“With the blue dude I will move to the herbalist, get 2 tokens so I can hedge my rolls and then fight the red and yellow ghosts.”
“Okay, then I’ll go to the Sorcerer’s hut and lose a Qi to get rid of this big black one, there is no way we can get 4 black tokens. Or pop it on the Buddha.”
“We should also do something about the Nazgul. We could push it back using the watchman.”
“But that is just delaying the inevitable, we should just let that tile get haunted and dehaunt it later.”
Ghost Stories is a challenging co-operative game for 1 to 4 players where monks distinguished by their colour fight evil spirits in order to defeat Wu-Feng, the Lord of Nine Hells.
The mechanics of the game are fairly simple, there is a deck of ghost cards, one of the last ones will be Wu-Feng himself, and the players take turns in drawing the ghost cards and fighting them. The board consists of villager tiles that can give you all sorts of perks (defeat a ghost for a life point, get helpful tokens, resurrection, etc). To defeat monsters you need to get damage points equal to the hit points on the card. By default players roll special dice with coloured dots, but you probably shouldn’t leave it up to chance, and you can use delightful little tokens matching the colour of the ghost as hit points. The rule book isn’t too daunting, twelve pages in total with pictures in it, and the playtime is relatively short, only about sixty minutes.
The Good
There are loads of fun little mechanics in the game, like the curse die (roll for your punishment), haunting of village tiles (you lose the perks of that tile), ghosts taking away a die, and so on and on. The game is very lean and easy to wrap your head around. All these pieces add up to an intriguing puzzle that begs itself to be solved multiple times. The preparation for Wu-Feng adds a lot of tension and excitement to the gameplay, players will start counting the discard pile, calculating when he will show up, start stockpiling tokens and abilities, trying to clear the board. The fight is usually arduous and more often than not victory will be achieved at the last possible minute, last possible card. Those lucky/unlucky die rolls, the specific order of ghosts and Wu-Feng’s different incarnations will give plenty of talking points to discuss after the game is long over.
Important note, this is a very challenging game. The setup has 4 difficulties, but to be honest we have only played it on Initiation level, and no one complained that the game is too easy and we should at least try Normal. Though, I think we thought about it once or twice. I am not sure if a living person has ever finished the game on Hell difficulty.
The Bad
It is difficult to point out any flaws in the game. The miniatures are a bit simplistic along with the artwork, but the colour coding makes things simple, so I really cannot be angry about it. The difficulty of the game could be brought up as a negative aspect, but it also what makes the game so appealing.
One more thing to mention is that the artwork on the cards are great, and the four colours correspond to four different types of enemies (like zombies, rage demons, etc). At least on paper, because you soon realize that the strengths and skills of the enemies are exactly the same across the board, which was a bit disappointing.
The Co-Op
Ghost Stories is the perfect puzzle to share with your friends. The game work really well with both two and four players. The players have to work together, have to save each other, utilize all the monk abilities to their maximum potential to achieve victory. You will have to think long and hard together, debate all the possibilities, consider the odds of each roll, strategize over how much risk are you willing to take as a group.
The Recommendation
Ghost Stories is a great co-operative game, it is easy to start playing it due to the straightforward rules, and if you want to spend sixty minutes thinking hard with your friend this is the game for you. A fantastic game with high replay value, perfect for puzzle-solving-loving people. However, don’t get fooled by the whimsical look, this is a hardcore game, and you will need to do some probability calculations and understand how hedging works to have a slim chance at beating it.
Info
| Release Year | 2008 |
| Genre | Strategy |
| Difficulty | Extreme |
| Number of Players | 1 to 4 |
| Length | 1 hour |
Rating
| Overall | Great |
| Story | Mediocre |
| Co-Operation | Good |