Back in the before times I used to make an annual pilgrimage to Colorado for an informal Horror Writer’s Retreat at the Stanley Hotel. The last time we managed to make it happen was in 2018 (I think) and I subjected everyone to a storytelling game called Gloom.

The basic idea is to play cards that a) score you points and b) describe a terrible disaster that befalls a member of one of the game’s quirky families. Players are encouraged to elaborate on the description on the card to create a story but don’t gain any points unless their family meets its demise. Gloom has a dark, Addams Family-esque feel so playing it with a bunch of horror writers was great fun.

I have all the expansions (and a Cthulhu variant) of the game so when I saw that there is a new version being funded on Kickstarter I didn’t think twice.

In the words of the team behind the game:

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!

You don’t have to be a storyteller to play the game, you can have plenty of fun just reading the descriptions on the cards as you play them but it’s even better if you embellish things and add your own spin to the story. It’s not as tricky as it sounds and once you get the hang of it, it can be great fun. Particularly if you have a dark sense of humour like I do.

If you’d like to see the game in action, Wil Wheaton ran a game with Amber Benson, Michele Boyd, and Meghan Camarena which is a lot of fun.

You can back the Kickstarter right here.

[Kickstarter of the (not every) Week – Gloomier: A Night at Hemlock Hall by Philip Harris first appeared on Solitary Mindset on 29th March 2021]