Last night I got a chance to play Gloom for the first time. In Gloom you have to inflict as much misery as possible onto the family you selected to play from the four families available, whilst inflicting happy wondrous things onto the opposing families. Eventually your family members will have suffered enough tragedy in their poor miserable lives that they meet an unpleasant untimely death.

The game ends with the first person who has all their family members die on them. Everyone then scores all their dead family members. The person with the lowest score is the winner!

I enjoyed my first play through of Gloom, despite the less than perfect lighting at the venue which made reading the cards hard.

I really love the transparent cards and layering them on top of a family member to affect the score. I enjoyed coming up with mini stories to explain the playing of the bit of bad luck that was about to befall the chosen family member. Or explaining just how fortunate the other players family members are with their unexpected bit of good luck.

I think Gloom will go down well with the students and the Fenland Gamers. I'm looking forward to playing it with more players.

Posted by me using my iPad and the Blogsy app