Card Game: Gloom - Ruining lives and killing them off 7GPs

Straight to the point: Fun edging on hilarious, but you’ll probably want the expansion packs

Brought to you by Atlas Games, Gloom is a table top card game where the aim of the game is to control the fate of your family by making them as miserable as you can before killing them off. From a stint in prison to a case of the pox you never know what tragedy will befall your hapless victims next, but not all is bad, on occasion your heirs may have a glimpse at joy, but this is in fact bad. To win you must have the most miserable dead family.

The game is a simple make up; family cards and modifier cards and that is it, no need for dice or counters but a little mental arithmetic is a must. Each family consists of five members for you to torture with your modifier cards. The modifiers card work by being placed over a family member describing the current tragedy befalling them, the transparent plastic touch to the cards enables you to endlessly stack. For me this concept is pure brilliance and means you characters current points can be easily tracked. You can also use your modifiers to halt your revival families progress, by adding nice and happy events to their characters such as blessed by a bishop or a trip to the circus, these appear as positive points, which is good for you and bad for them.

To make things extra fun the rules encourage you to explain or roleplay the circumstances surrounding each event. As the families experience more and more events the course of their life is tracked out through you, the player, through your ability to roleplay. For example my flapper girl was amused by a duck whilst out wandering, she then pushed her demonic sibling twins down a well and was scared by snakes, which were owned by gypsies who then cursed her. Each event card is stacked and the more that happens to the character the gloomier their portrait appears through the stack. This was quite moment of revelation for us and a clever touch by the makers.

The playtime was actually just under an hour which isn’t bad considering it was the first time we had played. This is also a testimony to the simplicity of the rules; take turns, on your turn you can play 2 cards on anyone then pick up to five for your hand and it moves onto the next player. There are, of course, cards that can bend the rules which stops the process becoming monotonous. Some modifiers also come with conditions that can alter the number of cards you can play or hold. When a player kills a character the cards are turned and kept in order, once one players family has been obliterated the game ends and the counting begins, the family whom earned the most minus points wins.

Conclusion

I certainly look forward to the next time I have opportunity to play, it kept me amused and created a lot of in character banter between the group which naturally leads to crying with laughter. Next time I am will definitely take the modifiers a lot more seriously and keep a better eye on my opponents, as this makes or breaks the game for you. As it happened I did win the game but it was a complete surprise to me, I hadn’t been keeping a close eye on my characters points, focusing more on my rivals, but still it worked. The downside of this game is that I am sure the single deck will get old quickly; we went through the pick up deck one and a half times in under an hour. Since playing I have already been looking at the cost of the expansion packs because I believe they will be necessary to keep this a game I play regularly. Unfortunately they are quite pricey which is a little off putting, but I guess that is what birthdays and Christmas is for. This is a must for a table top gamer’s collection.

Awarded 7 GPs