BOARD GAME REVIEW: SHADOW HUNTERS (2005)

Shadow Hunters is a weird game for me. I didn't really like it, but it took me awhile to pinpoint exactly why. When I did, it was so obvious that it took me awhile to accept that I didn't see it sooner. At its heart, Shadow Hunters is a dice chucking, social deduction game.

In Shadow Hunters, players are secretly assigned one of three factions and are either on the team of the Hunters, the Shadows or a Neutral (sort of like individuals). They then roll dice to move around a board, pick up random cards from there location, and then roll dice to attack. In amongst all this, players are trying to figure out who is on who's team to eliminate them for there team to win.

And that is my problem. There are so many elements of the game where the game feels like it is playing you, and not much way to gain more control. Your options are often to either attack or don't attack, A certain dice roll and 2 locations give you options of what to do, otherwise it is mandatory to play the card you draw. And you can reveal your character to activate your power.

So this ends up being a social deduction game where the main thing clouding peoples judgement is random chance. Other games have things such as alternate objectives (i.e. Dead of Winter) or potentially choosing from bad choices after trying to help (Battlestar, Dark Moon), but this feels much more random. This effectively just makes the start of the game extremely slow as people draw random cards to help determine who the opposing player is.

Add to this that it is effectively a dice chucker, with some hilarious final encounters sometimes when 2 players can't seem to land in the same location, with extremely swingy combat, and the fighting misses (when you get around to it). The game definitely gets too long for what it is. Especially with more than 5 players and the lack of player agency here.

Overall, Shadow Hunters is a good concept. However, it is let down by substituting a good set of rules for what is effectively role and move. The luck based combat that can be extremely swingy and the social deduction just serves to draw the game out. It is extremely dependent on luck to even achieve any agency by the end of the game. Overall, it is just alright but definitely prefer allot of other games.

2 out of 5 Shadow Stepping Waffles