Ghost Stories is a fun and exciting cooperative strategy game where players compete against the board and race against the deck to save the day from terrible ghosts seeking to reincarnate their dread master. Players take the role of one of four itinerant Eastern monks who come across a village plagued by spirits. Your band must dispatch the
monsters and their evil overlord, Wu-Feng.
The village consists of nine different locations randomly arranged in a three by three grid. The four monks in the game each have a different special power, and players may randomly choose which of two special powers will be active for that game.
The player's turn has two phases: the yin and the yang. On a player's yin stage, a ghost will come into play on the outskirts of the village and other ghostly activities occur. During the yang step, the player may act by moving around the village and either requesting the help of a villager or attempting to exorcize a ghost.
Each location contains a different villager who may prove to be helpful in your mission. The Circle of Prayer lowers the strength of certain ghosts, the herbalist's shop provides you with resources in the form of tao tokens, the night watchman's torches will help keep spirits at bay, and so on. Because each monk also has unique powers, players will have a wealth of options for the mission at hand.
When attempting to exorcize a ghost, the player rolls specially-colored dice and compares the result to the colors present on the ghost's card. If the player has rolled enough of the right colors, the ghost is vanquished. If not, the player may use any appropriately colored tao tokens and spend them to supplement his dice rolls. You won't be able to dispatch a ghost each turn, yet ghosts keep arriving every turn, cranking the pressure ever upwards.
It's a rare ghost that just sits around and does nothing. The presence of a ghost will often have negative effects for at least one aspect of the monk's abilities. Some cannot be driven off with dice, and some curse you when they are dispatched back to the underworld. If enough of a certain type of ghost gets too close to the village, it will scare off the villagers who will be unable to lend a hand. If too many of the villagers get scared away, you will lose the game. Villagers may be coaxed back, but like many things in the game, it's not easy and will take time to do so. Every action is a choice of how to best spend your time. As the ghosts appear every turn heralding the arrival of Wu-Feng, time is precious.
Ghosts will keep coming at a fast and furious pace, and it will become very difficult to
dispatch all of the spirits as they arrive. It will become necessary to make hard choices as the board becomes more and more crowded with monsters. Ghosts will find various ways of depleting a player's qi, or life. When a monk no longer has qi left, they are dead. Monks can be brought back, but if all the monks are dead the players will lose the game. Of course, a monk who returns from the land of the dead seldom comes back without problems...
After the deck has been mostly depleted, one of the incarnations of Wu-Feng will arrive. With powers far greater than that of a normal ghost, it will take a concentrated effort to dispatch him. The players will have to act quickly, because if the deck runs out of cards, the players will lose the game.
The game is beautiful. The art is crisp and clean, with predominant black but never murky color accented nicely by a bold comic book palate. The result is dark without being scary. The board is durable cardstock and will stand up well to repeated play.
This game is great for those who have a fondness for Call of Cthulhu: Arkham Horror but don't necessarily have the time to play it. The game does not take as long to play, and the random board and incarnation of Wu-Feng means that each game is unique. There are a number of different ways to lose, but only defeating Wu-Feng will give the players the win. Although difficult, this is indeed a very winnable game. The game offers four different levels of challenge in the rules, and there is little more satisfying than deciding that your group is ready to tackle the next level of difficulty. Because the game can often be played under an hour, it's a great game for people new to the concept of cooperative board games, and there's always the tantalizing promise of playing just once more.
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