In case you haven’t read my review, I absolutely love Spooktacular. When my copy finally arrived, I played it about twice a week or more with my group for several months, and even now I usually end up getting it on the table whenever my gaming group meets up. It’s easily one of my favorite games. So you can understand how thrilled I was at Gen Con to get a peek at the ten new monsters coming in the expansion: Bride of Spooktacular!
The components in these photos aren’t finalized, so don’t worry about any errors or how they’re on printer paper.
First up, we have Dragonbeard, the pirate dragon. What do those two things have in common? A love for treasure, of course! And Dragonbeard is all about gold. Starting with only a quarter of his treasures on his board, he spends this resource in order to take any of his actions. He doesn’t even get to play cards (or draw them, it seems) without using treasure. Dragonbeard will probably be a flexible threat on the board if you can manage your resources well.
Hellevator is not only a monster, but also a fully functional door leading to a nightmarish pocket dimension on their player sheet. Unlike Mummygator’s tomb, other monsters can also enter it, meaning you could probably abduct some poor schmuck and drag them around with you.
Kaiju Fight Club is one of the monsters in this expansion that drastically changes the entire game’s dynamic whenever they’re on the board—fitting for an Advanced monster. KFC actually turns the entire game into a team game! Each player is randomly assigned to one of three teams (except KFC itself, who’s on two teams). At the end of the game, team members add their scores together, and the winning team shares the victory! There’s also this whole Fan Club gimmick on KFC’s board where players can try and score their team some bonus points, at the cost of potentially revealing their allegiances. Which KFC especially can take advantage of with their card “Inevitable Betrayal” and swap one of their teams with another player! So don’t get too comfortable with letting the unchecked Remover carry you to victory.
Gorgasnax is a bit like Screamin’ Eagle, adding a special type of guest to the theater. But these Hunters are particularly nasty, forcing monsters to discard cards on Gorgasnax’s turn and putting them at a disadvantage. Which isn’t so bad for Gorgasnax themselves, since they get to redraw right after and mill their deck a bit better. None of the original monsters were very cryptid-like, and I’m always happy to see more of them in any media.
Similar to Hellevator, Headhunter is not only a monster, but also a guest. Which means they can be spooked and devoured. Even by themselves?!?! Based on the art and figure, it seems like it’s an evil robotic bowler hat that is controlling some poor, unsuspecting guest. A Meet the Robinsons reference wasn’t on my Bride of Spooktacular bingo card in any timeline, but I’m here for it.
Another monster that changes the entire game is Scream Mart. If you love the Otters in Root, then this might be the monster for you. At the start of the game, Scream Mart converts a bit of everybody’s points into Scream Mart Vouchers (which are each worth a point at the end of the game anyway) to spend on Scream Mart’s offers. See, Scream Mart adds an auction to Spooktacular on their turn, selling cards for other players to add to their deck. Or winning the auction themselves to play an extra card. Either way, players will need to gauge how many points these offerings are worth. Personally, I’m really keen to see what those unique cards actually are and how often Scream Mart passes out additional Vouchers.
On top of having one of the cleanest designs on its poster, Ailurophobia is one of the monsters I’d most been looking forward to before anything was actually revealed. Solely because it’s a cat. And looking at it now, I’m still excited for it. Ailurophobia is like a lighter version of Deadline (one of my favorites) in a way. But instead of expanding its reach with figures that can trigger effects if players hang around them, the Black Cat just leaves behind a trail of tokens with random effects for other players to trigger. With only two unique cards, these Shadows are probably some decently strong effects—similar to Hell Party Chef’s dishes, maybe?
Shiny Toys has tokens representing memorable Spooktacular monsters, but they need to be Devoured before their effects can be used. The mechanics around this are pretty interesting, but I mostly adore the toy versions of the monsters and how their effects kinda reflect the original’s playstyles.
The scorpions making up the Swarm do, in fact, fly now. They Fly is unsurprisingly like a Zerg swarm, rushing the board with its token scorpions. If they can get grouped up, the main Swarm can scatter them for some decent points. The board itself looks pretty simple, so I’m really interested in how the cards will take advantage of all these scorpions.
Probably the standout monster for me in terms of unique gameplay (aside from the two Advanced monsters) is Dead Presidents. They seem like a reverse Wolf Pack, starting with all their Zombies on the board, but featuring a mechanic for other figures (not just monsters) to fight them off and actually remove the Zombies from the board. But every time a Zombie is (re)killed, it enters the Wight House, triggering an effect and making the existing Zombies stronger. I love the idea that you start with a really high reach across the theater, but have to sacrifice that in favor of increasing benefits.
While adding ten more monsters to the original game’s twenty would normally be a solid expansion to the game, this is Level 99 we’re talking about. Of course that isn’t enough, so they’ve also made another twenty Double Features to the existing Spooktacular monsters, changing only their boards to create some drastically different experiences. What if Remover had a branching tree? Or if Lantern Glow just added more doors inside the theater? I’ve played with some of them when they were still being developed, and they were all a blast. Plus, more people get to see the amazing promo alt-art for all the monsters in case you didn’t pick up 99 Heroes.
Bride of Spooktacular is going to have plenty for any other lovers of Spooktacular, and it’s coming to Gamefound this October. But if that’s not soon enough, be sure to join Level 99’s public Discord server, where they’re currently hosting Tabletop Simulator games with the unreleased monsters!
