As the name suggests, Ghost Stories is a game about ghosts. A game about fighting ghosts, to be precise. But it's not another gothic horror game to add to that category's long list. Instead, Ghost Stories is set in China. Each player is a Taoist monk, represented by plastic miniatures, that is trying to protect a village from the vengeful spirit of Wu-Feng, Lord of the Nine Hells, and his hordes of ghoulish minions. It leads to lots of squabbles among the group and if one player gets too far in the lead, everyone is going for them!

If you are the first to grab the correct object you take the card and add it to your collection. But if you hurriedly grab the wrong piece then you not only lose the card everyone was vying for but you must also sacrifice one card from your collection and give it to the player who grabbed the correct piece. If you have no cards to give then nothing extraordinary happens. Ghost Stories is one of those games that I'd heard a lot about before I actually got the chance to play it. The 1-4 player co-operative game comes from a highly successful designer - Antoine Bauza - who has designed some of my favourite games, and well-known publisher Repos Productions. It is widely regarded as being an excellent, but fiendishly hard to win, co-op game. Ghost Hunting with a Twist For a more in-depth review of Disney Villainous – see my Disney Villainous review. Why Villainous is a great board game for Halloween It’s got 15 races like Spiderines and Vampires that are perfect for Halloween! Along with the races there are special powers that get randomly assigned to the races during each game. So you can have combinations like Vanishing Vampires and Mystic Mummies. In Gloom, you play the head of a family and it’s your job to make them as miserable as possible and then shuffle them off this mortal coil! You might poison them or give them crippling debt.

12. It from the Pit (1992)

Each character has their own objective that relates to what they want in the movies. Taking three villains as examples – Ursula wants to have the Trident and the Crown at her lair, Queen of Hearts wants to win croquet, and Jafar wants to have the Magic Lamp at the Sultan’s Palace and control over Genie. Fluxx games always start off the same. You can draw 1 card and play 1 card. Simple enough to start with. But as you go along, the number of cards you can draw, the number of cards you can play, and even how you win changes with the draw of a card! These games all feature Halloween classics like mummies, ghosts, haunted houses and werewolves, whether you’re playing with younger kids, or teens who want their gameplay a bit edgier. We have loved playing Ghosted as a family, and really enjoyed the humour and simple game play. Lots of fun having to use logic and deduction skills to become the top ghost detective and win the game. When you think that you have figured out all the answers you can call it out – get all three correct and you win the game but get any one the three wrong and you are out of the game with the game continuing with the remaining players.

In our post on educational board games that can totally count as school time, I included this historical game set during the Salem witch trials. In Salem 1692, the witch hunt has gotten serious, and you and your friends stand trial to determine who is the real witch. You’ll make accusations, defend yourself, and use your supernatural social deduction skills to suss out the real villains. It’s perfect for older kids who can really get into their characters while they play. And hey, educational! Everyone wants to help each other make the correct guesses because if everyone guesses their suspect, location and item before the end of the 7th turn, the group can have a guess at the final culprit! The traitor is given Traitor Tome and sent away to read the rules for the haunt scenario and come up with their plan. The remaining players read the same scenario in The Secrets of Survival to see what they need to do to defeat the traitor and win. While I have stated repeatedly that children will love Ghost Blitz, I also want to reiterate that adults will enjoy it too. Even without children present a group of friends can have a lot of fun with this dexterity game. In fact, there is a rule variant wherein you shout out the correct piece instead of grabbing it IF there is a book present on the card. This advanced form of play creates another challenge. Sounds easy for villagers to find a werewolf? It’s not! Accusations will be flying all over the place!

Scales of Justice symbol – you can guess one weapon, one suspect and one motive and the other players can tell you how many you have got correct – but not which ones!

The Seer can silently point to a person at night to find out if they are a werewolf or not and the Mayor nods if they are. Or the Troublemaker can swap two player’s role cards! There are plenty of roles with unique abilities to keep the game interesting, especially in larger groups. Why One Night Ultimate Werewolf is a perfect board game for Halloween It’s really that simple and that straight-forward. The challenge is when you’re feeling pressured to make the proper recognition and grab a piece before any of the other players. And to do it accurately. It is fast-playing and easily taught. Should I Own It? The game was also a nice length - if it had been longer it would have felt repetitive, but any shorter would have been unsatisfying. The player turns felt well-paced and the objectives were clear. There were meaningful choices throughout and plenty of options available to you every turn. Though we didn't have time to replay it immediately, the whole group is keen to meet up again and play the harder difficulties, which is a great sign. You change races several times during a game because after you’ve used up all your units your race goes into decline and you play as another one! Changing races means you’ve got new abilities to try out which keeps the game interesting and fun.Scales of Justice – you can guess one weapon, one suspect and one motive and the other players can tell you how many you have got correct – but not which ones! Ghost Blitz, published by 999 Games, comes with five pieces, 60 cards, and a rule book. The object of Ghost Blitz is to collect more cards than your opponents. Collecting a card is simple; at least it’s simple in concept, if not execution. Flip over a card and be the first player to grab the corresponding game piece accurately depicted on the card…or the piece that is not at all depicted.I’ll explain. In this spirited spooky fun detective game, all players take on the role of a spirited ghost and must solve their own murder through a process of deduction and elimination, asking questions and gathering evidence, what their motive was, and the murder weapon used – with the aim to be first to solve their own murder. A perfect game to get kids and families into the Halloween ‘spirit’. So I’ve gone through my family’s favorite scary board games for Halloween to share with you, and added a few more that I’ve heard great things about. A tip here is to make sure you’re seated far enough apart from each other that you cannot see your opponents’ evidence boards. They have sides for a bit of a barrier, but depending on how you’re sitting it may be extremely easy to spy on what the other players are doing. (My friends and I played this on our recent vacation, so we were on a hotel bed. I do not recommend this.)