“A very creepy, sneaky guess-who game”
Published by Milton Bradley in 1985, Ghosts! was a strategy game that combined glow-in-the-dark effects with the supernatural.
Two players went head-to-head to navigate one of their “good” ghosts out of the dungeon or capture all four of their opponents’ friendly apparitions.
GAMEPLAY
Each player controlled a cadre of eight ghost pawns – four “good” and four “evil.” Coloured dots placed on the back of each pawn indicated if they were good-spirited (blue) or evil-spirited (yellow). The game board was a dungeon of 36 rooms, each representing a game space.
At the start of the game, each player placed their pawns in any order in the two front rows on their side of the gameboard, one ghost per space. Each was positioned to hide the coloured dots from the opponent.
With each turn, players made chess or checker-like moves, moving a single pawn forward, backward, or sideways to an adjacent unoccupied space or to one occupied by an opposing ghost.
When two ghosts occupied the same space, a capture situation occurred. The player capturing the ghost reviewed the ghost’s identity. Capturing all four of an opponent’s good ghosts was a path to winning the game, while inadvertently capturing all four of an opponent’s evil ghosts resulted in a loss.
In addition to a hunting and capture strategy, a player could also win by successfully navigating one of their “good” pawns through one of the two exit door corner spaces on their opponent’s side of the board.
In an interesting twist, Milton Bradley made all of the pawns glow-in-the-dark, so sessions of Ghost! could be played in low-light conditions.
IN THE BOX
A complete game included a gameboard and 16 plastic ghost pawns adorned with coloured dots. Printed instructions were included in the box.
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