Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
It’s rare that something so dangerous can occur, such as reviewing a game in which you had no great interest and then discovering that there’s a sequel. When I gave This Game Is Killer a review, I left with a mixture of emotions. Although Alien on Board had some interesting concepts, the confusing rules and the inconsistent gameplay prevented me from really enjoying it. The series is now returning with This Game Is Killer: Frozen Horror, switching from the confining hallways in a spaceship to a similarly pleasant setting: the frozen wasteland of Antarctica.
Or, to be even more specific, The Thing (or the sequel) for the movie crowd, or Who Goes There? for the book people. The foundations haven’t changed much. You still need to survive, and the well-being of your neighboring players is not your concern. Instead of an Alien randomly attacking locations on the ship, a single player becomes the “horror” for the round, and whoever shares their location dies.
The Thing, Literally
No, this is not a social deduction game. While your identity is kept secret, it is revealed at the end of the round. From there, the identity cards are shuffled and dealt out again. Apparently, in this universe, the “thing” temporarily infects someone. Alright, I’ll bite.
The card play hasn’t changed much from its predecessor. You’re dealt two cards, and each turn you must play one for its location and the other for its text effect, choosing the order. Turn order follows a snake draft, moving clockwise from the first player before reversing around the table. That makes turn order crucial. You might have the perfect card, only for another player to act first and ruin your plans before you can respond.
A big change from the original Alien on Board is that the map actually matters. The previous game had a map, but it was mainly just a reference point rather than an actual game board. In this version, the map is just as important as the cards you hold in your hand. The board comprises four rooms representing the Antarctic outpost, which are linked by colored pathways. The colors of the paths that you can take are listed when you play a card for the purpose of moving.
Four Rooms and a Funeral
It seems quite simple to understand until you find out that other players can lock off certain pathways or even set a room on fire, killing anyone who is in that room by the end of the round. After that, the players go around the outpost, lock the pathways, set rooms ablaze, and generally make life miserable for everyone else until either only one player is left or someone manages to kill the Horror.
Compared to Alien on Board, there is much more substance here, while being far easier to teach. Having a random player essentially take on the role of the murderer in each round is a smart move, as it draws on social deduction conventions without turning the game into a true social deduction game. I should also highlight the card text, since it actually provides instructions for once, instead of dousing it with flavor text, which makes it difficult to understand.
Between the two games, I definitely recommend Frozen Horror to anyone who is interested in this series. But in terms of a game on its own, I still don’t care for it.
Although it is an improvement, the fundamental problem with This Game Is Killer persists here despite this attempt to smooth everything over. Like before, the biggest issue is that the game struggles to build tension.
Death Without the Drama
You can easily die in the first round, even when you’re playing the Horror. Death is often instantaneous and comes with little warning, causing an eyeroll rather than a sense of climax. It’s a strange flaw in a game that wants to celebrate the horror genre, considering one of horror’s defining traits is the buildup to each character’s death, even the minor ones.
The inconsistency is just as noticeable as the lack of buildup; in some cases, the game can end very quickly, while in others it may take forever as two players chase one another like the most uncomfortable game of tag in the world. Neither ending feels particularly satisfying, since the game hardly settles into a smooth rhythm.
Cold Feet
What ultimately prevents Frozen Horror from succeeding is the rather artificial way the entire experience can seem. The game aims to hit classic horror movie beats, but those moments rarely connect properly. Each moment happens on its own, disconnected from the last. Death comes swiftly and abruptly, making it hard to invest yourself emotionally into the game. Nothing ever builds to an interesting climax. Win or lose, you feel nothing.
I wanted to like Frozen Horror more than I did. There’s a better game hiding in here somewhere, and I suspect the people who enjoy the series will get considerably more out of it than I have. For me, however, playing it didn’t feel like surviving a horror film so much as waiting for the next box to be ticked. Although the sequel has managed to patch up the flaws of Alien on Board, it has never escaped the sense that something is still missing.
This Game Is Killer: Frozen Horror details
- Designer: Gaeton Dragone, Ivan Turner
- Artists: Grafit Studio
- Publishers: Smirk & Dagger Games
- Release Date: 2025
- Player count : 4 - 10
- Age range : 14+
- Time range : 10 - 15 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Semi-Cooperative Game, Sudden Death Ending, Traitor Game
- BGG Geek Rating: 6.98981 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 3.5.
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