Customer Reviews

Gloom: Unhappy Homes

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Gloom is fantastic, but this expansion is only so-so. The idea of residences is interesting, but in rules terms, they're simply family members who can't die, which makes them a lot less dynamic than the other cards. The mystery cards that you are supposed to play on them often require three icons and a laundry list of other conditions in order to get them into play, so that we often found them impossible to place. Nine times out of ten, we simply discarded mystery cards to get cards that were more useful and easier to place. The benefits mysteries offered were often out of proportion to the difficulty in placing them. Many have benefits that are all but useless or require that you fulfill another laundry list of conditions to take advantage of. As a result, we found residences often had almost no effect on play.

Still, residences and mysteries are the smallest part of the expansion. The rest of the cards are new modifiers, events, and untimely deaths that add welcome variety to the game. The expansion is well worth it, but not because of the residence mechanic.

Gloom is an amazing game. Very good for a intellectual activity with that certain special nerdy girl you may like. Great also for groups of gamers for a nice relaxing party atmosphere card game. It requires a bit of imagination to really appreciate it. If you have a brain and a quirky sense of humor and you like games. Get Gloom!

I bought Gloom as a pass-time while not in scenes when playing LARP (I played a Giovanni PC). Unhappy Homes for sure was a wonderful find and I was disappointed to find out that there are no other expansion packs (sniffle). On the other hand tools have been made available via the producers home page to create custom cards! NOTE, unless you know of a way to produce the cards like the manufacturer...plan on only getting a nice digital representation of the card you create. Hopefully there'll someday be a service that will produce the cards for us. Nonetheless, don't think - just buy this expansion set; your deck will be incomplete without it.

This is a great game with a unique mechanic based on the clear card stock used.

Though this game can be played with kids, it is a lot more fun when you can get right down and dirty in the gore factor with adults. :)