Ghost Face: The Game is the latest in a series of board games from Anthony Masi, published under his Stop The Killer banner. Produced under license from Fun World, it should be noted that this is not a Scream game per se, rather it concerns a killer (or killers) wearing the iconic Ghost Face mask. In fact, the game has nine different versions of the Ghost Face mask. Which one(s) come out to wreak havoc depends on your luck (note: mine is always bad).
The action in Ghost Face: The Game has been transported far from Woodsboro to an ill-fated (as it turns out) drive-in theater in Pennsylvania (surely one of the spookiest states. I mean, it has "sylvania" in its name! That's gotta count for something.) One to four players will vie for the chance to defeat Ghost Face before he kills everyone at the big drive-in triple-feature.
The game board is made up of a serpentine track of interlocking spaces. The Ghost Face killer begins at one end of the track, and the players start at the other. On their turn, each player will roll the three dice. The first will determine how many spaces along a predetermined path the killer will move. The second die tells the player how many spaces they can move, but they're not restricted to following the path like the killer.
Players can move to any adjacent space, taking care to avoid landing in the killer's space. If they do, and they've not yet acquired a weapon to battle Ghost Face, they're dead. The third die will tell players whether or not they should draw a card from the deck. The cards can help or hurt the player who drew them, place roadblocks in spaces that hinder player movement (but not the killer), or even move players around the board. They can bestow boons or deliver punishments, especially if you happen to be on one of the board spaces ominously labeled a "Kill Zone." Woe betide those who heed not this warning! (Am I a good harbinger?)
Along with the Kill Zones, there are other spaces which can make things worse for the players. If the Ghost Face killer lands on an "Add a Killer" space, the active player takes the double-sided spinner and gives it a whirl. All nine Ghost Faces are on the spinner with a possible "Yes" or "No" result. If it's a "No," everyone can just go on with their business. If it's a "Yes," however, a second and possibly even a third Ghost Face killer will be added to the board. That's a triple threat! More killers to avoid… more killers to defeat!
There's another twist in Ghost Face: The Game. There's one space on the board where players can find out if they, themselves, are actually the killer! If so, their win condition changes, and they are now out to Stab their friends!
Other spaces allow players to gain a weapon, which you must have to take on Ghost Face. Once acquired, a player needs to land on Ghost Face's space and, once again, grab the spinner. This time, they'll use the opposite side to determine if they successfully save their fellow players and all the other patrons at the drive-in or if they just end up another hash mark in Ghost Face's growing body count.
Players could find themselves out of the game if they have an unlucky spin (my luck with dice translates to spinners as well), but with games lasting around twenty minutes, it won't be long before they can get back into the start of another round.
Ghost Face: The Game is the culmination of a four-game series based on popular and beloved horror movies. Designer Anthony Masi began the series just a few years ago with the Kickstarters for Silent Night, Deadly Night: The Game in 2022, followed by My Bloody Valentine: The Game the next year, and 2024's Halloween II: The Game.
Masi has a long-time love of the genre and has been immersed in these properties as the producer and director of a number of featurettes to accompany horror releases for Anchor Bay Entertainment, Starz, Lionsgate, FEARnet, Miramax, Shout Factory, and others. It was during some work with the licensor of Silent Night, Deadly Night, that the idea for a game hit him.
"I was helping the licensor create items with their Silent Night, Deadly Night brand on it, and the idea of a game popped up one day on the phone, along with over a dozen other ideas," Masi remembers. "Over the next month, I designed a board game and had lunch with the guys to show them what I had in mind. They loved it, and we decided to Kickstart it."
All four games in the collection use the same basic mechanisms (with Ghost Face's multiple killers and possible hidden traitor being unique to that game). If you learn one game, you know how to play them all. When the right holiday hits, you can just pull out the appropriate theme, and you're good to go, no matter how much egg nog (or gluhwein, even) you've already consumed.
There are special "drinking" spaces on the game boards for a "livelier" session and opportunities to prove your knowledge of the movies with "trivia" add-on packs. Land on the right space and show off your misspent youth (or, as we like to call it in my house, pop cultural awareness!)
If gameplay sounds simple, it is, and that's by design. "I have always loved '70s and '80s-style board games," says Masi. "Some gamers want three-hour games with lots of rules, but that's not what this four-game series is all about. They are meant to be taken out on key holidays and played quickly without having to re-learn complicated rules. Open the box, put out the game pieces, select a character, start rolling the dice, and you're off and running! Play a few games back-to-back to see completely different results. Laugh, drink, fight a killer, then go about the rest of your holiday."
Fans of the films in question certainly won't be disappointed in the production. For all four games in the series, Masi teamed up with Fright Rags, whose work should be familiar to FANGORIA readers (Fangoids? Maybe I'll talk to editorial about that).
"Working with Fright Rags has been an amazing experience," says Masi. "Their designers are some of the best in the world, and I don't say that as an exaggeration. The Silent Night, Deadly Night licensor had already done business with Fright Rags and I knew the owner, Ben [Scrivens], from casual conversations on Facebook, so we reached out to him to talk about the game and he was into it and said, "let's do it!"
The illustration and design of the games are top-notch, and artist Justin Osbourn provides the same high-quality standard of work across all four games in the Stop the Killer series.
During the production of My Bloody Valentine: The Game, Masi was struck with another idea for a related product: novelizations.
"When making the MBV game," says Masi, "I casually mentioned to George Mihalke (director of My Bloody Valentine) that my friend, Armando Muñoz, was an incredible writer and would probably love to write a My Bloody Valentine novel based on George's original vision for his film. The MPAA butchered the 1981 movie, and this would be a chance to create a novel that stuck to the original screenplay."
Mihalke agreed, and one novel led to another and another. Silent Night, Deadly Night was next. "I've read that manuscript, and it is bonkers!" says Masi, and that's an endorsement!
The recent Kickstarter for Ghost Face: The Game offered not one but two new novels by R.J. Torbert featuring Ghost Face killers. It is noted on the Kickstarter page that 100% of the proceeds from sales of The Face of Fear and No Mercy will go to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, benefitting First Responder and Gold Star Families.
Another add-on comes in the form of a new game venture from Masi. Hex Dex is a small, highly portable solo card game. Two variants with the Ghost Face theme are available (collect 'em all), but other decks will be themed with future licenses.
"We debuted the line in the Ghost Face Kickstarter with two decks (a purple one and a "Candy Corn" variant)," says Masi, "and we will be continuing with other titles in the coming months. They are fun to play, and just like the original Stop the Killer game series, if you can play one, you can play the others. They also take up hardly any space, and you can take them with you to the coffee shop and office and play a quick game whenever you have free time and a table to play on!
What those licenses could be is anyone's guess, but Masi doesn't seem to be someone to sit idle for very long.
"About ten years ago, I created a children's game, which I had prototyped. I even auditioned for Shark Tank (I didn't get on the show), and I still think it's a winner. I'm going to try and resurrect it as a future Stop The Killer game. It's very unique and creates a sense of wonder for children as the game unfolds. I am also a professional magician, and I believe creating games and creating magic tricks have a lot in common, so I'm not surprised this world of gaming has captivated me."
The Kickstarter for Ghost Face: The Game (fittingly) ended on Halloween. But you'll still be able to order the game through the pledge manager for a limited time. If you're interested in collecting the other games in the series as well, there is a small inventory remaining, which will be available to backers of Ghost Face: The Game.
You can find more information at stopthekiller.com.
