Ghosts Love Candy Too

Did you know that ghosts love candy (sweets for us British readers) as much as we do? And during Halloween when all the kids are out trick or treating the ghosts are planning their own scary tricks to get the kids treats.

That is the premise for this follow up game Ghosts Love Candy Too (original was Ghosts Love Candy) from one of my favourite designers Danny Devine (Kohaku, Harvest Dice, Sprawlopolis) and publisher 25th Century Games. The question is does this game bring the delicious treats or rotten eggs? Read on to find out.

BOO!

Like the best treats this game is full of surprises. Firstly you are getting a high quality product for a very low price. Included in the gorgeously illustrated box are one hundred kid cards (tarot size) with the kids all dressed in brilliant and recognisable fancy dress (Plumber Bros, Space Wars Fan, Einstein, Student Wizard are just a few of my favourite examples). You also get six craving cards, seventy two ghost cards, seventy six treat tokens and an awesome pumpkin draw bag.

The artwork on everything included in the game is outstanding with only a couple of the treats being a little disappointing (the liquorice and chocolate colours blend into the token background and are a little boring compared to the rest).

Secondly there is a lot more to this game than you would initially expect and this is due to the fact that every one of the one hundred kids play differently therefore no two games will ever play the same.

Gimme, Gimme, Gimme A  Sweet After Midnight

Set up is straight forward and quick and the rule book clarifies player counts easily. Once you have set up there should be a street of kids each with a candy above them (and sometimes junk as well). Then all players will draw an amount of treats from the bag and keep some and then discard the rest. Finally all players will take a set of ghost cards, which are easily identifiable by their colour and picture, and a craving card which provides unique scoring for all of the candies (meaning that everyone will be aiming to collect the same candies but they will score differently for each player therefore candy corn might score four points for me but only two for you).

This is a simultaneous card selection game with the highest number going first then proceeding in descending order (ties are broken by a reveal of the next kids cards and the player with the highest number in the bottom left corner goes first). All players have ghosts with values of one through to nine and they select one card and place it face down in front of them. Then all players reveal their cards at the same time. This ghost number is important for one other factor as it represents the haunt value you will give to the kids but more on that later.

Once turn order has been decided the first player chooses a kid and places their ghost below them. They then take any treats that are sitting above the kid (including any junk) and then resolve that kids ability. This is where the game shines as every kid has clever and unique abilities that break the normal rules of the game.

Some of the kids abilities are an immediate reaction to being haunted such as taking treats from another kid in the neighbourhood or swapping treats between kids or even making the player with the most treats give one to the player with the fewest.

Other abilities are related to the end of the game depending if they are in a players stash (more about that later) or in the neighbourhood such as the Dinosaur who moves to the last player who haunted him at the end of the game (if he is still in the neighbourhood).

Then there are ongoing abilities like the Student Wizard that causes any kid that is scared too much to be put in a discard pile rather than a players stash. Or the Raccoon that causes all players to add treats to the Raccoon’s pile (from their own stash) if she is still in the neighbourhood at the end of the round.

With one hundred kids in the game all with unique abilities there are some real opportunities for some great ‘com-boos’.

Won’t Somebody Help Me (To Not) Chase Those Kids Away

After you have played a ghost, taken the treats and resolved the kids abilities (if applicable) you then need to check to make sure you haven’t haunted them beyond their courage level (the large number in the middle left of the card). If you haven’t then you just leave your ghost card below the kid and the next player takes their turn.

However if the total haunt number for all of the ghosts below a kid pushes them above their courage then that kid becomes scared and leaves the street and is added to the stash of the player who haunted them last. Then all ghosts below the scared kid are discarded (as well as any untaken treats above the kid). You then replace the scared kid with a new one from the draw pile. Finally check to make sure no other kids are scared then your turn ends.

A lot of the kids in the game will provide negative points in your stash and you will want to avoid scaring them. However a few of the kids will provide positive points or will enable you to move other scared kids out of your stash so sometimes there will be competition to be the first ghost to scare a kid.

Players will continue to haunt kids in descending order until everyone has had their turn at which point new treats will be added to every kid (if the new treat is junk you add another treat until candy is added). Then new ghosts are chosen and the game continues like this until all of the ghosts have been used (except in a five or six player game where you stop when players have three ghosts left in their hand).

Final scoring is calculated by using your craving card for each candy type, and then adding points for your full size bars and deducting points for your junk. Finally you add / deduct points for any kids in your stash. Ties are broken by the player who has the most five point candies.

Ghosting For Two

The game has several difficulty modifiers as well as a two player variant which is great. When playing with only two players you take two sets of ghosts each and will use one ghost from each set every round. This means you will be collecting candy from two kids every round in the correct descending order which could lead you to have two goes in a row.

There is an Easier Game mode as well as a Super Kid Friendly mode, both of which means this game sits comfortably in the family section of your collection.

A Couple Of Boo-Boos

There is one kid card in the game called Bird Kid whose ability is shown as green (ongoing) but it should be blue (immediate on haunting). Also the easier game and super kid friendly modes both say to remove the full size bars from the game. This should be ignored as it will cause the draw bag to become empty too quickly.

I Love Candy!

This is a brilliant simultaneous card selection game with endless possibilities due to the one hundred kid cards unique abilities. The artwork and graphic design is wonderfully playful and is even more impressive when you consider it was done by the games designer Danny Devine himself.

One word of warning is that there is quite a lot of text on each kid card and new kid cards will be coming out each round so all players will need to be positioned so that they can read the cards easily. Not a problem once you are used to the game but one that new players will have to overcome.

I can’t wait to teach this game to new people and watch their faces as they realise how much can be done in such a simple game. Even though it is targeted towards families I know there is a lot that any type of gamer will get from this game especially when the ‘com-boos’ start flying.

Just remember candy is good, toothpaste is bad.