Don’t Go in There: A Spooooooky Game of Curses and Ghosts

The house is filled with spooky ghosts and cursed objects. Step foot within those walls, and you’re bound to collect a little bit of both. But maybe you’ll get lucky and come out less cursed than your friends!

Published by Road To Infamy (R2i) Games, Don’t Go in There is a mixture of set collection and push-your-luck. It is designed for 2-5 players, and plays in about 30 minutes.

Gameplay

The three location boards are placed in a row. Three curse cards are drawn for each location and placed face-up above each one. There are twelve types of curse cards in the game, and players only use a certain number each time they play. After shuffling the types they’ve selected to play with, a random selection is then removed from the deck, so that players never know exactly how many cards of each curse type are in the game.

Each player has five meeples. On your turn, you place a meeple on an empty space on one of the three locations. Each location has four spaces. The space closest to the bottom of the board shows 3 flashlight icons. Each subsequent space has one less flashlight icon, with the fourth space, closest to the top of the board, having none.

Once a location has a third meeple on it, it is resolved. First, players count how many dice icons are on all the curse cards at that location. That number of dice is rolled. The number of ghosts rolled is then applied to each meeple at that location. Each player must, for each meeple he has at that location, take one ghost token for each ghost rolled minus the number of flashlight icons on the space his meeple occupies. After resolving the roll, each player takes one of the curse cards at that location. Players choose the cards in order based on the space their meeple is on. The meeple nearest the top of the board goes first — while it’s likely you'll collect more ghosts on higher spaces, you also are more likely to get the curse card you want. Players take their meeples back after a meeple has claimed a card.

Each location also has a special rule attached to it. For example, the basement allows the player whose turn it is when the room is resolved to reroll all the ghost dice once, while the nursery allows the player who took the bottom space to discard one ghost token.

Once a room has been resolved, its board is flipped over to the other side which shows a different room, and curse cards are drawn for it. Play then continues. Once the curse cards deck runs out, a room is discarded after being resolved.

The game ends once all curse cards have been taken. Each curse card has a curse value of one to four. However, different types of curse cards also have different abilities. For example, if a player has any of the cat curse cards, its ability allows him to dispel all his cat cards except one at the end of the game if he has nine or fewer ghost tokens. When a card is dispelled, it is flipped face-down and its curse value is not counted at the end of the game.

At the end of the game, players count up their curse points. The player with the most ghosts also earns one curse point for each two ghosts he has. Then the player with the lowest number of curse points wins the game.

Review

Don’t Go in There is part set collection and part push-your-luck. The interesting element of the set collection is that all the cards actually hurt you. Every card is worth a certain number of curse points. Some of the abilities require you to collect a certain number of cards to then be able to dispel them, so players may sometimes claim a high-valued one, hoping to trigger that ability down the road. This gets trickier near the end of the game as the deck runs lower and you’re not sure if there’ll be enough cards of that type left in the deck to allow you to dispel those cards.

The number of types of curse cards also offers variety as they can complement each other in different ways, and they’re never all used in every game. This allows players to develop different strategies based on which combinations of curse cards are used. There is also quite a nice range of abilities and how each one works.

There's a lot of player interaction here that plays well with the push-your-luck risk of acquiring more ghosts. It’s also more fun with three or more players, with more players vying for location spots. So, while the game says it can be played with two, it won’t be at its best that way.

It does have a great table presence. The box turns into a dice tower that looks like a haunted house, which makes for a fun centerpiece. The artwork is also quite nice and thematic, especially for the different types of curses. The dice even glow in the dark!

Don’t Go in There is fun. It’s simple, but the curse cards add layers to keep it interesting across multiple playthroughs. It’s also highly thematic, looks great on the table, and would make for a fun Halloween game night. Also there's no need to worry much about the 14+ age given on the box. These are family-friendly spooks in the box.

Pros: Thematic, variety across the curse cards, player interaction

Cons: Not at its best at two players

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.