I'm a huge fan of Betrayal at House on the Hill. It's one of my favorite games. Coma Ward does something similar. In some ways, it's an improvement. In some ways, not so much. I got in on the Kickstarter. The pieces are good, the map being two-sided is cool but unnecessary. The biggest problem and the reason I removed a star was the instruction manual and rules. A Kickstarter game will have flaws. That makes sense. The problem is there were some heavily overlooked rules explanations that made our game feel...impossible. Example: we had to shuffle the deck with the clues at one point. That put the third clue card near the bottom. After having plenty of things out to kill our characters and almost all of the rooms explored, we cheated the deck to make the phenomenon happen. By then, it was almost too late to do anything about it in the game as we'd been playing for a while.
There is an updated 1.5 version on BGG. I don't feel as if it addresses enough to fix the problems we had. It's still a very fun game and it will enter my rotation on a regular basis. This is totally worth picking up if you like games like Betrayal and want something a little different.
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You'd probably have more fun in an actual coma...
Don't be fooled by the cool synopsis and horror aesthetic. I was really excited to play this but it was one of the biggest let downs.There's an included sheet right off the bat that has rule corrections. If you like following rules, this game is a nightmare. Even with corrections the rules are ambiguous and confusing so be prepared to alter or individually interpret them. There is no immersion when you have to constantly re-read things, try to understand bad grammar, check the actual rule book and then the rule book correction page. It's obvious no one proof read before production, which is quite sad.The "monsters" are unimpressive tokens that all look the same but move and attack differently, per their corresponding cards. Good luck figuring out which one is which once they start moving and grouping up. Maybe the "horrifying doctor" would've been more horrifying if he didn't have a typo in his name at times and wasn't just a little scribbly token that looked like every other monster.The game tries to set ambiance but then you'll pull a card that has typos, grammar issues and/or doesn't fit the mood. (I.e. something scary and creepy happens but you resolve it and the card literally says "now that you've got your sh*t together...") Even the setting is confusing. You wake up from the coma ward and there's all kinds of regular hospital things there, but the hospital is named after the patron saint of mental disorders and harps on this constantly. It doesn't make for cohesive story telling.A lot of the game depends on luck. If your stats are already low, you can't even roll the correct amount of die to succeed. You just keep losing health since there's no way you can fight back until you eventually die.The most dissapointing thing is when the "phenomenon" happens. You find clues along the way (they don't say anything just "clue a, this looks important!). Once you trigger the phenomenon it explains everything that happened and what the clues are in detail. You don't even get a chance to put your own clues together. Surely there was a better way to implement story telling than that. I really don't understand why someone would be willing to put their name on this board game. There are games I don't like, but this one is an absolute disaster. There was a lot of thought and creativity put into the concept, unfortunately the same wasn't done for the production, proof reading or play testing.
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on March 12, 2019
- Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2020
Don't be fooled by the cool synopsis and horror aesthetic. I was really excited to play this but it was one of the biggest let downs.
You'd probably have more fun in an actual coma...
Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2020
There's an included sheet right off the bat that has rule corrections. If you like following rules, this game is a nightmare. Even with corrections the rules are ambiguous and confusing so be prepared to alter or individually interpret them. There is no immersion when you have to constantly re-read things, try to understand bad grammar, check the actual rule book and then the rule book correction page. It's obvious no one proof read before production, which is quite sad.
The "monsters" are unimpressive tokens that all look the same but move and attack differently, per their corresponding cards. Good luck figuring out which one is which once they start moving and grouping up. Maybe the "horrifying doctor" would've been more horrifying if he didn't have a typo in his name at times and wasn't just a little scribbly token that looked like every other monster.
The game tries to set ambiance but then you'll pull a card that has typos, grammar issues and/or doesn't fit the mood. (I.e. something scary and creepy happens but you resolve it and the card literally says "now that you've got your sh*t together...") Even the setting is confusing. You wake up from the coma ward and there's all kinds of regular hospital things there, but the hospital is named after the patron saint of mental disorders and harps on this constantly. It doesn't make for cohesive story telling.
A lot of the game depends on luck. If your stats are already low, you can't even roll the correct amount of die to succeed. You just keep losing health since there's no way you can fight back until you eventually die.
The most dissapointing thing is when the "phenomenon" happens. You find clues along the way (they don't say anything just "clue a, this looks important!). Once you trigger the phenomenon it explains everything that happened and what the clues are in detail. You don't even get a chance to put your own clues together. Surely there was a better way to implement story telling than that.
I really don't understand why someone would be willing to put their name on this board game. There are games I don't like, but this one is an absolute disaster. There was a lot of thought and creativity put into the concept, unfortunately the same wasn't done for the production, proof reading or play testing.
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