Kickstarter: Don’t Go Get Delighted By Ducklings. Life’s About To Get ‘Gloomier’.
Complete the tragic tale of your rotten relatives and win by being the most despondent at dinner in this hot Kickstarter.
You may think you’ve had a distressingly dreadful life, but at least you haven’t been poisoned while pruning, or killed by a kitten, or fell prey to the plague. But this is exactly what you will want to befall you and your forlorn family as you play Gloomier: A Night at Hemlock Hall.
Gloomier is a sequel to the game Gloom, and fully integrates with it and its many expansions. However, Gloomier is a fully stand-alone game and doesn’t require Gloom to play. In Gloomier, each player controls a family of 4 creepy characters and attempts to give them the most depressingly dreadful life before an untimely unmaking frees them from this morose mortal coil.
On each player’s turn they will take 2 awful actions. Most commonly they will play a Modifier Card which is placed on top of any living character card in play. As these cards are terribly transparent, they will allow some of the miserable markings of the card below them to show through, while covering some others. But Gloomier is more than just playing paltry pieces of plastic. Players are highly encouraged to weave a tale of woe and mention how their miserable malefactors met their misfortune. This is a story-telling game first, and a competitive game second.
At any point, a character’s current Self Worth is the total of all visible numbers. This will usually be negative, but the occasional disgustingly delightful modifier will pop up, which you want to play on your opponent’s characters. Happy people don’t win in Gloomier. Just like in real life.
And like any good misanthropic mourner should, you want your family’s Self Worth to be as low as possible before they die, which is another action players can take.
Once any character’s Self Worth is negative, they can meet an Untimely Death. Once this occurs, no more modifiers can be placed on them. And once any player’s entire family has cordially croaked, the game ends and players tally up the Self Worth of all their dead relatives. Whichever player has the lowest score can revel in remorse in their troubling triumph.
Gloomier also has much more to offer. Many Modifier Cards affect the game or their family in unique ways so long as they are visible. Additionally, Unwelcome Guests and Story Cards utilize the story icons in the lower right of the picture and offer a plethora of painful predicaments for players.
Honestly, I love Gloom. It’s got a great tone and theme and it’s so over-the-top ridiculous in the storytelling options it provides. I own Gloom and a couple expansions and I’m always willing to introduce it to new players. So, I’m very excited to see Gloomier on the horizon.
Gloomier is live on Kickstarter right now as well as plenty of other goodies like The Gloom Grief Case, which is designed to hold all your Gloom games in one place; and The Gloom Chronicles, which is “an expansion for the Gloom series, turning Gloom into a serialized, campaign-style game.”
Gloomier: A Night At Hemlock Hall – $24 – Kickstarter Ends April 8th
Misery and mysteries abound at Hemlock Hall, the imposing estate of Lord Wellington-Smythe and his eccentric family of misfits. When you’re invited inside for an evening’s entertainment, what could possibly go wrong? Will you Cuddle with Cats or Thwart a Thief? Will you Brawl Over Brandy or Fall Prey to the Plague? At Hemlock Hall, awful amusements become deadly diversions with the flip of a card.
Gloomier: A Night at Hemlock Hall is a darkly humorous stand-alone competitive storytelling card game for two to five players. To win, you make your characters suffer the greatest tragedies possible before passing on to the well-deserved respite of death. The player with the most negative score wins. And in Gloomier, the winner gets the final word: Who was the murderer? How did the heist end? You decide!
Thanks for reading!
