‘Krampus’ Expansion a Worthy Addition to ‘Horrified: World of Monsters’ [Review]

Earlier this year, I reviewed Horrified: World of Monsters, the latest entry in the co-op board game series that brings creatures of myth and fiction to the tabletop. The biggest change that World of Monsters introduced was the ability to mix and match monsters with a previous entry, Greek Monsters, along with the promise of compatibility with any future Horrified release. Your challenges throughout the game are defined by the monsters, so this allowed the series to be able to provide a wider range of challenges going forward.

This winter, Ravensburger has released a limited time, single monster mini-expansion that’s perfectly themed with the holidays: Krampus.

For those who aren’t familiar with the game, you work together with other players to move around the board to pick up items and save villagers while trying to complete objectives related to each of the two to four monsters that you’re competing against. The monsters themselves will pursue you and the NPC villagers attempting to kill you, which puts you one step closer to losing. It’s a compelling loop that follows a formula similar to the co-op classic Pandemic, but with an appealing horror theme and enough monster combinations that you’ll be able to keep things varied in subsequent playthroughs.

The new Krampus boss monster feels unique among the other bosses because it comes with four other NPCs that you’ll be leading around the board. At the start of the game, you’ll randomly place three children around the board, who you’ll need to save from Krampus by bringing them to St. Nick, the fourth NPC in the game. As part of your turn, you can move children or St. Nick along with you in an attempt to get the children to the same space as St. Nick. When you do that, you’ll spend items to save the child and take them off the board. Krampus will try to pursue both the children and St. Nick, and if he ever does damage to them, he captures them in his bag, forcing you to rescue them to bring them back into play. Once all children are safe with St. Nick, you can finally go to defeat Krampus and remove him from the game.

Since his objectives are so centered on moving other characters around the board, he reminds me a bit of the Yeti from World of Monsters, who required players to lead the Yeti’s children to a specific lair space on the board. The rules for Krampus feel distinct enough, given that you have to guide both the children and their destination, St. Nick, leaning heavily into the movement mechanics of the game. This chase is fun to play, and allows you to sweep across the board and attempt to work on other monsters’ objectives while you’re leading everyone around. In the games I played with this expansion, I was almost always beating Krampus first out of all the monsters, but I’m not sure if that’s because he’s easier than the others or if I was just focusing on him because he was a fresh challenge.

The production quality of Horrified: Krampus is top notch, adding onto an already beautiful game. It’s a very small package, but it contains a plastic figure for Krampus along with thick cardboard standees for St. Nick and the children. The monster card, which contains all the information about the Krampus-related objectives, also is made of a high-quality cardboard, setting it apart from the more flimsy cardstock for the base game’s monsters. The instructions for the expansion also have some wonderfully festive art on them, putting you immediately in the holiday spirit.

Slightly disappointing are the extra cards that are added to the game. There are two additional monster cards and one perk card, and they really only affect the Krampus monster in any meaningful way. If these cards come up after you’ve defeated Krampus, it feels pretty anticlimactic for them to show up, and even if they do appear at the right time it doesn’t seem like it’s significant enough to justify their inclusion. Not only that, but their card backs don’t match the decks in World of Monsters, so you can see them coming, which takes away their surprise. That said, they also have the same strong artistic style that the rest of the expansion has, so they are a joy to look at.

The Horrified board games live and die by the strength of their monsters, and Krampus provides another worthy inclusion to the long running series. The holiday theming of the expansion is on point, with festive card art and a great Krampus figurine, and the mechanics help mix up the dynamics of the gameplay. It’s not quite as significant of a change as something like the multi-stage Cthulhu in World of Horror, but it’s a great proof of concept for demonstrating how the game can be expanded simply through these small monster expansions.

I’m very curious to see what other monsters they have in store. I just hope future releases are a little more transformative.

You can pick up your copy of Horrified: Krampus at your local game store.

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