The 6 Best Horror Board Games to Play at Home of 2025
Top pick
Who it’s for: larger families or friend groups, excellent liars
Player count: eight or more, but consider that a suggestion (we’ve played with less)
Duration: 20 to 30 minutes
Rules: PDF
Ages: 14 and up
Best played around a campfire instead of at the kitchen table, Werewolf is a conversational parlor game. If you’ve ever played the classic hidden-role game Mafia, you’ll catch on fast.
The Werewolves of Miller’s Hollow is essentially the same thing but with toothy shape-shifters as the killers. As in Mafia, you could play this game using a normal deck of cards to designate each player’s role, but we love this version because of its more in-depth storytelling and tarot-style illustrations.
In a nutshell, a moderator (elect the most theatrical person in the room) deals out individual character cards, but no one reveals who they are. Options in Miller’s Hollow include townsfolk and the werewolves, and depending on the number of players, a peppering of additional characters with special abilities.
Once everyone knows their identity, the moderator tells players that it’s nightfall and instructs them to close their eyes. The werewolves reveal themselves to each other and the moderator, and then they silently decide whom in the group to kill. Additional actions can also happen at night — for example, if The Little Girl card has been mixed into the shuffle, that player can peek at night to try to see who the werewolves are, but if caught they’ll die of fright.
Once the werewolves decide on their victim, the moderator tells everyone to open their eyes and reveals who has been clawed to bits, after which the survivors attempt to guess the werewolves’ identities by agreeing on a vote before night falls once more. But beware: You might sentence an innocent person to death, and the werewolves will strike again.
Therein lies the fun — everyone starts vehemently accusing and denying, and it can be a great way to vent simmering frustrations in a packed home. Are you a werewolf? Maybe your first kill should be the person who keeps leaving wet towels on the bathroom floor. Or if your knockabout sibling suddenly shows a talent for swaying the room to his vote, nudge them into pursuing politics.
Just be warned that you might end a game suspecting that the cousin crashing in your parents’ basement is a sociopath after they successfully pick everyone off without once drawing suspicion.
