You and your family have lived in the marshlands for generations. But your hometown is getting crowded and you’ve heard of a group of villages to the west, in a landscape of azure lakes, where the constantly flowing water has created a maze of watery caves, sinkholes, underground streams, and porous bedrock. There’s opportunity to start a new life there, catching fish, living in a stilt house on the lake, and exploring the deep sinkholes for rare ingredients and rusty treasures. You’ve packed up your favorite fishing pole and strapped the baby to your back, ready for a fresh start. If only you’d known about the ghosts, you might have stayed where you were.
Above and Below: Haunted is a standalone sequel to Above and Below (The character tokens are compatible between editions), planned to release on the 10th anniversary of the original game. As in the original game, players compete to build the best village by recruiting villagers, constructing buildings, and exploring the caves below ground. Above and Below: Haunted features new stories and explores a new setting in the world of Arzium.
Above and Below: Haunted includes some new features:
- Ghosts! Your buildings can become haunted, lowering your reputation. The game includes wooden ghost tokens that are placed on building cards. Players can perform a banish action to remove their ghosts, placing one of the ghosts on another player's building and gaining a reward.
- Two Cave Types! There are now two types of cave cards: normal and dangerous. Dangerous caves have higher lantern requirements, but give larger rewards, including a pearl. Pearls are a new type of token that count as your highest placed good at the end of the game.
- New Buildings! There are many new types of key and star buildings included in the game to encourage new strategies. All buildings have been designed from the ground up especially for Above and Below: Haunted.
- Boats! Players can gain boat tokens, which can be used to alter die rolls or gain coins.
- Adventure Cards! There are now 40 unique adventure cards which are gained as specific rewards for exploring the caves.
