Vampire Hunter: The Game

I bought this because it was $3 and it had the word “vampire” on the box. Is there a stupider reason to buy something? Maybe, but this game has been sitting around my house for a few years now after I pulled it from a Kay Bee Toys closeout sale. And I gotta admit, I do have a bit of a soft spot for it. Any game designed to be played in the dark, whose objective is murder, gets some respect from me. And my nephew used to love it before he became obsessed with guns.

I won’t spend much time on the rules and what not, but I’ll just say that the object of the game is to have your character navigate across the board, get to the master vampire “Drakus” and kill him before he gets away in his ship. Along the way you may have to do battle with all many of ghosts and goblins (in a similar vein to the classic Dungeons and Dragons style, by way of rolled dice) and collect the necessary tools to kill the vampire.

The fold out game board has a plastic tower placed in the middle of the board with some cardboard appendages along the side for detail. The real gimmick of the game and about the only thing that makes it noteworthy is that the tower contains a light up function. Once turned on, it will shine either blue or red, to represent night and day respectively. The light is changed by simply pushing down on the top of the tower.

This comes into play because depending on what time of day it is (determined by a playing card), the game play can be altered. Parts of the board actually show a different image under each color light. For instance, in the pictures below, if you land on the square in the middle during the “day”, there is a harmless fog there. But land in the same spot at night and you must do battle with a lesser vampire!

The game includes 4 character pieces as well as the vampire’s ship. Each piece is plain white plastic, but I suppose you could paint them up if you wanted to get fancy with it.

I can’t say that I expect anyone here at CollectionDX to run right out and buy this. But if you have kids or tend to find yourself babysitting from time to time, it’s a neat game to have around the house, especially around this time of year. Kids will dig playing this and it’s especially great for keeping otherwise fidgety kids occupied should your house lose power. Since the light tower is run on batteries, you don’t need to have your electricity working to play. In fact, it’s better if you don’t.

Now bring the hate! 🙂