‘The Curse of Misfortune Lane’ Is Spooky, Tabletop Comfort Food

If your game closet is missing a family-friendly staple, and you’re looking for something spooky to bust out on Friday nights with your kids (or with your friends over a few cold ones), the folks at Howling Hog Games have just the thing: The Curse of Misfortune Lane is an asymmetrical “kids vs. monster” card game that encourages you to brave the odds to stack up on powerful weapons, and defeat a terrifying monster. The Kickstarter is live right now, and it’s already blown past the 50% funding milestone days in.

“Every Friday the 13th, an ancient curse unleashes a horrible monster on the helpless citizens of Misfortune Lane. The adults hide indoors clutching lucky trinkets while their weapons gather dust. This year their kids have decided to end this dreadful cycle once and for all.”

Here’s the quick version. Some players will play as kids, each with their own unique abilities and buffs, and one player will choose to play as a werewolf, a vampire, or a zombie. As a kid, your objective is to explore the town around you and find weapons to defeat the monster. While investigating a location you may stumble across some holy water, which deals damage to Vampires, or maybe you’ll find a blunderbuss, which is great at taking down werewolves. Any item that brings you luck will be useful.

Another key objective in your investigation is to try to determine exactly which monster you’re hunting.

As a monster, you have two jobs. You have your own cards that you can place at various locations that will thwart the kids by draining their luck or taking cards out of their inventory, and you’re also trying to throw them off the scent, deceiving them into preparing to fight a different monster (thus increasing your chance of survival).

There are obviously nuances and complexities that we can’t cover in an overview article like this, but you can check out a more thorough breakdown on the actual Kickstarter page. If you’re interested, you can also play the game on Tabletop Simulator on Steam. You can find the workshop page here.

It’s an easy ask. For 24 bucks you can snag a wholly-original and beautifully-designed asymmetrical card game that gives off a warm and fuzzy throwback vibe. This game looks the way we remember Halloween feeling as kids. It’s tabletop comfort food, and we’re eager to get it on our shelves soon.