The chair creaks as you settle onto it. The candlelight flickers. All around you the ravenous faces of your so-called friends twist in delight as you slowly open the box laid out on the table. Welcome to Dangerous Games! Each week, we'll feature a horror/thriller/monster tabletop game you should be playing. Don't be scared… roll the dice… what's the worst that could happen?
Miskatonic School for Girls (Fun to 11, 2012)
Life can be tough here at the Miskatonic School for Girls. Your teachers are driving you crazy. Your lunch lady's been drooling on your food. You can trust your house mates, kind of, but every other student at the school is out for blood. It's like this place is something out of a nightmare. Luckily, if you band together with your friends you may be able to survive all the way to winter break! Maybe...
In Miskatonic School for Girls, the goal is to be the last house with any sanity left in an all girls boarding school. This deck building game is all about picking the right cards for you and the wrong cards for your opponents. The faculty, comprised of Lovecraftian monsters and chaotic cultists, are trying their damnedest to drive you insane. But by careful card selection and a little bit of luck, you could be last one left with any sanity!
Gameplay Mechanics
Each player starts the game with a set of specific starting cards. Each student card that you have has a "friendship" rating and a "nightmare" rating on it. You play these cards and use these ratings to either buy yourself more student cards (with better ratings and special abilities) or to buy your opponent to your left teacher cards. Once a teacher card has been bought for you, you have to fight it.
To fight a teacher card, you draw another student card, read it's abilities, and attempt to knock away the teacher. But if you fail, the teacher deals damage to your sanity points. In the end, the last person with any sanity remaining wins the game. This isn't a game about beating all the teachers… in true Lovecraft fashion, that's impossible. This is a game about surviving as long as possible.
Replay Value
Even though this game can be pretty random sometimes, it doesn't have a ton of replay value if you're playing with the same group over and over again. There isn't a ton of deep strategy to this game. But, if you always have different people coming over to play games I would definitely recommend it, it's much more fun with new players.
Overall Impressions
This game will be a definite crowd pleaser if your crowd is the Cthulhu-loving type. The mix of Mean Girls and At the Mountains of Madness may seem like a bizarre combination, but it turns out to be extremely fun and very flavorful. If you like Lovecraft, or deck building games, you should check this out.