Scooby Doo! Betrayal at Mystery Mansion Review

Now, Betrayal at Mystery Mansion may seem familiar, since this is in essence, a Scooby-Doo themed version of Betrayal at House on the Hill, with many features of the latter being reworked or streamlined for younger or newer players. For the uninitiated, the Betrayal series involves playing as a character with variable stats, and generating the game board in real time through gameplay. Eventually, by discovering omens, or in this case “clues,” the Haunt phase will start and one of your players will be the bad guy for the rest of the play session. Then it becomes a race to see who accomplishes their goal first! Goals for both the monster and the gang will vary based on which Haunt is generated, so thanks to this and the dynamically generated game map, no two play sessions will ever be the same!

Betrayal at Mystery Mansion takes care to simplify some of the more complex mechanics of its ancestor game, with the goal of increasing player comfort and player options. For example, when the haunt starts, players can choose anyone to be the monster rather than it needing to be the one who started the haunt. Likewise, both sides can learn the haunt mechanics the original way, separately, or together depending on how difficult they wish the challenge to be. Players who run out of trait points, rather than being removed from the game, are instead stunned, and lose a turn. You have more freedom with how you incur damage, being able to spread it across multiple traits if desired. Also, Scooby snacks allow you to re-roll undesirable dice results. There are many more small changes which all make the experience more friendly to casual players, and coupled with the Scooby Doo theming, give this game a very wholesome vibe, in contrast to the macabre darkness of classic Betrayal. Everything from the game pieces, to the card descriptions, and even the rule book have that good ol’ Scooby Doo charm. Even the various Haunts are based on real episodes of the original show!