Pyramid Review
Betrayal at House on the Hill
Published by Avalon Hill
Designed by Bruce Glassco
$44.95
Betrayal at House on the Hill has an interesting history. It was under development at the original Avalon Hill back in 1998. When Hasbro bought the company, it was one of the few unpublished games that survived the transition, and was kept in the pipeline for several years. When Hasbro turned the Avalon Hill brand over to Wizards of the Coast, the game made the transition there, where it was polished, streamlined, and finally released to shelves, making it one of the "new" Avalon Hill's first entirely original games.
The premise of the game is quite unique. Up to six players cooperate to explore a decidedly haunted house, but the actual haunting doesn't occur until halfway through the game. When it happens, one of the players turns against his teammates, and undoubtedly tries to murder them in one of 50 endgame scenarios!
Players begin their terror-filled night by choosing one of 12 characters, ranging from cute little girls and burly athletes, to psychic detectives and clever scientists. Each character is rated in four attributes: Might, Sanity, Knowledge, and Speed. The attributes come into play as players try to make their way through difficult areas of the house or avoid the nasty events that will inevitably occur.
The house is "built" as players explore it using a tile system. Each tile represents a room, and as the house is explored, players place down these tiles on one of three . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: October 29, 2004
Copyright © 2004 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.