Ghost Fighin’ Treasure Hunters is a family friendly co-op game with simple roll and move mechanics that still manages to be engaging. In Ghost Fightin’ Treasure Hunters you play as kids going into a haunted house, fighting ghosts and taking gems.
In the advanced game, which is the only way I’ll play, the gems need to be taken out of the house in numerical order. This increases the difficulty of the game considerably. On their turn the player rolls the die, this determines how far they can move and whether or not they draw a ghost card.
The ghost cards will generally spawn new ghosts on the board, but they can also lock doors, limiting the movement of the treasure hunters. There are also escalation cards which cause multiple spawns to happen, as well shuffling the deck, which reopens any locked doors.
Once the card has been resolve the player can move upto the rolled value. If they end their turn in a room with a ghost they can fight, rolling to cause damage. If they have another treasure hunter with them they get an extra die and can defeat up to 2 ghosts or even a Haunting.
Finally if there is a gem in the space they can reveal it and choose whether or not to collect it. Each treasure hunter can only carry one gem and once you are carrying a gem you can no longer move through Hauntings.
Hauntings happen when 3 ghosts share the same room. These big ghosts can only be defeated by two treasure hunters and if all six Hauntings are ever on the board simultaneously, all the players lose.
Ghost Fightin’ Treasure hunters then is a simple game, but one that encourages cooperation and prioritisation of controlling the ghost population or getting the gems out. The roll and move mechanism, combined with locking doors and the haunting mechanism can cause you to have some less than stellar turns, but the lightness and the length of the game make up for quite a few of its other sins.
Overall I like Ghost Fightin’ Treasure Hunters, I wouldn’t play it with other adults, but for twenty minutes of family fun this one does a good job and with the advanced mode it is tough enough to actually offer some challenge. Also the mechanism it teaches are a great foundation and stepping stone other co-op games like Forbidden Island or the Pandemic Series.
On the second day of Christmas, Santa gave to me two spooky ghosts...