Dead by Daylight is the most well-known asymmetric multiplayer game, with a single killer facing off against four survivors who they must keep from escaping. Its gameplay and horror setting with many licensed characters in the roster grants it a large following. Even if at times a killer or survivor gets on your nerves, the gameplay is worth it.
With an official Dead by Daylight board game available from Level 99 Games, those interested in a similar experience intabletop gaminghave a great option. But what if you want other ways to play asymmetric or horror-themed games? These picks will offer you loads of killing, or surviving, fun while providing some variety for your game shelf.
Unbroken
One Night Ultimate Daybreak
Join the werewolves or uncover their secrets in a deadly game of social deduction
One Night Ultimate Daybreak is a stand-alone addition to the series of One Night games. In Daybreak gameplay is quick and can cause twists and turns as you deduce who is who with hidden role play.
Hidden-role and social deduction play are a classic for parties, and Beizer Games offers a great selection of them. One Night Ultimate Daybreak is another release in the line similar to One Night Ultimate Werewolf. Daybreak offers new abilities and characters that spice up gameplay.
While easily played on its own, it can be combined with other One Night games like Ultimate Werewolf for more fun or to add more players. One Night really comes to shine when you have as many friends as possible to experience the wacky characters and situations that can arise.
Because these games have an official app to walk you through play you don’t require the awkwardness of choosing someone to game master. Unlike with many other hidden-role titles, no one needs to remember the steps of play or tell players when to take their actions.
Some of the characters include the alpha wolf who can create a werewolf out of unsuspecting players, and the dream wolf who doesn’t know who the rest of their team are. With engaging powers for both werewolves and the villagers, games can take some wild turns.
For villagers, characters like the Curator cause their own chaos, able to place artifacts onto other players. These could prevent them from talking, or even turn them into a werewolf. Because some characters cause more chaos than others, you may want to run a simple group in your first few games.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Slaughterhouse
Popular horror comes to the tabletop for the basement Bubbas
In this asymmetric one-vs-many game, a killer player hunts down survivors by controlling the Sawyer family. Force your victims into the farmhouse for harvest, or try for a desperate escape.
Anyone who’s mained Bubba in Dead by Daylight will surely be familiar with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In this board game adaption, one player controls the Sawyer family, with pieces for The Old Man, Hitchhiker, and Leatherface, with a mover token for Grandpa. The game starts with only one Sawyer member in play but as tension rises the others join in on the chaos.
All other players in the game are the trespassers, hoping to find their way back out of the Sawyer household with their lives. There are five scenarios to play, allowing for a fresh game each playthrough. With mechanics for noise and fear a lack of careful play from the hopeful survivors can give an opening to the Sawyer player.
For every two fear tokens the player controlling the Sawyers may draw an additional card, and noise tokens let them play more of their abilities. The trespassers will need to be cautious with their movement and work together if they want to escape. Setup and play can take some time, and if you happen to die early as a trespasser, there’s not much you can do the rest of the game.
As an asymmetric horror game, Slaughterhouse hits all the marks you want to see from the genre. It has tense gameplay with a great deal of risk should you allow yourself to fall into any of the household members' hands.
The Stifling Dark
Ready your flashlights and find your way out alive
Enjoy a horror hidden-movement gem with The Stifling Dark. A group of investigators must avoid the adversary who is hunting them down in the dark. The adversarial player chooses a hunter and looks for an opportunity to strike from the dark.
For another set of fun with one killer vs a group of survivors The Stifling Dark offers a hidden-movement system where the hunter’s position is unknown to the investigators. Those familiar with hidden movement games will find this is a fresh twist on the genre. Rather than seeking out the hidden player, your time is better spent on defense and completing your objectives.
Any of the game’s playable hunters can feel overwhelming for the investigator team, being unseen a majority of the time always threatening danger. This feels asymmetric to the point of being unfair at times, but once you begin working together with your flashlights and rushing objectives you learn to turn the tide.
Flashlights are your only real method of detecting and deterring the adversary player. Each time you use a flashlight it loses charge, but not using it allows you to regain charge. While the markers for the light cones may appear very helpful and large, in practice you will need to carefully place multiple as a team to avoid a sneaky play by the hunter.
With other abilities and ways to play, the game has a nice variety and feels highly replayable. The hex-like map with numbered spaces and the light mechanic can feel odd at first but is not too complex. Just be sure to shuffle the team and hunter players to avoid gameplay going stale if someone becomes tired of a role.
Stranger Things Upside Down
Overcome the Upside Down and rescue Will
Born from the incredibly popular Netflix series, this Stranger Things board game offers cooperative objective-based gameplay. Play through the story of the first or second season of Stranger Things and avoid falling to fear.
Stranger Things is a beloved franchise, and its introduction to Dead By Daylight gave us an excellent new killer and survivors. Demogorgon mains will be sad to learn you cannot control it in Stranger Things Upside Down, as this is a cooperative game.
While this is a departure from the one-vs-many format, it is a very enjoyable one. Moving around Hawkins and the Upside Down to recruit allies, collect items, and help Will and Eleven is an engaging andteam-dependent gameplay loop.
Actions are resolved using the action cards you draw and keep in your hand, each has a value and the cards played combine to equal the total of your attempt. You can further boost this number using items or ally abilities. Unfortunately, you won’t know how many cards to spend for success.
Spaces with actions have a stack of tokens that create the opposing number to beat in actions that do not automatically succeed. However, you can only see the topmost token at any time. You may not commit much to a stack with a one-value top token, just to find the total rockets up to 11 when the rest are revealed.
Thankfully, even in failure, you make some progress, removing one token from the stack randomly. Difficulty to fight foes or complete tasks around the board can vary throughout gameplay creating a push and pull. The one downside to this team endeavor is if any character reaches maximum fear, the entire game is lost. Careful team play will be necessary, and also very satisfying.
Night Of The Living Dead
For a classic horror theme Zombicide has your brains- I mean back
Fans of Romero and zombies will enjoy this edition of Zombicide based on Night of the Living Dead. With a modular game board and multiple scenarios, you may enjoy fantastic and fresh gameplay endlessly.
Anyone who has regularly played Zombicide will be instantly familiar with the gameplay in this edition, Zombicide: Night of the Living Dead. Unlike some of the other versions, however, this one will present a more crushing and dreadful feel.
Simply running and gunning will not save you from the horde spawned from George A. Romero’s mind. More in line with his concept of the undead apocalypse you are not intended to enjoy or easily overcome the menace of the living dead.
Without large bosses or highly specialized enemy zombies from other editions, this take on Zombicide will have you feeling more grounded. Many playable feel weaker against the horde with fewer options to burn through groups of walking corpses easily.
You can certainly gain the power to deal with these awful foes, but the game always has an even and gradual pace of play. Escaping from the various scenarios will require metered plans and actions with a tactical element due to slower enemy movement.
There are plenty of Zombicide fans who enjoy this edition for its pacing and gameplay, and whether you are a veteran in the series or new and looking for some classic horror this is an excellent pick for your game shelf.
Let out your inner survivor and overcome certain death
Experience a solo-play game of survival as you seek vengeance for your fallen friends in the dungeon. Engaging resource management paired with monster combat keeps you immersed in a perilous fight for your life.
Solo-queue survivors who want the familiar experience of dealing with horrors alone can play through Unbroken without any other players needed. There are ways you could bring additional players into Unbroken, but it will disturb the intended atmosphere and gameplay. This is meant as atrue solo-play game.
In the setting of this game, you and a party of adventurers delve into a dungeon and find it to be a huge mistake. Your other members have been killed or lost, and now you alone must seek survival and vengeance against the denizens of the dark.
During exploration, the encounter deck will present you with options to exchange resources at the cost of time. A timer counts down according to each possible encounter action and, once at zero, you will come face to face with a monster. Proper preparation before this fight will be vital.
With a cycle of exploration and fighting, you make your way through four levels of dungeoneering. Scouting for information on the next monster or to draw additional encounters allows you a great deal of strategic choice. You can plan careful routes to victory, or end up overextended and trapped by monsters.
There is an incredible amount of replay value to Unbroken, and games often don’t take long, letting you explore dungeons again and again. A variety of monsters and heroes offers dozens of paths to victory or defeat, and, regardless of outcome, play is tense and satisfying.
FAQ
After being successfully kickstarted and produced the wonderful adaptation from Level 99 games is still available for purchase. Retailers that carry the game are limited, so a direct purchase is often necessary.
While certain benefits of the funding period are not available anymore, there is an expansion that can be pre-ordered. The expansion offers new killers and survivors like The Artist and Mikaela Reid to broaden your Dead by Daylight experience in tabletop.
Are the one-vs-many games fair to play?
Just as you can find in Dead by Daylight asymmetrical play can sway in favor of one side to another, and so too can advantages vary from game to game on the table. Many games with asymmetry exist that find excellent ways to self-balance or provide even footing.
The intended nature of some games can feel weighted against you for some titles. For example, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre can become lethal very quickly for the trespassers should they slip up. Learning all the roles in each game and repeated play balance the skills of each side.
What are asymmetrical games about?
Asymmetry in the briefest sense means that each player or side will have different advantages, gameplay, or mechanics. Many games have some form of asymmetry but it is often light asymmetry, meaning they play by the same rules but may have a different hand or cards or special ability.
Using the term asymmetric in the tabletop space usually refers to titles with a great deal of asymmetric play. Examples are different objectives, being a one-vs-many game, or using mechanics unique to each player. Games are often considered asymmetric only if they have these traits.
