Mine: The Board Game

Become Survivors Of A Raging Invasion

Players familiar with 2014’s This War of Mine can finally “play” the game in board game form. This 2017 cooperative board game takes all the artistic, thematic, and gameplay cues from the original title and turns it into a harrowing experience for players. Still set during the siege of a fictional city, players are in control of various civilians as they tend to an abandoned tenement in the hopes of surviving until the ceasefire. Spoiler alert, most of the time they won’t.

The board game has day-night cycles, where actions taken in each also affect resources the characters desperately need. Scenarios in the game are taken from a large “Book of Scripts” where a session’s three chapters (alongside their win condition and loss penalty) are outlined, as well as cards providing random scenarios. Like the video game counterpart, This War of Mine has been branded as more of an artistic and educational tool than one for entertainment. However, for players who want their style of horror to be more visceral and grounded in reality, This War of Mine is a must-try.