Intent: Share some Halloween costumes, inspire you to try board games, and create costumes from board games!

We all know COVID-19 has impacted Halloween this year, but what a great opportunity it is to get a small group of friends together (safely), dress up and play some board games.

Tylor and I love Halloween! Like board games, Halloween really pushes us to take ourselves a little less seriously and embrace and become the characters we love. (Some of our past costumes include: Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy, and Wreck-It Ralph and Fix-It Felix.) Dressing up and cosplay is wonderful and we hope to one day attend conventions and partake in all the creativity the community has to offer. Who knows maybe sooner than later in the digital space as well?

We were brainstorming what we want to do for you folks for Halloween this year, when it hit us, board game inspired costumes! You may be a board game fanatic that needs some inspiration, or maybe you’re just getting into board games and need a little introduction to a few that could enhance your Halloween experience, well either way, you’ve come to the right place.

We decided to take five games and create inspired costumes out of them. These are easy to put together and pretty simple ideas that you too can produce. Don’t forget to impress your friends with a new game during Halloween this year! Hope you enjoy our costumes.

Quacks of Quedlinburg

Designer: Wolfgang Warsch

Artist: Dennis Lohausen and Wolfgang Warsch

Publisher: North Star Games

Player Count: 2-4 players

Length: 45 minutes

Overview: In Quacks of Quedlinburg, you will compete as a miracle doctor or quack surgeon to present the best potion over a nine day festival! As you may have already guessed, this game is played over nine rounds. You will have a bag filled with ingredients, which you will increase in variety and quantity over the course of the game. At the same time as other players, you will draw ingredients one by one putting them into your cauldron. You may stop drawing at any time and must be careful as if you draw more than seven white chips your cauldron will explode, which will harm your scoring in the end of the round. At the end of each round based on how rich your potion is, you’re are able to purchase more ingredients (each with their own flavor and ability), move on the victory track, get bonuses, acquire rubies and get the local town rat to help you out! The bag of ingredients will grow, meaning less explosive white chips and more probability of brewing that ideal potion everyone is after! After nine rounds, the person who is the farthest on the victory track claims victory as the new renowned Quack of Quedlinburg. This game is easy to learn and enjoyed by many, great way to introduce individuals to the concepts of drafting and bag building. Will your potion be the one they’re looking for?

Costume Ideas: Quacks of Quedlinburg features charlatans and quack doctors, which you can dress up as to stir your cauldron and create your ideal brew. Be careful, the wrong ingredients could cause an explosion!

Arboretum

Designer: Dan Cassar

Artist: Philippe Guérin, Chris Quilliams, Beth Sobel and Waldo Ramirez

Publisher: Renegade Game Studios

Player Count: 2-4 players

Length: 30 minutes

Overview: In Arboretum(which refers to a botanical garden devoted to trees), your goal is to build the best arboretum by placing cards in front of you and outsmarting your opponents by strategically thinking ahead. The game starts off with seven cards being dealt to each player. On each player’s turn they will do the following in order, draw two cards, play a card into their arboretum, and discard a card. The twist is how the cards are scored, as not only do you need to build ascending paths, (which start and end in the same suit,) you also need to ensure you still have that suit in your hand and have the most combined total to even be eligible for scoring. It’s a beautifully illustrated game. Easy to play but tough to master as you always want to pay attention to what your opponents are doing, while maintaining your own strategy. Will your arboretum thrive or just be a bunch of trees aimlessly hanging out?

Costume Ideas: As Arboretum features ten different trees, you can embody as many and as little of them as possible. What do you get when you cross a Royal Poinciana and a Maple? Two types of trees.

Burgle Bros.

Designer: Tim Fowers

Artist: Virginia Critchfield, Ryan Goldsberry, and Heiko Günther

Publisher: Fowers Games

Player Count: 1-4 players

Length: 45-90 minutes

Overview: In Burgle Bros, you will work as a team to pull off the heist of a century in a highly secure three story building. You and your team will be evading guards, while searching for and cracking safes. You’ll have to think strategically and practice caution as setting off too many alarms may cause you to lose stealth and get caught. A really neat aspect of this game is that while you’re trying to crack the safe, your heist partner could be on another floor trying to trick the guard and search for the exit. Multitasking is key to victory! You’ll need to know when to take risks or when to play it safe. You will have to be prepared for anything as unfortunately you don’t have blueprints of the building and will have to go in blind. Will you succeed in the heist or will you get caught red-handed?

Costume Ideas: Burgle Bros features nine distinct characters, dress up as any of them but don’t commit any burglaries!

Viticulture (Essential Edition)

Designer: Jamey Stegmaier, Alan Stone, and Morten Monrad Pederson

Artist: Beth Sobel, Jacqui Davis, and David Montgomery

Publisher: Stonemaier Games

Player Count: 1-6 players

Length: 45-90 minutes

Overview: In Viticulture, your goal is to be the most renowned and successful vineyard owner by being the first to score twenty points! Each player inherited a vineyard, it’s definitely a bit run down but it certainly does the job. Your role is to enhance the production, grow your business and drive new visitors to enjoy your beautiful vineyard, while remembering to harvest grapes, produce wine and fulfill orders to obtain points. Viticulture is a worker-placement game, which means you will have workers, which you will place on a space to do an action or gain a benefit. You will have to think strategically to figure out how to best place your workers to obtain the most benefits and be the first to cross the finish line at twenty points. This game offers a varied gameplay each time, with different paths to victory and intriguing player interaction. No matter how you do, this game will have you feeling grape!

Costume Ideas: In the land of Viticulture there are many visitors that come across your hard-worked fields searching for specific wine suited to their tastes. Not only can you dress as those visitors, you can be the wine and grapes as well!

Mysterium Park

Designer: Oleksandr Nevskiy and Oleg Sidorenko

Artist: Xavier Collette and M81 Studio

Publisher: Libellud

Player Count: 2-6 players

Length: 30-45 minutes

Overview: In Mysterium Park, one player will take the role of a ghost of the former director who recently went missing. The rest of the team will be psychics, communicating with the ghost to find out what really happened in Mysterium Park. The psychics are initially presented with suspects, and must use their supernatural abilities to communicate with the ghost, obtaining illustrated visions and narrowing down the murder suspects to three. The game then proceeds to the second round, in which the suspects must narrow down the locations where the murder took place. If the psychics are successful in narrowing down both the suspects and locations in under six nights (rounds), they have the opportunity to communicate with the ghost one more time and receive one last vision to figure out who indeed committed the murder and where. This game is neat as the ghost can only communicate in illustrated cards, hoping to sway individuals to specific clues in order to succeed. Will your ghost direct you to the truth, or will the visions be too obscure for your psychics to understand?

Costume Ideas: Mysterium Park has twenty distinct characters, each with a suspicious vibe. Which one will you be?

Quick Tips for a Board Game Costume

• Lost for an idea? Grab any game from your shelf and the creativity will just flow!

• Board games often have many characters and elements that can be utilized as a costume. You can be a range of pieces from main characters to dressing up as a token! Who doesn’t love being a meeple or a dice?!

• Group costumes are where board games shine! Dress up as all of the factions of Scythe? An Architect, Paladin and Viscount of the West Kingdom? Various Killer Bunnies? The possibilities are endless.

• Don’t be afraid to go abstract, you can be a board game table, a board, that obscure component that draws attention each time you pull out a game. “Yes, I am indeed the Master Quilter from Calico.”

• Don’t forget to use this opportunity to share the love of games with your friends, it is an easy opportunity to catch someone’s eye and introduce them to board games.

What will you be for Halloween? Share with us on any of our social media and remember to tag us or use the hashtag kovray.