When the nights start drawing in and the leaves begin to fall, when the world gets a little bit more dark and shadowy, we know the spooky season is upon us. With Halloween being such a big part of celebrating the scarier side of life, by dressing up and getting a sugar rush from handfuls of candy (as well as facing our fears head on, no matter how young or old we are!), we here at Card Gamer thought it was the right time to recommend some scary tabletop experiences, no matter your age, experience level, or tolerance for horror. So without waiting around for a jump scare, come with us as we a take a look at the best scary card games!
The Best Scary Card Game For Younger Players – A Little Selfish: Zombie Mini Edition
Given that its rules are minimal and its gameplay even more so, A Little Selfish: Zombie Mini Edition isn’t exactly the best game for more serious gamers to play. Of course, we’re not recommending it for serious gamers at all, but rather as a more family-friendly game that younger players can grasp and have fun with no matter their age.
Though there’s some slightly gruesome imagery in the game, which sees players competing to get to a helicopter while hindering the other players, and potentially even turning into a zombie to hunt everyone else as they try to survive, it’s all very cartoonishly rendered and pretty harmless.
A Little Selfish: Zombie Mini Edition is the smaller, lighter version of big brother Selfish: Zombie Edition; it can be taught and played entirely in a matter of minutes, making it perfect for players whose attention spans haven’t quite developed enough for them to sit still and play a longer, more complex game. It’s a very chaotic and luck driven game, very much decided on the cards players draw, and the outcome can often feel a little out of everyone’s (potentially dismembered) hands. However, it’s this kind of chaos and luck that again makes it a perfect game for kids, as they’ll be on an even playing field against their older siblings and parents. Plus, even if they “lose,” kids can turn into a zombified version of their character and eat their family. Win-win, right?
The Best Scary Card Game for a Group of Gamers – Munchkin Cthulhu
With subject matter covering the gamut of HP Lovecraft’s cosmic horror-based Cthulhu mythos, Munchkin Cthulhu pokes the Great Old Ones in their many eyes, laughs at their indescribably shapeless forms, and then runs away with the loot.
Though hardly scary in terms of its aesthetic and tone, Munchkin Cthulhu is a card-based dungeon delve in which players compete to be the first to get to Level 10, just like in any other version of Munchkin. For Lovecraft fans, there’s an absolute feast of references to his scary stories, but perhaps the scariest thing that’ll happen during a game is that your friends will all add horrible mutations and assistance to that Byakhee that you’re trying to get rid of with a shotgun.
It’s all good, chaotic fun, and played with the right group can be an especially hilarious game. Like the previous game on this list, A Little Selfish, it’s hardly a “gamer’s game” in terms of the rules or any complex strategy (there really is very little, and we’d even go so far as to say that it’d be fine for younger players, though there’s quite a bit of text on the cards in case that’s something you need to be aware of), but that’s beside the point. Munchkin Cthulhu is there to gently and affectionately poke fun at its source material, and for players to have some undemanding fun with, perhaps between more serious and intellectually demanding games.
The Best Scary Card Game for Solo Players – Arkham Noir
At the other end of the scale from being able to support a whole party’s worth of players is Arkham Noir, which has similarly Lovecraftian subject matter to Munchkin Cthulhu, but treats it as seriously as its originator did. A dark detective story in which the player must work their way through a mystery, solving clues to get to the heart of what happened, Arkham Noir is available in several different, standalone versions (as numbered Cases, with the one shown above being Case #1: The Witch Cult Murders). Each of these features a different case to solve, and a different deck of cards to fit the mystery that HP Lovecraft himself, here cast in the role of a Private Eye, must get to the bottom of.
It’s a very cleverly designed game – a brilliantly involving puzzle that can, unlike many murder mystery type experiences, be played over and over again, with different clues and solutions to the puzzle each time. The imagery and subject matter is pretty dark and gruesome, making it the absolute perfect way to while away an evening if you’re alone, and in the mood for something scary that’ll also tease your brain along the way. It’s also worth noting that it can be pretty challenging too, so this won’t necessarily be a game that you’ll be able to claim victory over immediately. In the world of Arkham Noir, the good guys don’t, or can’t, always triumph over evil.
The Best Scary Card Game for Two Players – Terrible Monster
If you’ve ever played Love Letter, you’ll already understand the appeal of Terrible Monster. A head-to-head, two-player game of voodoo and monster summoning, Terrible Monster has the same, deceptively simple mechanics and minimal components (the game’s deck has just 16 cards overall) that you find in Love Letter.
However, with damage being dealt and reflected, as well as ghosts stalking, and monsters being raised from, the depths of the Bayou, it’s a very different experience in practice. It’s a fantastic, underrated game, which is both addictive and endlessly replayable. A full round can play out in just a few minutes, and there’s always time for just one more jaunt into the mists, to take on your opponent and perhaps even the eponymous, elusive kaiju itself.
The Best Scary Collectible Card Game – Hecatomb
Though we’ve dabbled with the dark side in Arkham Noir, and even in the more comic book-style voodoo aesthetic of Terrible Monster, nothing we’ve looked at so far compares to Hecatomb, in terms of genuinely scary horror content.
Hecatomb is a collectible card game that was released (perhaps “emerged,” or “crawled out of a festering pool” are more appropriate) back in 2005 by Wizards of the Coast. It has some genuinely unique features, such as its transparent, pentagonal cards, and mechanics that avoid mana shortages that can be an issue in games such as Magic: The Gathering, by having each card usable as a source of energy to bring your cards into play. This is done by simply rotating them vertically so their colored bar is closest to the player.
Its standout feature, however, sees players building unspeakable abominations by stacking their disgusting creatures on top of one another, with each one adding its own power as the layers grow, in order to gather enough souls to bring about the apocalypse before your opponent does. Take a look at the above image of three cards; these can be combined to make a single abomination (which is genuinely the in-game term for them!), by stacking them, as you can see in the below image.
Hecatomb’s subject matter is pretty dark, but its artwork is where it really sets itself apart from other games with a horror focus. The monsters and awful events on these cards are enough to give Freddy Krueger nightmares, with stunning depictions of, frankly, horrible things from renowned artists such as 30 Days of Night co-creator Ben Templesmith.
It’s easy to imagine games of Magic: The Gathering soundtracked by lush orchestral music; whereas the mind pictures mid-’00s gamers creating their abominations to the angsty, angry nihilism of bands such as Nine Inch Nails with Hecatomb!
Just from looking at, and reading, Hecatomb’s cards, it’s easy to see why it has an age rating of 15+ on the packaging, but it’s also clear why it may have struggled to find an audience. It frequently either veers very close to, or outright crosses over, the line where it becomes distasteful, and also feels as if it’s been designed by an angsty teenager, at least from an aesthetics viewpoint.
The unique cards, and the ease with which they’re marked or damaged, not to mention the cost of producing something so outside the standard cards featured in other games, wouldn’t have helped matters either.
Still, if you can get ahold of this out-of-print game (which only lasted for two more sets beyond its base set, including a Halloween-themed set named Last Hallow’s Eve, and is now very cheap to buy on the secondary market), and can get past, or get on board with, its dark and disturbing imagery, there’s an incredibly inventive and addictive card game to be found under, and between, its layers of viscera. Which, of course, makes Hecatomb the absolute perfect game for spooky season, if your players aren’t of an overly nervous, or easily frightened, disposition.
For some horror on your Xbox, check out our review of Inscryption here.
