We all love horror movies, that's never in doubt, but there are so many other facets to the world of horror that never get explored. Our shared love for Halloween, costume parties, haunted houses, it all shows a desire to live out horror off of the silver screen, and in the real world... in a controlled setting, of course. Many fans of horror seek new and different ways to express their love of the genre, be it through body art, or maybe a vampire convention; for many, just watching isn't enough. We want a more interactive activity.

Tried any good board games lately?

Yes, one of the staple activities of the 70's family, that remnant of the Nuclear Age, was family board game night (or so the commercials would lead me to believe). But over the years, with TV gaining in popularity, and family interaction fading away to nonexistence, board games have fallen almost exclusively into the hands of nerds who grew up obsessing over bouts of Risk, and have become an elegant, varied, often complex art form. With so many varieties of games bleeding out there into the geek clique markets, it seemed inevitable that the horror niche eventually find a few games to sate their appetite.

So, if you and your friends ever want an evening trying to live out a horror movie, but don't want to go about drawing straws to see who gets to murder the others with a chainsaw, here a few ways to go about it:

My first personal experience with horror gaming came in '91, when the Australian company, Couple 'A Cowboys released this little gem. Atmosfear, known as Nightmare in some countries, was an interactive game that was packaged with a VHS. As you'd play the game the VHS tape would keep track of the time, the game taking about an hour. At regular intervals, The Gatekeeper, a guy who looks a bit like Emperor Palpatine, would come on, declare you all to be maggots, and give some new instruction that usually shat on whichever player had the dice in his hand at the moment.

The game revolves around the idea that the players are trapped in a nebulous void of fear, trying to escape, and the Gatekeeper will only let one leave. He does so enjoy fucking with you. So you travel the board, collecting keys, and eventually transforming into a monster yourself, vampire, werewolf, pumpkinhead thing, or what have you, and trying to make it into the center of the board. Even if you made it, its possible that your personal fear, written by all players on slips of paper at the games' start, might repel you from victory.

The game has been reprinted on DVD recently, but I prefer the VHS version. The production values, despite the addition of CG, really still looks just as good on the old ones, and the game's first edition was more creative. One cool feature of the original was that anyone who failed to pick up a monster transformation early in the game became a 'Soul Ranger' (skeleton on motorcycle) instead, and had a different path they had to follow, representing the sewers underneath the other players. Newer versions are easier to play, but maybe a little oversimplified.

This game was developed twice, once in 1987, and again in 2006. Though not the first horror board game, its still one of the earliest, and probably the oldest that still sees any real play. It follows the events of the Bram Stoker novel, and much like the novel it will appeal to people who like a bit of tedium, a bit of slow boiling tension, and a very sudden, short, climactic battle.

I love the game, personally, for its attempt to become a real vampire simulator. The game pits a group of players, representing Van Helsing, Mina, etc. hunting down another player in the role of Dracula. Dracula, having to fend off four other players, is a bad ass. The game takes place in the time following the death of Lucy, when Dracula is on the run through Europe, trying to get back to his native soil, and waiting for Mina to turn into his fiendish concubine (Mina starts the game with a vampire bite, and is really easy to turn against the other players). The four humans try to guess Dracula's location, cut him off from his castle, and destroy him.

The trick to playing the game is timing. The Dracula player travels the board unseen, his location being laid via a series of face-down cards, while the others try to guess his location, picking up clue cards to reveal the vampire's whereabouts. Once they discover his location, they can charge to the attack, but all the while, the sun continues to rise and set, moving across the skyline with each passing turn. If the attack is pressed on a turn when the sun goes down, Dracula gets a hand full of Vampire badassery cards that let him turn into wolves and bats, hit harder, move faster, and generally rape anyone who comes at him.

For added effect, let the player who does the best Gary Oldman Dracula voice play as the Count.

Now here is a winner, one of the favorite horror board games of just about every gamer I know.

Players assume one of 8 horror movie cliché characters, trapped together in an old mansion on a stormy night. At first, the only room is the house's main entryway. As players move through the house, you build it, piece by piece, revealing rooms at random. You never know how the house is going to look, so exploration really is key. As you explore, certain rooms will pop up, giving the house its theme; sometimes you get the mad scientist tokens, sometimes cultists. And, eventually, someone always finds the Necronomicon, or something similar. This is where the real fun begins.

Betrayal comes with a little booklet of 50 horror scenarios, ranging anywhere from Vampires to fire bats from Hell to Cthulhu cults. Depending on what major horror item is found, by who, and in what room, a particular scenario comes out of the book. The player who found the object then becomes the betrayer. He, in secret, reads what kind of creature he has become, and how he can use his new powers to destroy the other players. The human players, in turn, get to read a secret passage describing the weakness of this monster.

The game's one weakness is that its a bit lopsided. The monster is either really weak or incredibly strong. But the game is still a blast for the fun of exploring an old monster-movie mansion, and for the paranoia it builds, with no player being able to tell who they can trust until its too late. A new edition is scheduled for the Fall of 2010, and promises to look and play even better than before.

For added effect, let the player who does the best Gary Oldman Dracula voice play as the Count.

Now here is a winner, one of the favorite horror board games of just about every gamer I know.

While its not one of my favorites, I don't think I can write this article without at least mentioning long-time fan favorite, Zombies. Since this game has come out, there have been quite a few other zombie-based board games; Mall of Horror is a Dawn of the Dead mock-up, and Last Night on Earth is probably the most impressive, with amazing art and lots of different scenarios. But, time and again, people are drawn the simple joys of Zombies.

Players start as gun wielding civilians in the middle of a town fraught with the undead. Somewhere in town, and you don't know where until the later stages of the game, lies a military helipad with the only helicopter left in town, your one means of escape. Players don't work together in this one, you're all after that chopper, and for whatever reason there's only enough room for one of you. Maybe the helicopter is already full of scantily clad nurses and a supply of Del Tacos, whatever. Either way, your goal is to kill as many zombies as you can while getting to that heli-pad, and use your fellow players as bait, impeding them from taking your taco-copter.

Though it lacks in design quality of newer zombie games, and can sometimes take a long, long time to play (oh God, the zombies never stop coming!), the easy, competitive gameplay can be picked up by anybody instantly, and it remains the most popular of all zombie games. Added bonus, for an extra $10, you can get glow-in-the-dark zombie figures to populate your city.

One day, a friend and I set out on a quest to find the most over-produced board game of all time. We wanted as many cards, tokens, fiddly-bits, and doo-dads as we could possibly fit on a board. We found one of my favorite games, Arkham Horror, the one with a bazillion tiny decks of cards.

Arkham is based on the works of HP Lovecraft, which makes it a winner for me anyway. It combines elements from all of his stories, and quite a few of the expanded Mythos writings of his contemporaries like Derlith and and Bloch. Players form a team of investigators, from a very wide variety of choices, and work to stop the cults and monsters that roam the streets by collecting clues, traveling through portals to other worlds, and generally being attacked by lunatics and strange magic at every turn. Failure means the return of the Great Old Ones to the Earth, and a climactic, often terribly one-sided, battle.

Two great strengths of Arkham are the fact that with different evil Gods to fight, different investigators, and randomly generated encounters and monsters, the game is never the same twice. Most important is the teamwork aspect, as none of the players are working to win the game for themselves, everyone has to work together to fight against the board. There are no points, either you save the world, or you inadvertently doom it. A Sunday night around the dinner table doesn't get much more epic than that.

For people who are really into complex gaming, there are expansions that add-on the cities of Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport, along with the new rules and horrors those would suggest. Hey look! Your character just became a fish man! Damn your cursed heredity!

There's a whole other world of horror-based games out there, now. These are a few of the essentials, but we've only scratched the surface. Horror continues to grow as a genre, and as it does, new ways to express our love of vampires, zombies, and ax murderers will continue to surface. But if you're with a group of horror loving friends, and are looking for something to do other than group around the TV one more time, here's your answer.

Gather at the dinner table, dim the lights, put on a little atmospheric music, and prepare to battle the undead... or maybe even become one.