BaHotH for me fell into the category of “so painfully bad the first time that I don’t have the it never got a second chance”.

While it probably isn’t “great”, I really do think that it is a very solid game with a fantastic theme.  It was the Game of the Month for our group back last October, and it ended up being a lot of fun. 

During our first game of it, our experience was almost as bad as Curt’s was, but instead of giving up on it we went and downloaded the revised rules and corrected booklets from the AH website, and that really made a huge difference for the rest of our games, both in game balance and clarity of rules and scenarios. 

You can check out my full review of Betrayal at House on the Hill on my blog, http://www.gamerchris.com

For me, what prevents Betrayal from being great is its inconsistency.

Well, that, and the colossal amount of errata.

And the incredibly confusing rulebook.

And Haunts that are still confusing even after the haunt book was almost completely re-written.

The last time I played Betrayal I enjoyed it, but it’s a game you really need to go into knowing what to expect. In my case, you have to go in willing to find entertainment value in just how cheesy the game is. You have to be willing to laugh when you’ve read the rules for the haunt 4 times and you still don’t really understand it.

I enjoy the rich theme of the game, but it is very inconsistent.  I will often be willing to play, but if I’m in a group I know will be trying to “win” the game I will shy away from it.

The last game I played (which was enjoyable) was a four player game.  There was a nice build-up before the haunt and then I became the traitor.  Because of the types and locations of cards revealed it was pretty much impossible for me to “win” as the traitor and I “lost” in about 2 turns.

In this case, the exploration portion was fun, and the Hero players had fun winning, but it was a bit hollow as we all agreed it was pretty much impossible for the Traitor to win based on the setup.  (The players had to acquire 4 or 5 things and move them to a room, unfortunately they all began about 2 rooms away from the target room, I didn’t have nearly enough time to respond and prevent them from winning.)

Chris, I probably should have mentioned the book of errata, because it is a factor.  But I do have to give the game some leeway because of the scope of its reach.  It makes me think of Eric’s favorite tv show, Project Runway. 

This season, one of the designers, Jillian, is obviously talented but has a tendency to make designs that are generally more complicated than the time limit would allow her to produce well.  In at least a couple of instances, I think the judges gave her a pass on the construction because they could see that her ideas were good.

I think of Betrayal the same way.  I think the idea for the game is good, and it’s clear to anyone that a lot of work went into it.  Unfortunately, in some businesses you have to make a decision to send a product to market that isn’t quite ready because of whatever deadlines.  I’m guessing that that’s what happened here. 

The idea, and the execution were pretty good.  It needed some more editing and fine tuning to make a clean final product.  But that has not deterred some people (with over 2800 people logging that they own the game and a hundred and fifteen 10 and 9 ratings on BGG).

Betrayal at House on the Hill and Project Runway in the same column? Whodathunkit? I haven’t played the game, but I’ve watched all of the shows, and the unspoken criteria used by the judges in Project Runway can apply to game criticism as well. From best to worst, you have:

beautiful and original
thoughtful
plain
confusing
repetitive
tasteless
unflattering
unoriginal
poorly constructed
boring

Whenever you’re comparing two designs (whether games or fashion projects on PR), it doesn’t matter how confusing or unoriginal one design is if the other design is boring. Boring loses every time, because boring is the same from one design to another. Confusing at least has a surprise factor, something unique in its awfulness. Unoriginality might raise your eyebrows, but if the game works, you’ll still want to play it.

Side note for PR fans: I’ll be incredibly surprised if Christian doesn’t win. So much talent in such a tiny body…

I’ll totally agree that it is very inconsistent.  It was a very ambitious game, which would have been virtually impossible to playtest thoroughly enough to catch all balance problems, since all 50 scenarios tend to have at least a few unique rules or characters. 

But even with all that, the reason to play is for the theme, which (IMHO) is done very well. It is NOT a game where winning should be the main goal.  In many ways, though, that’s what I like about it.  It’s like reading a story where you don’t know, and often can’t even predict, the end.  Play it for the experience, especially around Halloween, and you’ll have a good time.

It was a very ambitious game, which would have been virtually impossible to playtest thoroughly enough to catch all balance problems, since all 50 scenarios tend to have at least a few unique rules or characters.

Not to beat a dead horse here, but while perhaps “playtesting” 50 haunts might have been difficult, proofreading them shouldn’t have been. In the box as published, it’s unclear that even that level of effort went into it. Given the huge amount of randomness in the game, I’m not clear how much playtesting would have been required, since “balance” was never going to be an element of this game. But clarity at least would have helped a lot.

It’s particularly problematic because for the game to work, the villain and the heroes really need to keep their versions of the rules secret from each other. The hero team can usually work out their rules because they have a few people looking at them. But more than once I’ve seen the traitor throw up his or her hands in despair at trying to figure out what the heck they’re supposed to be doing, and we all have to sit down and puzzle it through.

I think it’s a sign of a deeply conflicted design. On the one hand, it’s basically a light, totally random romp. OK; that sort of game can work. Then you’ve got all these haunts with poorly-developed, badly-written, and usually excessive rules. I think this could have been a great game if they had kept their eye firmly on the level of complexity the amount of luck in the game seems to require. i.e., not a lot.

Again, I totally concede your point about clarity, which is exactly why the errata and revised Traitor’s Tome and Secrets of Survival are pretty much required to make the game playable.