Kickstarter horror game The Night THEY Came Home ready to launch

Fans of classic slasher horror movies: There’s a new tabletop horror game on the horizon, and it sounds AMAZING. It pays homage to the slashers of the 1970s and 1980s, and you can pre-order it via Kickstarter for the next two weeks.

1978: The Night THEY Came Home is described as “a survival horror tabletop game that pits a slasher against a survivor on Halloween night.” It’s a one-to-two player game, with one of the players cast as “the Survivor.” The Survivor has to go through a series of escalating horror scenarios as the are pursued by the Slasher, a killer that is controlled by player two.

Through the use of cards, the horror-inspired storyline (set on Halloween of 1978) plays out from day to night. During the day, both players work on their own backstories, pulling cards and collecting resourced to use in their upcoming showdown. At night, both Slasher and Survivor must enter the house and battle using the cards they have gained as they each fight for survival.

1978: The Night THEY Came Home is played on a screen-printed cloth tabletop mat that shows the house in which the showdown will happen. Realistic custom knife tokens are used to keep track of the resources that have been earned. The thematic poker playing cards feature narrative prompts to move the story along, and both Slasher and Survivor get their own rulebook. The horror game is handsomely contained in a telescoping box, and a digital edition is included for free.

This new horror game is expected to ship in October (perfect timing for a game set during Halloween), and was created by World Champ Game Company’s Adam Vass and Megacorp Games’s Logan Dean. Illustrations were created by Justin “Black Coffiend” Valliere.

Vass stated that in most roleplaying games “players are working together to overcome struggle, and board games have players competing to win; 1978 threads the needle of having both and marrying story and strategy in unique new ways.

With the game being Kickstarter-funded, there are different reward tiers based on the amount of money you give. $20 gets you a digital edition, which includes PDFs for each player, printable cards and assets and a virtual tabletop.  $50 includes all of that, plus the physical copy of the game (which looks pretty great, judging by the photos).

If you want to see more detailed information and/or be among the first to experience 1978: The Night THEY Came Home, you can secure a copy through Kickstarter at 1978.Games.