Betrayal at House on the Hill vs Azul

Each of the 50 scenarios are unique and have a gripping story that helps pull you into the game. Whether it's demons, monsters, or rituals that need to be completed, each gameplay session will be filled with new stories and new objectives. Thanks to this, each session memorable in its own way as you won't ever be doing the same thing twice.

In the beginning, players all work together to explore and search the haunted house, but once the betrayers are revealed in the later sections, the game turns you against one another. This complete shift in tone from co-op exploration to frantic survival is often the most exciting part as everyone's goals suddenly change and your friends are trying to kill you.

The "Traitor's Tome" rulebook contains a base of 50 "haunt" scenarios to play through, but you can easily create your own or find more online if you'd like to play more unique or varied games. Even when playing the base game, the sheer amount of variety in nightmarish things (monsters, aliens, ghosts, weird portals) the game throws at you is incredible.

Overall, this is a great game to help get your friends into board games, even if they are bit reluctant. Each game session usually only lasts about 60 minutes, but manages to pack as much fun in as possible. The suspense of exploration combined with the excitement of the big reveal is an addicting mechanic that works well with many groups. Thanks to this short length and incredible way of drawing people in, this makes it a great game to pick up and play with friends on the spur of the moment.

You can play a whole game from start to finish in about an hour.

Perhaps one person, or even multiple people are forced to switch to Betrayers in the middle of the game. You never know who is going to be affected, what the revealed horror will be, or when it will happen. Additionally, the Betrayers and Investigators often have objectives which are kept secret from one another, so you never know what your opponent's win condition is until it happens. All of this keeps everyone guessing what's going to happen next and how things will play out.

The Window's Walk expansion not only adds 50 new haunts, but adds new rooms, cards and opens up the roof for exploration. Overall, it's an excellent addition that expands on the base game and gives you plenty of new content to enjoy.

Apart from the initial setup, luck plays little to no role in the outcome of this game.

You have to try to predict the moves of your opponents while simultaneously thinking about your own moves, in order to win. For example, if you're trying to collect the full set of same-color tiles, you need to be aware if other players are doing the same. There are 20 tiles of each color, and if all players are trying to collect the yellow ones, there might not be enough in rotation for all to succeed.

You get points from placing tiles, and various combinations give you more points. You can lose points if you don't think ahead, and you can also take risks where you lose a few points to gain many more.

The game itself is very beautiful. Azul was inspired by the tiles at Alhambra. The design is bright, upbeat and colorful.

There are multiple ways to get points. For example- aiming to get all tiles of the same color or getting the most columns.

If the preset pattern has become too familiar, you can use the other side of the board to create your own pattern. It's completely blank, so you can come up with multiple possible patterns.