Monsters

The storyline in Friedemann Friese's Fearsome Floors (aka, Finstere Flure) continues the FFF-saga from Friese's earlier game, with players trying to escape from Fürst Fieso. Story aside, what we have is a wonderful race game in which the players must move through a dungeon as quickly as possible – or at least within 14 turns – before it crumbles over their heads.

Players could reach the exit in only seven turns if everything were peaceful and quiet, but unfortunately the dungeon is also the home of a very hungry monster! Each round, players take turns moving one disk at a time, flipping over the disk after moving it to reveal the movement points available for the next round. They can try to lead the monster, who is always after fresh prey, to opponents' pieces, but they may find themselves eaten instead! Pieces can slide along blood slicks or might be crushed between a boulder and a wall. You can even try to get the monster to teleport to another part of the board, where it will fall upon its next victim!

Colossal Arena/ Titan: the Arena is a strategic card game for 2 to 5 players with one of the best themes of any designer board game around: you play, not as combatants, but as spectators, cheering and betting on the melee ongoing in a fantasy arena/Colosseum in which eight pitting eight fantasy creatures are pitted against each other in battle!

Each round, one of the creatures will die. To decide which unlucky soul will be the victim, players put numbered power cards in front of the creatures, with the lowest one going to the graveyard. The jockeying for position and strategic diplomacy in playing the numbered power cards can be intense - but what makes this game even more interesting is that players the players' bets throughout the game which will sometimes allow them to use a creature's special power in battle!

The winner at the end of the game is bettor who's raked in the most winnings - just another day in the life of a fantasy monster gambler.

Titan: The Arena is actually a reworking of a Reiner Knizia game called Grand National Derby, but Avalon Hill's remake was quite significant from a gameplay standpoint.

The Titan: The Arena printing is often confused with its namesake, Titan. But other than the fact that they both use fantasy creatures as a general theme, there is very little that is similar between the two.

Reimplemented by: Galaxy: The Dark Ages

Online Play

Ludoholic (no longer available)

Four armies of alien micro-monstrosities clash in a challenge to the last jump!

In Micro Monsters, four races of horribly cute aliens – Autogators, Bigbears, Finbacks, and Turboturtles – face off, with each race wanting to close the rival monsters' dimensional gates. Using dexterity-based game play similar to that in MicroMutants and X-Bugs – and more commonly seen in Tiddly Winks – players in Micro Monsters "shoot" their monster tokens across the playing area by pressing on one edge of them with a "monster shooter" to send them flying. Land on an opponent, even with the tiniest bit of your monster, and you capture that opponent's token, removing it from play. Land on an opponent's gate, on the other hand, and you remove one of that opponent's energy tokens; take an opponent's final token and she must flip her gate to the damaged side. Land on a damaged gate, and that opponent is out of the game!

At the start of a player's turn, that player first rolls a die. If he rolls a monster, he takes his normal turn; if he rolls his race's special symbol, he uses his special alien power:

Autogators move two separate monsters on the same turn.
Bigbears move one monster, then place a trap on an opponent's monster to immobilize it until the next Bigbears turn.
Finbacks move the same monster twice on the same turn.
Turboturtles move one monster, then place a shield on it that prevents it from being captured until that player's next turn.

The last player to have an open gate – whether damaged or not – wins!

The forest is filled with all sorts of Monsters. They watched and waited as you built your Castle and trained your soldiers, but now they’ve gathered their army and are marching out of the woods.

Can you work with your friends to defend your Castle against the horde, or will the Monsters tear down your Walls and destroy the precious Castle Towers? You will all win or lose together, but in the end only one player will be declared the Master Slayer!

Castle Panic is a cooperative, light strategy game for 1 to 6 players ages 10 and up.

Players must work together to defend their castle, in the center of the board, from monsters that attack out of the forest, at the edges of the board. Players trade cards, hit and slay monsters, and plan strategies together to keep their castle towers intact. The players either win or lose together, but only the player with the most victory points is declared the Master Slayer. Players must balance the survival of the group with their own desire to win.

The game includes:
1 Gameboard
1 Rulebook
49 Castle Cards
49 Monster Tokens ( see Token set )
6 Walls
6 Towers
1 Tar Token
2 Fortify Tokens
6 Order of Play Cards
12 Plastic Stands
1 Die

It is the turn of the nineteenth century, and mad scientists throughout Europe are competing for the infamy of being the first to create life through the power of alchemy. Using only the raw materials provided by some dubious "Suppliers to the Anatomical Trade", harnessed lightning, and the services of a motley crew of unattractive servants, in It's Alive! you race to collect the eight body parts needed to create your monster and bring it to life. Unfortunately, the local peasants are particularly clumsy and tend to die in freak farming accidents, so the dubious gentlemen rarely find a whole cadaver in sufficiently good condition. Instead, they offer the parts they have managed to salvage. Each turn, you may buy the offered part, sell it to an anatomist for a meager profit, or auction it, trying to get a better deal or rip off your opponents. You might be lucky and get a coffin with a weakling clerk's cadaver in it, which can be used in lieu of any strapping villager's body part, or your involvement in the macabre trade might invoke the villagers' wrath.

Reimplements (and reimplemented by)

The Menorah Game