Game profile: Bump in the Night

October 26, 6:04 AMPittsburgh Board Game ExaminerRobert Moyer

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Product image from the Twilight Creations website.

Growing up, most people are scared by the monster that lives under their bed. In Bump in the Night from Twilight Creations, you get to be the monsters under the bed! Or down the hall… or in the kitchen…

Two to six players ages twelve and up play monsters who haunt an old mansion. Fourteen little girls have decided to hold a sleepover in your haunted house wrecking your peace and quiet. What choice do you have but to do what you’re best at – scare the girls so much that they run screaming into the night! For each girl you scare away, you get a point. The first person to have five or more points on their turn wins.

At the beginning of the game, each player chooses a color and receives six monsters in that color. Depending on the monster, their scare value will vary. The cat and bat each have a scare value of 0, the goblin and poltergeist have a scare value of 1, the ghost has a value of 2 and the Specter of Death has the highest scare value of 3.

Your mansion is made up of six two sided tiles arranged in a 2 by 3 rectangle. With over 5000 different ways to arrange these tiles, your mansion can be different each time you play. I find the artwork to be quite similar in style and quality to Kill Doctor Lucky and that's a good thing.

Through card draws, the starting positions for the little girls are determined. Once they're placed, choose a hallway for your Goblin and let the scaring begin!

Each turn contains phases where you can 1) lock or unlock doors (limiting the movement of bats, cats, goblins and the little girls), 2) place, replace, or move 1 monster, 3) scare people, 4) move 1 monster or 1 person, and 5) play “block” cards on your opponenents.

There is a particularly nice component to the “scare” phase. Scare attempts are more effective in small enclosed rooms than in one of the mansion's larger rooms. That's logical, but you need to keep it in mind when you choose your next victim.

But isn’t scaring all of these girls a little mean-spirited? Perhaps, but then again you’re playing mean spirits. And besides, they shouldn’t have broken into your house. What else is a monster to do?

For more info: Read the rules on the Twilight Creations website.