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Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate, the spiritual successor to the classic Avalon Hill horror game Betrayal at House on the Hill, will arrive just in time for Halloween. Wizards of the Coast was kind enough to provide Polygon with an early look at the game, and we’re excited to get it on the table.
True to the format of the original, Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate begins as a cooperative game. Three to six adventurers will take their time exploring the city of Baldur’s Gate by connecting locations from a random set of tiles. Then, around halfway through the game, one member of the party will become the traitor and the turn — called a haunt — will be revealed. From there on out, it’s a competitive game with one super-powered player trying to destroy the others.
Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate comes with 50 different haunts, each of them with its own ruleset and victory conditions for both sides. That’s a lot of content for one $50 board game. Here’s a sneak preview of some of the cards in the box.
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This isn’t the first time that Avalon Hill has iterated on the classic Betrayal formula. Last year they released Widow’s Walk, an expansion to the original Betrayal at House on the Hill with 50 new haunts, along with a new floor of the house to explore. The haunts were crafted by a laundry list of guest designers, including Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward; Cards Against Humanity’s Max Temkin and Eli Halpern; Depression Quest designer and Crash Override Network co-founder Zoë Quinn; tabletop veterans Rob Daviau, Chris Dupuis, and Keith Baker; and Feminist Frequency’s Anita Sarkeesian.
From what we’ve seen, Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate is a must-play for fans of Dungeons & Dragons. More so than any previous tabletop spin-off of the famous role-playing franchise, the game is absolutely dripping with in-jokes and famous ephemera. We’ll have a full review next month.