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Posted 13 hours ago

Mysterium is a beautiful, pure cooperative game of communication. Murder most foul has been committed at Warwick Manor and a group of eminent psychics have been called together for a seance to investigate. That’s you.

In Mysterium, one player plays the ghost of the murder victim and the others psychic investigators who must discover who committed the murder, where and with what weapon. The ghost may only communicate with the psychics through dream-like images depicted on gorgeously illustrated cards. The psychics have just 7 hours (rounds) to interpret the visions sent by the ghost: exposing the murderer, uncovering the location and determining the murder weapon. Intuition, cooperation and inspired guesswork will be key to your success.

Two to seven players, ages 10 and up, can play Mysterium in about 45 minutes.

Join us at Here Be Books & Games this Saturday and we’ll teach you how to play!

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Here Be Books & Games

Posted 4 days ago

5 Games of Mystery and the Macabre for Halloween, Part 3

Halloween has always been a holiday of mystery and the macabre. So to introduce a little fun and creepiness to your Halloween gaming, I’ve put together a list of five games of mystery with some that border on the macabre.

Here's number 3. Watch for the other 2 in posts later this month.

3. Choose Your Own Adventure Games
Choose Your Own Adventure games are just that: narrative adventure games in which you choose, what doors to open, which fork in the road to take, how to react to circumstances and more. Each game features cooperative play and a unique adventure with a mystery to uncover. Two titles are available so far.

In Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger, you and your friends are in for a perilous and laughter-filled adventure. You’ll make risky choices, collect bizarre clues, and face mortal challenges as you explore the weird and strange house.

In Choose Your Own Adventure: War with the Evil Power Master, you and your plucky young team of heroes must endeavor to save the galaxy from the evil power master bent on global destruction.

You can break up play into multiple sessions - by chapter - or play one long session if you so choose. When I played The House of Danger with five other people, we were so caught up in the story we couldn’t stop and played the whole game through in one session.

You can play both Choose Your Own Adventure titles multiple times to uncover more secrets and different endings. No two play-throughs are quite the same.

Choose Your Own Adventure Games can be played solo or with as many people as you wish. The titles above are recommended for ages 10 and up. Playtime is about 60 minutes for one chapter; each game has multiple chapters.

In stock now at Here Be Books & Games.

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Here Be Books & Games

Posted 4 days ago

5 Games of Mystery and the Macabre for Halloween, Part 2

Halloween has always been a holiday of mystery and the macabre. So to introduce a little fun and creepiness to your Halloween gaming, I’ve put together a list of five games of mystery with some that border on the macabre.

Here's number 2. Look for the other 3 in posts later this month.

2. Escape-Room-in-a-Box Games
When you’re looking for a little mystery to solve on Halloween, you can’t go wrong with the Exit: The Game and Unlock! series of escape-room-in-a-box games.

Escape Rooms are puzzle adventures you have to solve in a specific amount of time - usually an hour or two. They can be quite costly: $50 per person is not unusual. However, for $15, less than half the cost of one admission to a live Escape Room experience, you and your friends can solve a similar puzzling mystery at home with an escape-room-in-a-box à la Unlock! and Exit: The Game.

The Unlock! and Exit: The Game series have numerous adventures you can choose from. Explore a pharoah’s tomb, thrawt the plans of an evil mastermind in a cartoon adventure, recover a mysterious serum, explore a sinister mansion, uncover the midnight mysteries in a mysterious museum, solve the murder on the Orient Express or escape from the abandoned cabin in which you sought shelter.

Player count ranges from 1 to 6 players. Play time is usually an hour. The games also come in a variety of difficulty levels. Some are even designed so you can include kids.

In stock now at Here Be Books & Games.

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Here Be Books & Games

Posted 5 days ago

Welcome to... Halloween. Choose a trick or a treat, circling either a ghost or a candy when you build houses in Welcome To...Halloween, a thematic neighborhood expansion for Welcome to...

Welcome to... is a super fun roll-and-write game! Each turn, you’ll flip cards from three piles to display three different action sets. Each set shows a house number that you must assign to one of the houses in your community and an optional corresponding action you can take. The house numbers on each street must ascend left to right, with two exceptions: 1) the Bis Action, which lets you break that rule by duplicating a house number for a penalty or 2) a round-about on the street.

Race to be the first to complete the three public goals, one of which is related to the special Halloween board. Choosing a trick or treat when you build a house is another special feature of the Halloween expansion which also features new artwork.

Game play is simultaneous in Welcome to... Halloween, so lots of people, ages 10 and up, can play at the same time! Playtime is about 45 minutes.

There are lots of ways to build your community and many paths to a happy Halloween in Welcome To...Halloween!

Come by this Saturday and we’ll teach you how to play!

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Here Be Books & Games

Posted 7 days ago

Exit: The Game - The Abandoned Cabin is an escape-room-in-a-box.

Your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and you're looking for shelter to get through the night. Luckily, you find an abandoned cabin in the woods near the road. You enter thankfully and spend an uneventful night. The next morning, however, when you try to leave, you discover the door is locked! Iron bars on the windows prevent you from escaping. Searching the cabin for some means of exit, you discover a book and a strange disk....

Drop by this Saturday and we’ll teach you how to play! This is a one-time play through, so don't miss it!

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Here Be Books & Games

Posted 1 week ago

Above and Below is a light worker placement game of town-building and storytelling.

When your village was sacked by barbarians, you searched far and wide for the perfect place to build a new home. Then you found it! Not only was it perfect, but nearby you discovered a vast network of underground caverns filled with treasure, rare resources, and untold adventure. Unwilling to limit your new life to the surface, you immediately start organizing expeditions to explore the riches below while continuing to expand your village above.

In Above and Below, you’ll send your villagers to perform jobs like exploring the caverns below, harvesting resources, building houses and training new workers. Each villager has unique skills and abilities, and you must decide how best to use them. Will you send Cyndi on the expedition below? That’s where the storytelling is! Or will you keep her above to teach important skills to one of the youngsters, so you can send a bigger party later?

When you send a group of villagers to explore the caverns below, one of your friends reads what happens to you from a book of paragraphs. You'll be given a choice of how to react. A lot will depend on who you sent on the expedition, and how kindly or not so kindly you treat with strangers. Your fortune is yours to tell in Above and Below.

Above and Below supports 2 to 4 players, ages 13 and up and plays in about 90 minutes.

Drop by Here Be Books & Games this Saturday and we’ll teach you how to play!

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Here Be Books & Games

Posted 2 weeks ago

5 Games of Mystery and the Macabre for Halloween, Part 1

Halloween has always been a holiday of mystery and the macabre. So to introduce a little fun and creepiness to your Halloween gaming, I’ve put together a list of five games of mystery with some that border on the macabre.

Here's the first one. Look for the others in posts later this month.

1. Hako Onna
I’m gonna start with the one that I think sounds the creepiest: Hako Onna.

The scary men arrived. My father, in a panic, pushed me down into a way-too-small box. I heard my bones snap, but dared not scream. I heard angry voices...then nothing. Father never came back. I was left alone. That was a long time ago. Im not alone anymore. Sometimes, people come play. I like to play hide and seek. When I tire of playing, I eat.

Hako Onna is a horror game of reverse hide-and-seek, a one-against-all exploration game. One player plays Hako Onna (the Woman in the Box), and the rest are Visitors, who are trying to escape from the mansion.

As Visitors, you’ll try to not make any noise as you search the shadowy rooms of the mansion for information, items to protect yourself, and a way to escape what you do not see, but know is there. Beware! If you stumble upon Hako Onna, you’re dead.

3 to 5 players, ages 10 and up, can play this creepy game in 90-120 minutes. In stock now at Here Be Books & Games.

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Here Be Books & Games

Posted 2 weeks ago

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle, set in the wizarding world of the famous Harry Potter books, is a cooperative deck-building game. Taking on the roles of Harry, Hermione, Ron and Neville, you and your chums must consolidate your defenses and work together to defeat the villains harassing your school.

Harry Potter: Hogwart's Battle is a campaign-style game featuring seven boxes that you'll open as you play through the storyline featured in the books and movies. This allows young and/or newbie gamers to grow into the game as you reenact the seven-book story.

While the player characters don't start with any special powers per se, each one has his or her own unique starting deck. As you progress through the seven games, your characters will gain knowledge and skills, just like the young wizards in the books.

Each of the seven numbered games can be played multiple times. This isn't a Legacy game. You can pick up the story anywhere you want, and play with different people each time. The components and artwork are top-notch, making the game highly thematic despite being essentially a card game. Love it!
2 to 4 players, ages 11 through adult, can play a session of Harry Potter: Hogwart's Battle in 30 to 60 minutes.

Learn to play it this Saturday at Here Be Books & Games - or just come play if you already know how!

We recently added a copy of the expansion, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle - Monster Box of Monsters, to our game library. So we can break that out, too, for those looking for a more challenging experience or if someone wants to play the new character Luna Lovegood. In order to win with the Monster Box, you have to defeat all the new Creatures as well as the Villains, and deal with all the Encounters, too.

Grab a broomstick and swing by. We’ll teach you how to play!

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Here Be Books & Games

Posted 2 weeks ago

Potion Explosion is a game of potion-crafting, marble-crashing and set collection that’s incredibly fun!

It's time for the final exams of the Potions class! Under the helpful tutelage of the Headmaster, you’ve learned how to handle volatile ingredients, represented by colorful marbles, and turn them into fantastical potions! The rules are always the same: take an Ingredient marble from the Dispenser and watch the others fall. If you connect marbles of the same color, they explode... and you can take them too!

Complete your potions using the marbles you collect, and drink them to unleash their magical powers. Remember, though, that to win the Student of the Year Award, being quick won't be enough; you'll also need to brew the most valuable potions! You can score additional points by completing five different types of potions and three of the same kind.

2 to 4 players, ages 14 and up can play Potion Explosion in 30 to 45 minutes. Come by Here Be Books & Games this Saturday and we’ll teach you how to play!

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Posted 2 weeks ago

The Quacks of Quedlinburg is a light-hearted, push-your-luck, bag-building game of potion brewing.

Mix up some wacky concoctions to impress the folks at the fair. Compete to see who can build the biggest potion using weird ingredients like rats, pumpkins, garden spiders, crow skulls, toadstools, mandrake, ghost’s breath, moths, and cherry bombs!

You each have your own bag of ingredient chips. During each round, you'll simultaneously draw chips and add them to your pots. The higher the face value of a drawn chip, the further you can place it in the swirling pattern of your cauldron. Push your luck as far as you can, but if you add too many cherry bombs, your pot will explode!

At the end of each round, you'll gain victory points and also coins to spend on new ingredients to add to your bags. But players with exploded pots must choose points or coins — not both! The player with the most victory points at the end of nine rounds wins the game.

You can learn to play Quacks of Quedlinburg this Saturday at Here Be Books & Games! We'll teach you how to play.

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