Base price: $56.
3 – 6 players.
Play time: 60+ minutes.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 2
Full disclosure: A review copy of Betrayal at House on the Hill: Third Edition was provided by Avalon Hill.
I keep wanting to do a style of review where I revisit a game from my past and see how my feelings changed on it, but before I can do that, they release a new version of the game I was thinking about covering and then it’s different enough that I feel like releasing a review of the previous version would largely be reductive, at this point. And as proof, here we are again. I was going to cover Betrayal at House on the Hill 2E and talk about how it’s a flawed masterpiece that inspired a generation to imagine what could be possible between narratives and board games. It was going to be a whole thing; give me a couple years and I’ll get back to it. Instead, I got to play Betrayal 3E over the spooky season and now here we are! I’m excited to try out some new photography techniques; we’ll see if I’ve gotten any better. In the meantime, this will likely come out a bit after Halloween; there are plenty of Halloween games. What can you do? But please, enjoy a brief meditation on the latest game in the vaunted Betrayal at House on the Hill series. Maybe I should try Betrayal Legacy? Maybe next year.
In Betrayal at House on the Hill: 3rd Edition, you’re back with a brand new collection of adventurers in the house that really just can’t stop killing people. Sometimes it kills the good guys; sometimes it kills the bad guys. Real estate is fun like that. But with new haunts, new items, new omens, new tiles, and new friends, maybe you’ll survive the experience this time. Not unchanged, mind you, but you’ll possibly survive. And that’s pretty cool! As the game progresses, players build out a haunted house to try and discover the secrets that lurk within. But beware! As players collect Omens, the house’s true agenda begins to form. It’s possible that among you lurks a Traitor with their own agenda, seeking to commit some unspeakable evil or just be a bit of a jerk; the Haunts are pretty varied like that. The remaining Heroes will have to keep their wits about them to survive or maybe beat up some undead cats? Again, the Haunts are weird. Can you survive this third iteration of the classic spooky house game?
Overall: 8.75 / 10
Overall, I mean, I still love Betrayal at House on the Hill. I love it every time I play it, and I have a blast doing so, even if I die horribly (or someone else does). Betrayal remains a labor of love for me to write about, and having written about it at least three times, I always worry that the game’s shine is going to darken a bit and, somehow, impossibly, it almost never does. Maybe it’s the spooky season; maybe it’s the spooky inside of me. Who knows? I will say that they’ve tightened a lot of things up (and introduced some more confusion into the rulebook, but, again, that’s just part of the fun). I do take issue with the publisher referring to the game as “cooperative” when it’s literally called “Betrayal at House on the Hill”, but, I mean, if you get surprised, I guess that’s on you at this point. There’s a lot to like in this edition, too! New haunts? Fantastic. I personally love that you choose your sort of “Haunt Prompt” that tells you why you’re even in the house to kick things off. It’s a fun way to set the mood of the game and it lets players get invested in the narrative from the get-go. And, frankly, if you’re going to play Betrayal at House on the Hill, you need to be invested in the narrative. That’s … most of the game. Not all of it! But most of it. If you’re here looking for a deeply strategic experience that’s going to challenge your brain and make you riddle over everything you’ve ever known about gaming, well, this isn’t it. It’s not what you’re looking for. This is one of the Three Great Spooky House Games, along with Mansions of Madness and Shaky Manor, depending on how invested in the Gamer Experience your group is. Highly recommend all of them, frankly. Granted, I haven’t played all of the new haunts yet, but I do love the mechanical changes that the developers have made to simplify the flow of the game and make it less confusing for new players. I still have my house rules, though, and I always will. It’s always better to roll one die at a time for Haunt Rolls; so much more suspenseful. Plus, they added in a rule that lets you transfer being the Traitor to another player if you don’t want to be it, which is wonderful for some groups.
Betrayal always takes me back to my roots, watching Tabletop for the first time to see if I wanted to get into board gaming and seeing some people get murdered by Wil Wheaton as a demon or something. I don’t know; I assume that’s also an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I watched the other ones. Sub Rosa. And it’s a happy memory for me, so, yes, some of that nostalgia will always be imprinted on the game. I can say for certain that the components are still a bit too bendy and the cards remain a weird shape and, of course, player elimination still sucks. I killed one of my good friends on my first turn as the Traitor and they just kind of got to watch the rest of the game. I felt bad, but I was a demon cat burning the house down; I’m fickle by nature. Plus, I had to let everyone know I meant business. That said, there is one major change that is strictly good: the stat trackers actually work, now. No more sliding coffins or clear nail polish to try and make them thicker; they’re already perfect. They also added a bit more diversity to the cast (especially in terms of their hobbies and interests), which is always fun. Anyone can die in a spooky house; that’s what we fought the Civil War over, probably. I was raised south of the Mason-Dixon line. But it’s hard to begin or end the spooky season without looking back at Betrayal at House on the Hill, so I wanted to make sure I got a review written up before Mariah Carey rises from the grave to tell us that she wants us for Christmas. It’s terrifying. In the meantime, though, Betrayal will likely be a game that I return to year after year, and hopefully the publisher does too! It’s a genuinely silly experience if you let it be, and I love that. If you’re looking for hard strategy and complex management, maybe look elsewhere, but if you’re in search of a spooky time, a silly time, or you just want to build a haunted house that gets eaten by a big rat or something (again, haven’t played all the haunts yet), I’d overwhelmingly recommend Betrayal at House on the Hill Third Edition! There’s always something in there for me.
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