Avalon Hill has announced it’s releasing a free two-part ‘haunt’ for spooky board game Betrayal at House on the Hill, and it’s been co-created by actor, producer, and director Matthew Lillard. The haunt, titled Thirteen Ghoulies Are All That, will be available as a free download from Hasbro Pulse on October 13, and on the same date, Lillard himself will demo the scenario in a YouTube livestream.
This new miniature installment for the horror board game is the first part of an event Avalon Hill calls its first ever ‘Season of Treason’. A press release tells us it’s “a month-long program celebrating all things horror”.
The new Betrayal at House on the Hill haunt has a ‘scenario’ called Writer’s Block, and it’s stuffed full of references to Lillard’s filmography. The title alone contains three Lillard movies: Thirteen Ghosts, Ghoulies III (where Lillard made his film debut as an extra) and She’s All That.
The scenario is all about an actor/writer/director/producer who seems to be a pretty clear self-deprecating stand-in for Lillard himself. The character, Dexter Norville, is described as “the sorta famous actor most people know as ‘that guy’ from cult-classics Yell! and P.I. Pup” (Scream and Scooby Doo). He’s location scouting in a mansion at midnight, when things go horribly wrong.
At least we presume they do: we don’t actually know what horrors the haunt will entail. Perhaps thirteen weird gremlin guys will turn up and receive makeovers, suddenly becoming hot after they lose their glasses and get a new hairstyle.
For anyone who’s not played the game (see our Betrayal at House on the Hill review to see why you should) the game has two phases. In the first, players explore the house, finding equipment and unlocking new rooms. In the second, a traitor and a spooky scenario is revealed: the ‘haunt’ begins.
The base game (in its third edition) has 50 haunts, and now this new one will be available to Betrayal players for free. Tune into the Hasbro Pulse YouTube channel on October 13, 7pm EST, to see it in action, played by its co-creator Matthew Lillard.
For more horrifying Halloween content, check out the best horror wargames and the most scary MTG cards. And if you like being a traitor, these are the greatest social deduction games ever made.