That’s the last goddamn hitchhiker I ever pick up.

Escape the farmhouse with your The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Slaughterhouse rules summary!

Despite being a huge aficionado of horror cinema, I got around very late to watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – too late really, as unfortunately the transgressive, dangerous aura it had when I was young had long rubbed off by that time. This can happen as I finally get around to watching a few films that were once deemed ‘video nasties’, long past the cultural zeitgeist they were born in.

A lot of people would consider it their favourite horror film however, though my taste runs to the fantastical rather than slashers. Be that as it may, this board game version by the sadly defunct Prospero Hall studio could become a tabletop favourite. It’s a tight, lean, enjoyable horror romp in the old Sawyer house that nails its theme and provides lots of (nervous) laughs and tension alike.

One player plays the unhinged Sawyer family, the others the ‘trespassers’ – the clueless young people who stumble across the house and quickly learn the error of their ways. Most actions as a trespasser carry the risk of generating noise tokens that you may have to hand over to the Sawyer player as fear tokens, who can use them to power their actions. Not an original mechanic – The World of SMOG does something similar – but it works perfectly here.

The Sawyer player starts with just one character, but as the panic meter (a big cardboard chainsaw) increases, more characters emerge, culminating in the appearance of good ol’ Leatherface himself. At which point the trespassers are really in trouble. And while the trespassers can quite easily be killed (a clever system of drawing 4 different injury cards), attacking the Sawyers only reduces their number of actions. Everything reinforces the cat-and-mouse feel of the gameplay, as the trespassers uncover horror tokens throughout the house and can briefly hide in rooms for a brief respite from pursuit. The basic rules system is enhanced by several scenarios with different goals, plus a very simple legacy system that adds item cards left behind by previously killed trespassers to the common item card pool.

Unusually, there are no win conditions as such – the goal is simply to survive, which is thematic and all, but raises questions if one player is playing 2 trespassers, and 1 escapes – is that a win, or do you keep playing? One of the game designers told me players can come up with their own ideas about success, and that the goal was to make a game that felt like a horror movie. Which is fine, though this is still a game … anyway, it’s a small issue. There are also some omissions in the rulebook, but all that is fixed in my summary.

Overwhelmingly however, this is a huge success and a fitting swan song for the creative people at Prospero Hall, all of whom, I hope, are still gainfully employed in making more games that blend theme and gameplay with such success.

I can remake you, just as I was remade.

Control the city with your City of the Great Machine rules & reference!

This game was brought to my attention by a great review on Charlie Theel’s Player Elimination website, and as usual, Charlie didn’t steer me wrong (well, there was that Fate of the Fellowship review, but there’s always an exception to the rule). City of the Great Machine is one of those rare games I like so much in which mechanics and theme are inextricably intertwined.

It’s a one-vs-many struggle set in a steampunk city dominated by a mechanical overlord – sort of George Orwell meets H. G. Wells. Players are Revolutionaries trying to inspire citizens to riot against oppression; the Great Machine has time on its side and a legion of automata to quell the dissent.

City of the Great Machine blends hidden movement, resource management, and asymmetric gameplay in a wonderfully thematic package – and it can also be played solo or co-operatively. It’s a stunning production with an excellent artwork, a well-written rulebook and comprehensive support material, and some very nice miniatures as a bonus. I enjoyed this at 2 players, but I’m very much looking forward to to playing this at a higher player count so players can scheme amongst themselves in the presence of the Great Machine (the rulebook expressly tells you to refer to players as Revolutionaries or the Great Machine, in one of many thematic touches). And, dare I say it, its theme of revolution against autocratic technology is more relevant than the glossy layer of steampunk initially leads you to believe.

There’s a wealth of strategic material in the rulebooks, but this summary distills the rules into an easily digestible few sheets. And of course, it’s available on my app, Tabletop Codex!