The Haunting House

The goal of The Haunting House is to be the first to escape a haunted house that the players have entered. The haunted house is made up by randomly laying out tiles in a 6x6 square making up the floor plan and then adding entrance and exit tiles at opposing edges.

Each player then gets a set of cards symbolizing different actions. Each turn consists of two phases: a planned phase and a random phase. During the planned phase each player secretly select a sequence of cards that define that player's actions that turn (somewhat reminiscent of RoboRally). After finishing that turn, the random turn follows where a number of random cards are drawn and executed, throwing the players off track from their plans. During the random phase, a few cards are inserted into each player's card set that cannot be chosen during the planned phase. Apart from normal move cards, there are also special action cards that may for instance move the exit or things like that.

Publisher's blurb

The Haunting House is a wildly fun, fast paced, strategy boardgame with a twist. The object is simple, players enter the front door and race to be the first to reach the exit. It's not as easy as it sounds. Half the time the players choose their own path. The other half their paths are chosen randomly by opponents. Additionally, the board elements constantly change as the game progresses.

The Haunting House features 38 tiles that make up the board, 60 cards and six custom-sculpted pawns.

BoardGameGeek Info

Publisher: Twilight Creations, Inc.
Published in: 2004
My Rating: 6.0
BGG Rating: 5.37
BGG Rank: 26508
Players: 2-6
Ages: 10+
Duration: 0:45
Complexity: 1.3788 / 5

Acquired: August 2008
Eager to Play: No
Plays: 8
Last Played: October 17, 2021
Time Spent: 6:00

This is a tile game of traversing a changing maze trying to exit first. Each round of play has two phases, one random and one chosen. Players have cards defining what actions they will take, and they will take 4 actions each phase. Another player will randomly choose the cards during the random phase, but during the chosen phase each player may carefully choose what they want to do and in what order. Players simultaneously reveal their actions one at a time, and the First Player acts first, knowing what everyone else will do. Actions include rotating tiles, moving, swapping tiles, trading places, and moving the exit. The game's randomness is balanced by the allowing the users to choose their actions, which is in turn balanced by the random choice. It's a good marriage.

The Haunting House

Eight plays