The most scared I’ve ever been playing a board game was the time in middle school when my friend knocked a glass of root beer onto our six-hour game of Risk. I still sometimes wake up in a cold sweat thinking about that moment. All those plastic soldiers, washed away in a river of sticky brown.
Board games aren’t what I would consider a medium for telling scary stories. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of horror-themed board games that are exceptional. I love Arkham Horror, I have friends that love Betrayal at House on the Hill, and I recently demoed Funko’s new Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Scream games, which are both excellent. But even the most tense game of Mansions of Madness wouldn’t exactly be considered scary. No one’s ever going to be looking over their shoulder or sleeping with the lights on no matter how harrowing board game night might have been. Or so I thought before I played Compound 49, an immersive survival horror game with a brilliantly fear-inducing mechanic: it’s designed to be played in the dark.
The thing that makes Compound 49 so unnerving, and what sets it apart from other games that use horror merely as an aesthetic, is the way themes and gameplay combine to create an atmosphere most spooky. Its premise is familiar: you and your fellow players are survivors in post-apocalypse, cut off from the outside world and protected by the walls surrounding your sanctuary. The game begins on a small board that builds outward as you leave the compound to explore the wasteland, but at the start, you’re free to explore the town to gather resources and complete tasks, all under the protection of four street lamps that illuminate the compound and keep the darkness at bay - literally and figuratively.
You play Compound 49 in a dark room with only the light from these lamps for illumination. This is both a flavorless way to make the game unique, but also a meaningful gameplay mechanic. You quickly realize that tasks are more difficult in the dark, both for your character, and for yourself. You have to get close to the light in order to read the information on the cards and story materials you pick up. It’s an early, subtle way that the game creates dependance on light, and an intense feeling of helplessness when it eventually goes out.
Your characters are safe when they’re in the light. This mechanic is meant to be interpreted literally: if your light emitting from the tiny streetlamps reaches the square your character is in, they’re considered to be in the light. Video games have used light and shadow as gameplay mechanics - Alan Wake and Destiny 2’s Prophecy Dungeon come to mind - but I’ve never seen it used in real life this way. It immediately adds a fascinating layer of immersion to the game. Compound 49 has lots of ways blurring the line between real life and the game board.
Here’s another one: talking is a gameplay mechanic. When the round starts each player has four actions they can use, and everyone takes their turn simultaneously. Early on, in the safety of the compound, you can talk about your plans and delicate tasks to one another, trade resources, and work together. Once you’re separated however, as will happen once people start to leave the compound, you can’t talk to each other if your characters are too far apart to hear what the other person is saying.
When your characters are separated, stuff happens. Events trigger and you’ll be given new information, story updates, and objectives. Unless the other players are with you, the information will only be known to you. In the dark, alone, pursued by all manner of mutated horrors, there’s a real sense of isolation here that I’ve never experienced in a tabletop game before.
There is a range at which other characters can hear you, measured in blocks on the board, but shouting out to someone at a distance gives the monsters that may be pursuing you a movement advantage. You’ll be drawing attention to yourself by talking, so you have to weigh how crucial the thing you need to yell really is. There’s so much tension built into these moments, and a sense of drama you’d typically only get from traditional roleplay games.
On top of everything, Compound 49 employs deep survival mechanics that require you to manage your food, water, sanity, and physical health. Traveling outside the compound is costly, and moving outside of the safety of the light is incredibly risky. The dangers lurking in the dark are made all the more real by Compound 49’s immersive systems, which includes a haunting soundtrack to provide even more ambience.
I only played through the opening chapter during my PAX West demo earlier this year, but in just over an hour I got a strong sense of how complex the game is. This is a big box game akin to Gloomhaven or Descent with a campaign that unfolds over many sessions. Compound 49’s Kickstarter campaign launched today, and backers will be the first to get their hands on the game when it releases next year. If you never thought decks of cards and miniatures could be terrifying, now’s your chance to find out.
