Nostalgic ‘Ghosts!’ Board Game is Full Of Spooky, Scary Strategy
Ghosts often show up when they are least expected. That’s exactly how my childhood memories of the Ghosts board game hit me.
I’ve always been a fan of strategy games ever since I started playing board games in the 90s, despite how weird 90s board games were. Sure, games like Mouse Trap, Grape Escape, and Splat! were good fun, but they didn’t really give me the strategic gameplay I was looking for, even as a kid.
But far back in the reaches of my mind, there was a game I remembered loving. But it had mostly faded from my memory. Fortunately, that is no longer the case.
Prior to this writing, I was working on a completely unrelated game and this happened to pop up in my research. I immediately recognized the cover and knew I had played this game as a kid. While looking through the gameplay videos I could find, all the memories came rushing back. I loved the Ghosts! board game.
And yes, of course, the ghosts glow in the dark.
Nowadays, it’s been reprinted over and over and currently seems to have landed on the title Good & Bad Ghosts. It’s not a great title, but it is much more searchable and does hint towards some of the gameplay. But I’m going to stick with the 1985 Milton Bradly version for this review.
How to Play the Ghosts! Board Game
At the core, the game plays like Stratego. Each turn, that player moves one ghost orthogonality. If you land on an opponent’s ghost, that ghost is captured. That’s it. That’s the gameplay. But there are a lot more twists layered on top of the simple gameplay.
Each player has 4 ‘Good’ ghosts and 4 ‘Bad’ ghosts. The ghosts are marked with colored stickers on their backside, hidden from the other players. Good ghosts are blue, bad ghosts are orange. The goal of each player is to achieve any one of the following:
- Capture all of your opponent’s good ghosts
- Have all of your Bad ghosts captured
- Move one of your good ghosts to one of the corners of your opponent’s side.
The first player to achieve one of those conditions wins!
Simply Complex
Despite the dead simple gameplay in the Ghosts! board game, what’s great about this game is the sheer amount of bluffing that can be done. In games like Stratego, there is a fair benefit to having your Spy or Mines captured. But in Ghosts!, half your ghosts are bad, and you want them to be captured. That’s how you win. This creates such a huge mind game between the players.
Suppose I’m charging towards the exit very aggressively with one of my ghosts. Maybe you assume that’s a good ghost because I’m trying to escape with that ghost. But maybe that’s what I want you to think and I’m pulling the ol’ double bluff and it’s actually a bad ghost.
So, now you move one of your ghosts in the way of mine. Obviously, you wouldn’t sacrifice one of your good ghosts to intercept mine. That’d be a bad move. Unless that’s what you want me to think! So, I don’t capture your ghost and I let you capture mine. But, turns out it was a bad ghost all along! Your double bluff fell victim to my triple bluff! You fool!
For as simple as the gameplay is in the Ghosts! board game, there are so many different ways to play. Being able to read your opponent and understand how they would think is really important here. And all this from a silly kids game featuring a cheap blue knockoff of Slimer on-the-box art!
Finding this game was a huge nostalgia trip for me. I had completely forgotten about it and I’m delighted to have found it again. And now if you don’t mind, I have an eBay listing too look up.
Scooby Doo is a great resource for pictures of ghosts.
