I just had the chance to watch The Last Lovecraft: The Relic of Cthulhu and I was impressed! For an independent film (one that has also won a couple of awards, I might add) this is an awesome film. What’s it about you ask?

Well, there is a story to be told here and quite honestly, the reason why this is a mini-review is because I really don’t want to spoil it for you. I feel this is the type of film you have to discover… laugh out loud… groan… And realize the costuming is just that much better than Mighty Morphin Power Rangers or The Keep.

Part of what makes this movie strong is the characterization and the nerdly discussions, but there are some other surprises hidden between the script’s pages.

This preview and the images were provided with permission from the publisher as part of FlamesRising.com’s continuing coverage of Steve Jackson Games Week. Today, you’ll find images of upcoming Munchkin Games including Munchkin: Axe Cop, Munchkin Zombies 2, Munchin: Conan and a few other Cthulhu-related treats.

From Steve Jackson Games to our dice bags, there will be an attractive plethora of custom and jumbo die this Fall for Cthulhu Dice, Fairy Dust and Munchkin Jolly. One color in particular stood out in our minds. We regard it as watered down red, but you’ll probably look at it and go… Pink? Pink Cthulhu Dice? With SPARKLES? It’s almost as if they know we’ll lose sanity just by picking one of them up. Well, if that doesn’t cause you to go a little insane, the giant foam Cthulhu Dice (pictured above) probably will. Instead of marbles? Think Silly Bandz in the shape of Cthulhu. Oh. My.

Steve Jackson has dominated the games industry lately with a seemingly endless supply of Munchkin-related games, accessories and knick-knacks. Just to prove there’s more going on at Jackson Labs than Munchkin, Steve Jackson Games released Zombie Dice last year to great acclaim. That acclaim is well-earned: Zombie Dice is fast, fun and addictive, and it’s cheap to boot.

Zombie Dice includes 13 dice, instructions, and a dice shaker/storage container in the package. The instructions are very simple: you (as the zombie) roll three dice at a time, and pick them out of the cup without looking at them. If a brain logo comes up, hooray! – you’ve successfully eaten some brains; set those aside.

The crew of the exploration ship Znutar just wanted to cruise around the Galaxy, discovering strange new worlds and playing pool. But then their ship was invaded by the Awful Green Things . . . and suddenly they were fighting for their lives!

I recently had the chance to try this game. Amazingly, I had never even demoed the Awful Green Things From Outer Space before. I’d seen it sitting on the shelves of the local game store before and thought it looked like fun. Naturally, I played the role of the alien monsters the first time out, but both sides are just as fun in the end.

Before game play can begin, there’s a little set up involved in this primarily two-player (or two teams) game. First, the Znutar crew has to be placed into different locations on the ship. Then, players need to resolve the starting locations for the Awful Green Things, weapons, etc. Once you’ve played a few times, the set up will go fairly quickly. It took us about five or ten minutes to set up the game the first time we played.

“Lenore might only be small, but her talent for mischief — and occasional wanton destruction — is anything but. Witness the mayhem that ensues when Lenore and friends are attacked by a gaggle of vicious militant mice, and cower in the face of an assault by undead German soldiers from Hell! Never has the term ‘something for everyone’ seemed more sinister and bizarre.”

While I can honestly say that this style may not appeal to everyone, it sure does appeal to me. In my teens I recall watching cartoons like Invader Zim, Agh Real Monsters and even today catching an episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog. So a book like this just comes off to me as looking great.

Ah yes, here we go. So when I was at Wizard World Chicago, see previous blog article on said adventure, prior to going into the actual convention I met up with Matt, our very fair minded and –not to be a kiss up, but really, in to in fact be a kiss up-wonderful editor handed me a box, which he so apply and verbally labeled as a “Christmas Present.” I asked as we stood in the lobby of the hotel, whether or not “Johannes Cabal the Detective,” was in the box or not? To which, of course there was the obvious reply, yes. But the man wears sunglasses to obfuscate his eyes, which I believe hide his own supernatural abilities. Point being, I am scared of him, so I didn’t press the subject.

Last week, I was able to sit down with Steve Jackson from Steve Jackson Games and a group of playtesters at ACD Games Day to play a round of the upcoming Munchkin Zombies game.

Having played several flavors of Munchkin, I thought I knew what to expect when we started to play. I couldn’t have been more wrong. You see, I thought this game would be like Munchkin: Cthulhu, where you play humans that have the potential to turn into zombies. Boy, was I off-the-mark! In Munchkin: Zombies you play…a zombie! Immediately, I was struck by how disgusting and wrong the cards were. Class cards cover all the different zombie types from your favorite movies, books and world myths. There are Strong Zombies, Fast Zombies, Plague Zombies — even Atomic Zombies! There’s also also the chance you can pick up different types of zombie Mojo, too, which functions as a special ability.

Spectrum Games is pleased to announce the release of Bloodbath Hotel, a whopping 139-page adventure for Slasher Flick. Written by Gregg Helmberger and Kim Foster, this adventure puts the players in the role of ghost hunters investigating a long-since abandoned hotel that was once very opulent. But when they start getting picked off one by one, the remaining characters have to figure out who – or what – is responsible. Will they escape with their lives intact or will they become the latest victims of the hotel?

Edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes, ZOMBIE RACCOONS AND KILLER BUNNIES is a collection of anthologies that explore the darker side of your favorite woodland creatures like raccoons, bunnies, snakes, bats and more! For this collection, the short stories range from humorous to gory and everything in between. Additionally, the stories explore multiple genres like modern horror and science fiction. Before we offer you a few samples of select short stories from this horror anthology, we’d like to highlight the titles in this book, which was published by DAW in October 2009.

THE STARS ARE RIGHT is a board game produced by Steve Jackson Games. Inspired by the Lovecraft mythos, the object of the game is to “summon” ten points worth of servitors and gods before your opponent.

After playing through the game multiple times, I feel that in order to get a sense for what the game is about, you really need to play through it twice. To set the game up, you place the cardboard stars in rows of five by five, for a total of twenty-five. Each player gets five cards to start; I highly recommend giving each player a Turn Sequence card to help keep the movements straight. On the card there are a series of symbols that are used at different points in the Turn Sequence. There are two types of symbols, primarily. The directional symbols allow you to change the way the board is arranged; the pieces are double-sided so there’s a lot of different variations on how the pieces are set up.

*cue ominous music*

They’re creepy and they’re kooky… Mysterious and spooky…

My first nomination for the Girls of Gore series went to Eve from THE MENAGERIE, the world’s first female (and vampire). In this edition of Girls of Gore, I’d like to turn your attention to the lovely Morticia Addams, who is definitely more than what she seems. Now, you might think that Morticia is just another pretty goth that’s all dressed up with nowhere to go, but you’d be wrong. Dead wrong. She may dress in the finest, black gowns and take extra care of her appearance, but Morticia is definitely a Girl of Gore. Why? Well, read on.

This week, to celebrate Crackle.com’s Zombiefest, I decided to check out a few zombie-licious movies. One of the movies is called “FLESH EATER.” Now normally, I don’t really like a lot of cheese with my zombies, but this was just…too horrifying to watch without cracking up.

Director Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland is not a horror movie. It’s not even a horror-comedy. It’s really a fairly straight forward comedy-comedy, the back drop of which involves zombies. And as such it works pretty well, just not as well as its components suggest it should.

The world has been overrun by zombies and a most unlikely survivor nicknamed Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) is heading east across the country toward home hoping to find others, his family in particular. As fate would have it, he crosses paths with Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), another survivor heading east and Columbus’ polar opposite in just about every way. Soon the two of them run into a bad girl nicknamed Wichita (Emma Stone) and her twelve year old sister Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). These girls were conning men out of their money before zombies became an issue and have since parlayed their game into a post apocalyptic art of survival as they head west.

Twilight Creations earns the distinction of being the first board game I review. I’ve been familiar with the company since Zombies, moved through When Darkness Comes, and looked forward to their Deadlands release (I didn’t get a chance to play a demo, but I did hover for a little bit while a quartet enjoyed a brief visit to the weird west. Today, I’m reviewing Martians.

Martians is a tile-based board game similar to Zombies. The game is intended for two to six players, ages thirteen and up. I should go ahead and point out that my five-year-old son, a board game enthusiast, wanted to try out this game. After reading the rules and deciding to go with the cooperative version, I told him he could try. Except for reading the cards, he quickly grasped the fundamental concepts of the game. He places little green men and tokens accurately; furthermore, he understood the turn sequence just as well as his dad (who had to sometimes look at the rules).

Spectrum Games is pleased to announce the release of Horror Island, the initial adventure for the Slasher Flick RPG.

When a group of young adults travel to a supposedly deserted island for some fun and partying, they find out that the island is anything BUT deserted. Someone or something is watching their every move and starts killing them off one by one.

Horror Island is a full adventure for Slasher Flick. Included are maps, handouts and a ready-to-play group of characters to use. Presented as a late night televised movie, the book is as much fun to read as it is to play!

Slasher Flick is just over 100 pages, an RPG all about octopi. (That’s actually not true.) It’s written and designed by Cynthia Celeste Miller, produced by Spectrum Games. The game is called Slasher Flick. The pages are edged with blood. It’s not a game about serious exploration of the serial killer phenomenon, it’s not a strategy wargame. It’s a game about sitting around a table, having a night like one spent with an actual slasher movie, only in RPG form.

Slasher Flick is simple and focused in nature. Mechanics focus on the drama and tropes of the genre, instead of “killing the bad guy.” Characters are more likely to think the sound of the villain sneaking up is the wind, than a sign that they need to go monster hunting.

Review By David A Hill Jr

Spectrum Games is pleased to announce the release of Slasher Flick, the role-playing game that brings the thrills and chills of the “psycho killer” horror movies from the screen to your tabletop.

According to Cynthia Celeste Miller, “As with any of our games that emulate a particular genre or medium, Slasher Flick was designed to reflect every aspect of the source material. This isn’t a universal system. It was created specifically to feel like a slasher film in play. And I’m extremely confident that the game does exactly that. One of the most important keys to capturing the feel of the slasher movies was the implementation of something we call ‘kill scenes’. A kill scene begins when the killer appears in any given scene and ends when the character(s) present drops to below zero survival points (death) or gains a total of eight survival points (escape). Survival points are gained and lost by making crucial stat checks throughout the kill scene.

Amanda Feral is back and just as glamorous (and bitchy) as she was in Happy Hour of the Damned. But make no mistake: Road Trip is a very different book than its predecessor. Sure, there are still risks of zombie “mistake” outbreaks, partially digested food, and gruesome murders (only some of which are performed by our heroes–and really, the murders they perform are a public service, not a crime).* But unlike Happy Hour, Road Trip begins with the assumption that the readers already know how Amanda’s world works. There’s much less meandering into explanations of zombies, vampires, and other supernaturals and more delving into Amanda’s troubled past.** Now that Amanda’s mother is on her death bed, Amanda struggles to come to terms with a childhood she’d really rather forget.

“Vampires’ Quest” is a card game about competing vampires and is the first offering from Headless Games. In “Vampires’ Quest” players compete to match Bite cards with Victims, turning them into vampires and racing to create an army of the undead.

The game is played in rounds, scoring points based on the number of bitten victims claimed.

There are 15 different kinds of cards (including Bite and Victim cards) that can affect game play. Some allow you to steal claimed victims from other vampires, send claimed victims back to the deck or counter other players’ cards.

Review by Michael Erb

The Card Game of Monster Movie Mayhem!

This is a funny card game from Green Ronin with spoofs on various horror classics ranging from Frankenstein to Dracula with ghosts, beasts and other monsters mixed in to keep things interesting. The local townsfolk team up to destroy these monsters and deal with mayhem along the way.

There are three decks in this game, Townsfolk (representing the local “citizens” that are battling the monsters), Mob (including weapons, actions and other enhancements) and Monster (which also includes events that are often detrimental to the heroes).