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?
Vampires of the Night (Three Magicians Games, 2009)
Your sweet little vampire babies sleep soundly in their coffin-cribs. The sun rises in the east, and it's time for all good little boys and girls of the blood-sucking variety to go to bed. The creaky old castle is quiet this morning. Suddenly, you hear an awful buzzing! It's that damn Van Helsing's son, raining down stinky garlic on your kids! Time to bustle around the castle and clean it all up!
In Vampires of the Night, you play the role of the parent vampire trying to clean up all the garlic left in the crypt. Using an innovative mechanic, you try to score as many garlic points as possible. At the end, the player with the most points wins!
Gameplay Mechanics
This is a very simple, family-friendly dexterity game. Players use a "vampire wand" to move the vampire pawn along a board with holes punched out of it. The wand and head of the vampire are both magnets, and their polarity causes the pawn to repel from the wand. Plastic garlic tokens slide around the board, and if you can knock garlic off the side before you knock it down a hole you score the garlic on the token.
Play moves from player to player until all garlic is either scored or in the box below the board. There are no negatives to knocking garlic down a hole except that it ends your turn. The player with the most garlic at the end of the game wins!
Replay Value
This is a quick family game that you'll want to return to again and again. Setup takes two minutes and cleanup is a snap. This is the kind of game you could fill a night with or play once before a longer game.
Overall Impressions
This game is perfect for those families that prefer The Addams Family to The Brady Bunch. Not too scary for the kiddies, and with a really fun magnetic mechanic to keep parents interested, Vampires of the Night will please everyone!