Trails To Tremble By

Once again I have to ask what it is with the horror themed board games. I'm a fan of board games, and I'm a fan of horror, but why are there so many of them? I guarantee they're 70% of this blog at this point! Although, this is a weird one because it's technically not even got a board. That's right, this is one of those rarities that falls into that iffy category of "is it or is it not a board game?" and on a technicality level, yeah, I have a hard time qualifying it as such. But, this is the blog for board games, and it comes in a board game box and so that's that. But yes, this is not technically a board game, it's actually a tile laying game, which, and I can't believe I even have to SAY this...tile laying is not scary in the slightest.

According to Board Game Geek, the description is as follows:

"Each player selects 10 "spooky" tiles of either witches, monsters, ghosts, or buzzards, plus one crossroad and one tombstone. The first player then picks one of the 40 road tiles and places it in the center of the table. Each player then adds a road piece, making sure the road continues without a dead end or circling into itself. Every time you form a three-sided space, you fill it with one of your spooky tiles, making sure it does not block the road. After you have added 5 of your spooky tiles, add the tombstone, and then the rest of your pieces. The winner is the first to use all their pieces and add the Haunted House tile to the road."

The odd thing is, near as I can tell as I said before, there's no board to begin with, so to call this a board game proper is a bit of a stretch. In fact, it's actually kind of unique in that you sort of build the board yourself as you go. Instead of having a token player piece, you're creating the path to victory yourself. That's not something I think we've ever seen before now.

Essentially the goal is the same, you're still trying to reach an endpoint, in this case a haunted house specifically. Why you would be fighting against others to reach such a destination first is a question for an entirely different person, but who knows, maybe there's treasure in the house. Maybe it's one of those "Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" situations where someone's stashed a load of cash inside it and whoever gets to it first is the lucky winner. I don't know, I'm not the one out here trying to beat others to a clearly damned domicile. I'm just taking potshots in the dark at speculating their reasons for doing so.

The art of the box and the tiles as well is actually quite fun to look at though, I will say.

It's all very kid friendly, but that's not at all a bad thing. Let's remember that, especially back in this day, board games were mostly a lucrative kids market. But these look almost like something out of old Hannah Barbara cartoons, and I for one love 'em. That ghost especially is something I almost wanna get tattooed over my asscrack, like any good tramp stamp loving goth girl would do. With his collar and his tie, he looks like he's vaguely annoyed at his position within the afterlife. Like, he's dead, but he still has to go to work, and that's got to be a upsetting realization once you've crossed over I'd imagine. I also love the pseudo spooky green coloration of the tile backgrounds. It's really the perfect color for this sort of thing.

Ultimately, Trails to Tremble By isn't anything to really remember, if we're being honest. That isn't to put it down, either. It's got a unique concept of board building, the artwork is pretty solid, and it's a cute concept on the whole. But it's also not something that's ever going to stand out and be remembered as a classic. I think, if nothing else, it sits simply as yet another inclusion in the already overwhelmingly saturated genre of spooky adjacent board games. There's nothing wrong with it at all, but there's also nothing spectacular about it either, and I think that's kind of a nice place to sit, really.

Honestly, "Trails to Tremble By" sounds like the name of a podcast where two hosts discuss hikers who've vanished and were never found, and that sounds entertaining as hell.

Released in 1971 by The Western Publishing company (a more vague name for a board game producing company I could not fathom), the game has, as seems to be the case these days with these posts, no artist or designer credited that I can find, and that's a damn shame, cause I really want the people who did the art and design for this to know how much I love it. One of the worst sins a board game can make, and they make it often sadly, is not being visually engaging. There's nothing worse than not having any visual personality whatsoever, and thankfully this one doesn't suffer from that. This has a very distinct look, and I hope the folks who put in the time and effort making it are proud of their work, because they certainly deserve to be.

And I swear to you, whoever you are and wherever you are game designers and artists, one day I WILL get that angry little workplace ghost tattooed right over my ass crack, just to make you proud. Or wildly uncomfortable. Either way works for me, really. I just want a ghost tramp stamp.