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Five of the game series’ most inventive monster designs, and how their mechanics capture what makes each classic horror icon so memorable.

There are few things more reassuring than sitting down for a nice, relaxing game of Horrified and traipsing around a beautifully illustrated village that’s being terrorised by a collection of supernatural monstrosities. Lovely stuff. It’s basically a wholesome evening in, provided you don’t think too hard about the screaming.

Horrified: Universal Monsters is the game that got me into the hobby, and I cannot resist every single new release. It’s like an illness. I know that, technically, they all play the same. They’ve got the same base ruleset and the same basic idea. But they all play differently. They do. And I’ll tell you why: it’s the monsters. It’s those hell-spawned monsters…

The Horrified series has now expanded well beyond its original Universal Monsters, bringing together creatures from Dungeons & Dragons, Lovecraftian horror and the wider world of monsters. Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons – Ravenloft is currently riding high, so it’s long past time, then, for an important decision: what is it about the Horrified monsters that make the game so fiendishly good, and which ones do the best job?

This isn’t a listicle. It’s not. I don’t do listicles. Never have. Rather, this is a sequence of descriptions of monsters from the game, with a discussion of what makes them great. In order of greatness. From 5 to 1. You can read them in any order you wish. But 5 to 1 is best.

What Makes a Great Horrified Monster?

We need to clarify the criteria, just so you good people don’t think I chucked all of the minifigs into a cloth bag and plucked out five at random. That would be a terrible way to run an article. Terrible. In order to make a Horrified game brilliant, a good Horrified monster needs to do more than look impressive on the table.

The best monsters feel like their source material while also giving you a genuinely different problem to solve. They should change the way you approach the game, create memorable moments and ideally make you question whether your carefully constructed plan was ever particularly clever in the first place.

For this ranking, I’m looking at four things:

Theme: Does the monster actually feel like the creature it’s supposed to represent?

Gameplay: Does fighting it create interesting decisions and change the way you play?

Personality: Does it have something distinctive that separates it from the other monsters?

Fun: Does having it on the board make the game more memorable?

With that in mind, let’s get to it!

5. Bigfoot – Horrified: American Monsters

Bigfoot is a significant symbol in cryptozoology (bet you didn’t think I know big words), and has loomed large in my imagination since early childhood, when some idiot let me watch the video nasty Night of the Demon. This slice of 80’s lunacy was banned in the UK, but that didn’t stop dodgy types knocking on your door with some sneaky vids you could rent for the night. Bigfoot does some bad things in that film. Really bad.

Anyway, let’s not go there. There’s too many stories and books and movies about Bigfoot to count, and he was a shoe-in for Horrified: American Monsters. There’s a couple of things that stand out about Bigfoot as an opponent. The fact that you have to get five photos as evidence of his existence is thematically spot-on.

Then there’s his movement, which pairs up nicely with the notion that Bigfoot is both scary and elusive. Usually when a monster attacks a player or villager, that’s the end of their movement. Not Bigfoot. He barrels on through. He delivers a windmill punch to your jaw and, if he’s got any movement left, he keeps on going, leaving behind footprint tokens. You have to pick up (collect) these footprints in order to reveal the photo tiles. The risk and reward is built in to taking on Bigfoot. This is smart design, and I’m loving it. Footprints and photographs: you understand all of this from the myth of Bigfoot, it’s recognisable as the kind of real world ‘evidence’ we’ve all seen. 

That matters because the best Horrified monsters aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest miniature or the most frightening reputation (although I’ll never forget the things I saw as a child…). They’re the ones that make you play differently, and you’ve got to be prepared for Bigfoot’s hit-and-run technique.

So why is Bigfoot only number five? The simple fact is that Horrified as a series handles its monsters, by and large, with imagination and attention to detail. There’s a lot of competition, and on another week my choices could easily change.

Still, if you’re looking for a thematic Horrified monster, Bigfoot is an excellent choice.

4. The Beholder — Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons

The Beholder is one of the most recognisable creatures in Dungeons & Dragons, which creates an interesting challenge for Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons: how do you turn one of D&D’s strangest and most dangerous monsters into a board-game villain?

The answer is, you add another of D&D’s most iconic elements: the D20. Horrified has had dice from the start. The iconic (and usually funky-coloured) hit dice have been a feature since the OG game, and are used to resolve monster attacks. But this release introduced the new die, and it was a good deal more effective than expected at the game’s announcement. It’s been so effective, in fact, that it stuck around for the following release… but we’ll get to that soon.

To defeat the Beholder, you have to take out its eyestalks, and then attack the central antimagic eye. To do this, discard an item when you’re on the same space as the Beholder (oo, how brave are you), and roll that fancy D20. Roll a 1, you miss, you are Will Wheaton. A 2-15 lets you damage an eyestalk of your choice. A 16-19, your sword swing takes out two. A 20 (critical hit!) lets you destroy three in one go. Some lucky rolls can make a hero of you. A bit unlucky? Then it’s a real heads-down duck-and-dodge fight, as you and the other players move in and out for the battle. Very unlucky? Then you are in for a tough time, and for a story that your mates will tell about you every week at your board game gathering.

This is what makes the Beholder a particularly effective addition to Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons. It’s the way its abilities translate the creature’s identity into gameplay. This feels like a TTRPG battle. This is a top notch example of what the Horrified series does well. You don’t simply get a famous monster with a familiar name slapped onto a miniature. The mechanics are designed to make you feel like you’re dealing with the Beholder itself.

The Beholder earns its place at number four. It’s recognisable, thematic and mechanically distinctive… but there are three Horrified monsters I think are even better.

3. Cthulhu — Horrified: World of Monsters

There is perhaps no shortage of games featuring the enormous Lovecraftian nightmare, which means that simply putting a Cthulhu miniature on the table isn’t enough anymore. Horrified: World of Monsters has to make the experience of fighting Cthulhu feel worthy of the name.

And fortunately, it does.

Now, to be clear, I’m not a fan of World Of Monsters. The theme is dreadful (and not in a good Horrified way). It’s an excuse to make a core box into which you can mix any monster, some wishy-washy nonsense about portals and ‘The Stewards of the Shrouded Void’ which is about as lazy as it gets, and it means that the game loses all of the series’ charm. (Let’s see if you can guess where I’d place Horrified: World Of Monsters when I get round to ranking the series…) But we aren’t judging the games. We’re rating the monsters. 

Cthulhu is particularly notable because he is Horrified’s first ever two stage monster. That’s right, just when you think you’ve taken the Ancient One down, that’s when he gets rough. So, first up you need to open that portal (okay, so the portal is thematic for Cthulhu canon, but it has little to do with the mythology around the other monsters, okay?), which requires discarding items to rotate one of the ancient dials (this bit could be in a Lovecraft short story). As soon as the portal is open, you can make a brilliant decision for your own personal safety, and pop on through!

The brilliant/scary bit is that you have to tempt Cthulhu to follow, as it is only in this realm (known as the Corpse City of R’lyeh (lovely)) that he can be defeated. Two of the four monsters in World of Monsters are fairly easy to defeat. Cthulhu more than makes up for that difficulty level.

This is where the distinction between a good monster and a great Horrified monster becomes obvious. A great monster doesn’t just make you think, “Oh, that’s Cthulhu.” It makes you think, “Oh no. That’s Cthulhu.” And fair warning: he is NOT the first monster you should attempt to play against on your first go. You really need to make sure you’re familiar with the locations and how to move around the board before you attempt to take him on.

Cthulhu takes the number three spot because he feels appropriately epic. You’re taking on something that regards you the way we lowly humans view an ant, so Cthulhu should be daunting. For fans of Lovecraftian horror, Horrified: World of Monsters also demonstrates just how far the series can stretch beyond its original Universal Monsters setting.

2. Baba Lysaga — Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons – Ravenloft

Baba Lysaga is one of the most distinctive monsters in Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons – Ravenloft. Those unfamiliar with D&D might not recognise the full name, but they are likely to be familiar with her namesake: Baba Yaga, the subject of an Eastern European myth. Baba Yaga is a witch from Slavic folklore who lives in a magical hut in the forest and either helps, imprisons, or eats people, usually children. What a charmer.

Baby Lysaga’s hut is powered by a magical gemstone, which players need to steal before taking on the witch herself. This entails doing the one thing that any player would flat out refuse (especially if they’ve ever watched a horror movie). You need to explore the hut. Brilliant. Just what you wanted to do. There are, of course, enemies within the hut that you must defeat by discarding items on Lysaga’s location, or release the imprisoned ravens via the same method. When at last you find the gem, you must have enough blue items to discard, along with a good roll of the D20, in order to defeat her once and for all.

It’s a fun mix-up of gameplay styles, and that’s what elevates her above the Beholder and Cthulhu for me. There is something wonderfully weird about taking on a mad witch and her demented walking hut. Again, there’s the inventive use of the D20 as well, which gives a flavour of tackling a big monster in a Ravenloft campaign.

She’s also a good example of why Horrified: Ravenloft deserves attention from anyone who enjoys the series. While the original Horrified: Universal Monsters has the advantage of instantly recognisable horror icons, Ravenloft has the freedom to introduce stranger threats that D&D fans will love, and that could lead the curious to try out the TTRPG for themselves, whilst adhering closer to the horror theme than the previous D&D entry could.

So why doesn’t she take the top spot? Because there is one monster that, for me, embodies everything Horrified does best. And he always has.

1. Dracula — Horrified: Universal Monsters

Of course it’s Dracula. Don’t act surprised.

Alongside The Mummy, he’s the very first monster I came up against: the gruesome twosome are the rulebook’s suggestion for your first game. But here’s the thing: Dracula isn’t number one simply because he’s Dracula. He’s number one because Horrified: Universal Monsters understands exactly what makes Dracula such an enduring horror character and turns that into a fantastic board-game experience.

When you take on Dracula, you’re participating in a modern board-game version of a whole cinematic horror tradition. Nothing is more 1940’s black-and-white horror than going up against the Count as he holds an entire village under a spell of terror. It reminds me of late nights in the late 80s, peering out from under the bedcovers at my little square telly, as the fanged one preyed upon the innocent and Van Helsing took longer than necessary to get the job done.

The race around the board to destroy his coffins feels very old school horror movie. It’s like you’re living inside a Universal film (although you might not live for long…). And when you get down to that last coffin, and the monsters are closing in to stop you… tremendous fun. Dracula is capable of creating that classic tense ending more regularly than any other monster in the series, precisely because of those four coffins in four distant corners of the map.

For me, that makes Dracula the best monster in Horrified. Not necessarily the hardest. Not necessarily the most unusual. But the one that most completely delivers on the promise of Horrified: familiar horror, translated into an accessible, tense and hugely entertaining cooperative board game.

So, What’s the Best Horrified Monster?

The great thing about ranking Horrified monsters is that there isn’t really a wrong answer.

You might think Cthulhu deserves the top spot. You might prefer the strange brilliance of Baba Lysaga. You might think the Beholder is the perfect translation of a D&D monster into a cooperative board game. For me, though, Dracula takes the crown. He’s iconic, thematic and mechanically brilliant, and he captures exactly what makes the original Horrified such a satisfying horror board game.

But there it is. That’s my list (for this week, at least). Which Horrified monster would you put at number one?

(And can I just take an opportunity to request a Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons – Ravenloft part 2? Thanks Ravensburger, if you’re listening.)