It’s time for everyone to whip out their favourite D20s, put on their best cape and start preparing their spells, as Horrified returns to the world of Dungeons and Dragons with the latest spin off in the hugely popular board game franchise.
Horrified: Dungeons and Dragons Ravenloft takes you and your fellow players to the setting of Ravenloft and the domain of Barovia, once again using the brilliant Horrified system to create an extremely fun and thematic co-operative experience for up to 4 players.
Following on from Horrified’s first foray into D&D with 2025s Horrified: Dungeons and Dragons, where you had to defeat creatures such as the Mimic and the Beholder, Ravenloft has you battling famous D&D foes like Baba Lysaga, Carrionette, and perhaps most devilishly of all, the Dark Lord of Barovia Strahd von Zarovich.
Once again published by Ravensburger with design by Peter Lee and Nick Tourville, Horrified: Dungeons and Dragons Ravenloft was a game that I was extremely interested in once announced, and I was lucky enough to get my hands on a copy of it before its expected wide release next month.
But did Ravenloft have me feeling like a D&D hero, or was I left feeling like I was stuck on level one with the most basic of spells?
I’m No Dungeon Master
I will start this review stating I am a lot more familiar with Horrified, than I am with Dungeons and Dragons, so I tackled this game seeing how it played with the Horrified formula rather than D&D.
While I have dabbled in the odd campaign of Dungeons and Dragons and put hundreds of hours into Baldurs Gate 3 like most gamers my age, I wouldn’t call myself a dungeon masters by any stretch of the imagination.
I also haven’t yet had a chance to play the original Horrified: Dungeons and Dragons, so was very much starting my playthrough of this with fresh eyes.
It is Horrified though that really drew me to this game. The original release from 2019 whereby you go around saving villagers and defeating classic Universal monsters is one of my favourite board games of all time, let alone cooperative experiences.
And with Horrified: Dungeons and Dragons Ravenloft, all the core tenets and mechanics can thankfully still be found here.
After choosing the monsters you are going to face for this campaign (I started with three because I’m well brave… more on this decision later), you and your fellow monster slayers choose a character to play as in the game, usually with a unique set of actions for that character alongside the standard actions all players can take.
Incorporating D&D into the gameplay from the off, you choose one of 5 different classes to perform as. You can play as a Warlock, a Druid, a Ranger, a Paladin or a Sorcerer. Unlike in the original though, your character choice also comes with another flavour that you may need to think about throughout the game, a potential Dark Gift.
Your Dark Gift can make some of your abilities better (or more chance to get them), but also comes with a negative impact that you would need to balance when planning your moves.
In original Horrified your abilities are just there, an extra action or a quicker way of moving around the board. In Ravenloft your extra abilities are fittingly dependant on the roll of the infamous D20. This adds a really fun extra wrinkle to the game, as how effective your ability can be is determined by your dice roll, but you are in control of when to roll that dice, and of course as previously mentioned when, if ever, to accept your Dark Gift.
Other than this, if you are familiar with Horrified you understand the basic turn structure of the game. You take up to 4 actions which includes moving, guiding villagers to safety, picking up items, or advancing progress in defeating your chosen monsters by interacting with some kind of puzzle or action.
Using your best cooperative skills you need to think of a good strategy to defeat each monster and quickly, without you or the citizens of Ravenloft taking damage to increase the terror level for a lost, or before you run out of cards in the Monster deck, a deck which is pulled from at the end of each players turn to determine the Monsters moves and actions.
For my money, the general system of Horrified is almost flawless. It scales perfectly for the challenge you want to face, the amount of players playing, and has a gameplay loop that is simple enough to understand for players of any skill level, while still being really crunchy and challenging to keep experienced board gamers invested.
The Ravenloft addition has proved no different, with just some added spice and D&D flavours to proceedings, with those D20 dice rolls proving pivotal in your actions, but also in how you go about defeating each monster.
I knew from my first few turns I was getting to experience another excellent edition of Horrified and knew I was going to enjoy the ride!
Not Favoured By The Dice Gods
Yes sadly I am the kind of board gamer who genuinely believes dice hate me, so adding more dice to the game did make this at times a more painful experience for me.
For whatever reason, my hit rate rolling a 5 and under with a D20 seems astronomically high, so yes I did sour on the game after a few rounds when those bloody dice wouldn’t let me do my special action or advance a step in the defeat of one of the monsters!
While this does seem to be more of a me problem and my deep seated issue with dice, I do think your enjoyment of Horrified: Dungeons and Dragons Ravenloft, in comparison to other titles in the Horrified franchise, may depend on your thoughts on dice and luck more generally.
My own gripes aside I actually find dice a really fun mechanic in board games to add a little suspense and drama, and that feeling didn’t go away here. Deep down I think I like having a moan about how unfair I have it and how unlucky I am with dice, it’s sort of my board game personality, but actually the inherent randomness of it can create really fun moments, like it does in Dungeons and Dragons more broadly.
However, it can mean that from what I have witnessed with my playthroughs, it makes a perhaps even harder version of Horrified that more difficult. Dice rolling aside, I think this game is tough as nails, especially in comparison to the original I have played.
The amount of steps to defeat Strahd is really difficult in a comparatively short window of time, whereas the Gulthias Tree can be really hard to simply advance its push your luck style puzzle as its dependant on you having previous knowledge or experience of the game.
It’s led to quite a comprehensive defeat for me each time I have played it. Now, we can’t shy away from the fact this might be more to do with my lack of ability at the game and not a balancing issue itself, but I never really encountered this with other versions of the game.
As mentioned earlier perhaps starting with 3 monsters just because I am now quite experienced at Horrified was a mistake, this is an entirely new game after all. But I do think there is probably a better balance of difficulty and complexity with the original than can be found in Ravenloft.
The dice do not help with this problem, as even when you think you’re making good progress, one bad dice roll might leave your plans in tatters, which can be frustrating when you feel you and your team came up with a really good tactic to deploy. You can’t shy away from the dice either, as they are crucial to almost all the puzzles for each monster.
But I don’t think players should be put off by this difficulty. I like a hard game, I own Spirit Island after all, and actually the challenge of this game has me hankering to play it again to try and overcome it, which you could argue you don’t really find in the original, which is a lot more gentle. My concern is if luck is not on your side, then realistically no amount of strategy could guide you to victory in this one.
Your Four Foes
I couldn’t review a Horrified game without talking in depth about the creatures you’re up against.
Carrionette, Gulthias Tree, Baba Lysaga and the Dark Lord of Barovia Strahd von Zarovich, are really fun monsters to face, and their presence on your board game table is really impressive. The monster miniatures are really cool, especially Baba Lysaga in her giant house which often covers an entire space, which you could argue is a design issue but in reality I really love it.
All four of them feel totally different to other Horrified creatures, and after a couple of games I really liked the difference in how you defeat them, even if they proved difficult. Trimming the roots from the Gulthias Tree or stabbing at Strahd’s heart are all so thematic. While I may not be overly familiar with Ravenloft in the D&D setting, I still found myself immersed in the lore and theme, so much so I was going down a rabbit hole of Googling each character and their history.
The art and design of Horrified: Dungeons and Dragons Ravenloft generally is top tier; it has such a table presence. I loved the way the original looked, but this version really turns it up a notch, with the incredible artwork on the cards, the aforementioned miniatures, and just the overall look of all the game pieces in the box. The game board is impressive, and even the shape of the perk cards feel fantastical, somehow rich in history and the occult.
Where I think the game falls down slightly is in some of the rules and mechanics, especially when it comes to the monsters. In Horrified, all the characters and rules are explained perfectly, you rarely get an edge case or a need to go back over the rulebook. In Ravenloft though, I did find some of the rules and clarifications a bit convoluted or not addressed.
The Twig Blights (little sidekicks for the Gulthias Tree) movement is confused, to the point where they aren’t really a threat and actually just slow the game down rather than proving a fun obstacle and offshoot of the tree.
Speaking off the Gulthias Tree, its own movement is left rather unexplained, as it wasn’t made clear whether it always stayed rooted to its starting position, or if it can move when impacted by a monster or perk card. In the end we just had to house rules it and went with the thematic approach it can’t move at all, but I do think this could do with a little more clarification.
It was just little things like this that popped up in the rules or the design which caused some confusion when playing, leading to the game slowing down at times, something I just haven’t experienced in previous versions of the game.
Final Thoughts
While I did have some nitpicks of Horrified: Dungeons and Dragons Ravenloft, ultimately I really enjoyed my time with it, and want to keep playing to finally overcome it.
It does a wonderful job of incorporating Dungeons and Dragons into the Horrified formula without changing the essence of the game.
I do think at times it struggles to balance this mix, (the Dark Gifts especially I haven’t ever really touched in any of my games as their use seems very limited), and I do think it has some rules issues which could do with ironing out and clarifying in the rulebook.
But when I consider I am very much a novice of D&D, I still really loved getting to play it. If you’re regularly scheduling in sessions of D&D with your friends and are more familiar with the lore of Ravenloft, I think you could find a lot to love here, especially when the systems of Horrified are so wonderfully refined.
Personally I am more attuned to the original game with the Universal creatures or the classics nerd in me loving Horrified: Greek Monsters, so would prefer those over Ravenloft, but I still found a lot to like in this game, and while the dice Gods may have deserted me since birth, the incorporation of the D20 and other D&D elements really made this experience feel unique.
With Ravensburger stating you can actually mix and match this with other games in the series, you could add this to your collection simply so you’ve got some new trials to overcome. And trust me, they sure are challenging. (One day I will beat more than just the Carrionette. One day).
