Atmosfear IV: Countess Elizabeth Bathory, Vampire
1993 / Video board game expansion / 3-6 players
***
Growing up with The Harbingers, I hadn't considered bothering with the original, presumably inferior Atmosfear, until I found scans of all the cards from the expansions on BoardGameGeek and realised that – with printing and YouTube VHS rips – a cheap base game was all we needed to open a whole world of Nightmares (up to 4 hours, anyway. Not that we ever get very far into the tapes).
My daughter wanted to play the vampire one first, which was as punishing as its reputation suggested. By seven minutes in, she'd already been randomly gifted all of her keys while I moped in a black hole and was headed for the finish line when she rolled an unfortunate 1 and was banished from the board to join the legion of the damned. We were then reminded why you need more than two players as further random punishments made what was supposed to be the exciting pursuit of my flesh and soul drag on until we switched off out of boredom. She was getting a bit creeped out by the Countess' transformation anyway.
Suffer!
