Twilight Creations When Darkness Comes...The Awakening Board Game

I love to play and review zombie games and that is what led me to purchase When Darkness Comes: The Awakening. This game is original, loaded with thematic horror elements, and is fun to play once you learn the rules.Originality-- * This game is very original. It is a toolbox kind of game. By that I mean that you can make really any kind of classic horror scenario with this game. The game comes with 6 different one-shot scenarios and a mini-campaign, as well.Rules-- O Poorly written, split between two books, and hard to understand are the phrases that best describe the rules of this games. The rules make this game hard to play just out of the box; the host will need to sit down and carefully review them before playing the game in order to make some kind of sense out of them. In the end, it may be better to just use the components and develop your own rules.Components-- * The components are nice. The map boards are well-detailed and colorful. The pewter miniatures are cool. Some of the tokens are a little misprinted and I don't understand some of the artwork on them, but they work for the game. Also, one of the token sheets wasn't glued well and so tore away when punched from the sprue. Your experience may vary.Theme-- * This game has a huge amount of theme potential, but the tokens for monsters kinda robs from the fun. The theme could definitely be amped up with miniatures to stand in for the "newly discovered" monsters.Cool-- * This game is very cool! It is a toolkit for making any horror-themed boardgames or rpg scenarios. How could you not think that was cool?Bonus-- O Because the rules are poorly written and the game has no active online support that I am aware of, I cannot reward it any bonus points.Total-- 4/6 stars This game has incredible potential. I really believe that with time and dedication this game could be "pimped" by a collector up to a 5 or 6 level game, but out of the box it just isn't quite up to that level.

Theoretically, a horror-themed Heroquest ought to be the coolest thing since Heroquest. The pawns are detailed and the board components are very cool: modular tiles depicting a small city. Each scenario has a detailed story for setting the mood, and the game can be run with a GM or without depending on the scenario. Everywhere I searched for good horror board games online, this title came up, so I decided it was a good investment.However, nobody ever mentioned how badly written the rules were. They're abysmally unclear in many cases, almost as if they were thrown together with little to no playtesting. This becomes clear to anyone who sits down and begins reading them, without any playtesting needed. If I had known I would have to rewrite the rules myself, I would've thought twice about the purchase. Still, it seems like it might be fun for any group willing to reinvent rules on the fly. I wouldn't know, because I haven't figured out how the game works yet in order to play it.Also, the player pawns are metallic, which is bad news for any tabletop. Be warned.

A friend of mine badgered me into getting this game so we could add it to our group's repertoire (which already includes numerous other card and board games). In a nutshell: it's a pretty good game.The basics of the game are that you play a character (choosing from premades or creating your own using the character creation rules) and there is some scenario to be accomplished. The game comes with a few, and it wouldn't be too difficult to come up with more on your own. All skill checks are made using a dice rolling system that's fairly simple. You get a certain number of dice and try to get the most pairs or longest straight you can, which determines your success or failure.The game is played on tiles printed with different building layouts. Some scenarios require specific buildings, while another builds the town as you play (you start on one tile and then randomly choose and place others as you move). Each tile has random chips that you flip over when you land on their space. These can be items, allies, security, or monsters. You get points for completing the chip (finding the item, defeating the monster etc) which can be spent to reroll dice or other helpful things.The game also has a unique aspect in that it can be played with a Game Master like a pen-and-paper RPG as opposed to a straight boardgame. I've yet to play this way, but the game rules seem like they are robust/expandable enough to handle it, and could make for a good rules-lite style game.Overall I'd definitely recommend this game to people with friends who enjoy boardgames and/or like survival-horror styled games.