Scooby-Doo! Betrayal at Mystery Mansion takes the successful framework and applies a Scooby Doo theme (which it does amazingly well) adds a few modifications to make the game work better with a families and kids.
Betrayal at Mystery Mansion will play up to five players, taking on the roles of Fred, Velma, Daphne, Shaggy, and Scooby. Each character has values in Might, Courage, Brains, and Speed, plus a special ability – Fred comes prepared with an Item, Daphne gets extra Scooby snacks, Velma gets benefits on Brains rolls, etc. When the characters attempt a task, they roll a number of custom dice equal to their appropriate attribute (each side shows 1 success, 2 successes, or blank), with the number of successes translating to an outcome either good or bad for you.
Part 1 of the game sees the scooby gang exploring Inside and Outside the mansion (the outside part is a newer addition to the series) You will be adding more rooms and more pathways out from the starting point which is the Entrance Hall and Mystery Machine tiles. As you are flipping tiles, some locations will have an event, some will have Items and some will have clues. Most clues provide a permanent benefit, but more importantly, a haunt roll is made every time a clue is found. Somewhere between the third clue and the ninth, this roll will trigger the haunt! I’ll talk more about the haunt later on in this review.
Once the haunt begins, one of the players is chosen as the “monster” (This is done different then the original game here, so if you are playing with kids, this allows the option of always having a parent play the monster so the kids keep playing one of the Scooby Gang). The players then consult one of two books – Secrets of Survival and the Monster’s Tome. Betrayal has this been done separate, so much the traitor leaves the room, This is done so there might be secrets kept from one side or the other), Betrayal at Mystery Mansion allows both to be examined together, everything can be done out in the open, so both sides know what they are trying to do win the game from this point on. The former character for the monster player will disappear ala an episode of Scooby Doo, you might fall in a trap door, you might get locked in the closet. You (the player) are never turning traitor on your other players, as the Scooby Doo would never do this to each other.
There are a total of 25 haunts you might play through, these are based upon classic episodes of Scooby Doo. The monster tome will tell you what you need to do and how to set up the board, you will use many tokens you will find in the box.
The Components
The cardboard is good heavy stock, the standees are well-made and heavy cardboard, the dice of good quality, the only part that I have to nitpick about here, is the same as the other version of the game, the clips you use on your player aide, to slide around to show your stats tear up the cardboard, this has always been the case, I wish they would come up with a better solution here.
The artwork is straight of the cartoon, and the theme is spot on throughout the game.
Betrayal at Mystery Mansion does a wonderful job of transforming Betrayal at House on the Hill into a game that captures the spirit of the original while keeping it family-friendly and being interesting to kids. The game is also shorter, the haunts tend to be more goofy than scary (Ala the Scooby Doo cartoon), none of the Mystery Inc. gang actually turns traitor, and the haunts are only semi-random (there are 25 haunts, but you choose a complexity level at the start and you’ll get randomly get one of the 5 haunts associated with that). How the haunt starts is my biggest problem with the game. When you find a clue, you have to roll to see if the haunt starts you start doing this on turn 3 up to turn 9, where the haunt will start no matter what. The times I played for this review, the hunt started on turn 3 every time, and the tiles that were needed had all already been placed and was very close to the end objective tiles. Yes, I realize this was a random chance, but there really needs to be a better way for this. This made the game less fun, as the players did not really stand a chance as the Monster had an advantage.
Whether you have played Betrayal at House on the Hill before, Betrayal at Mystery Manor will appeal to families and kids. If you are a Scooby fan you will be in 7th heaven with this one, as it sticks to the theme and it does it well.
You can find Scooby-Doo! Betrayal at Mystery Mansion in at Walmart, your FLGS or Amazon.
Scooby-Doo! Betrayal at Mystery Mansion was provided to us by Avalon Hill for this review, this had no outcome on the review in any way.
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