On an intellectual level, I understand it would be terrifying to attend a cinema where all the projections have pushed through the big screen to consume the moviegoers. But as an intellectual there’s some appeal to the prospect, because in preparation for such an occurrence I now only attend exhibitions of Brian De Palma’s erotic thrillers. Rawr.

Sadly, the mortals of Spooktacular were in attendance at a B-movie horror festival on Halloween night. Now they’ve been reduced to cheap theater snacks. And not the sexy kind of snacks.

Evil Pinball Table vs. Hell Chef vs. Giant Bee Queen vs. Fitness Demon.

The first thing you should know about Spooktacular is that it’s a big capricious romp. Entire handfuls of guests are moved at once, precluding even the pretense of a plan. Monsters are sent ping-ponging through corridors and theaters, transforming each new turn into a fresh conundrum. Pieces you’ve never seen before will appear on the board, signaling some goofball outcome you can only guess at. Or request clarification about, I suppose, although that’s boorish behavior for such an event. Just go with it. Let the tides carry you where they listeth. If that holds no appeal, maybe seek fairer pastures.

But the second thing you should know about Spooktacular is that it was designed by D. Brad Talton, Jr., creator of such titles as Millennium Blades, Exceed, BattleCON, and Pixel Tactics. And what do those titles all hold in common?

Erm, yes, anime babes. But what else? Okay, sure, a heaping of nostalgia for arcade cabinet fighting games. And? There we go: lots and lots of characters.

True to its heritage, Spooktacular positively brims with characters. Also character. There are twenty monsters in the box, each freshly Ring-girled off the big screen, and each sporting their own approach to cinephile cuisine. For your first session, you’ll probably select one of the simpler characters. (Rated E for Easy.) Such as Doombox, a sentient boombox straight out of a white-flight Blaxploitation flick, with a tusked mouth in place of a cassette deck and various tracks that whir into tune when it snacks on guests of the correct color. Or the wandering Outlander, his hapless victims pressed into service as a murder posse. Or my favorite of the easy characters, Remover the Fitness Demon. Her special power is a weight-loss plan. Only the way she sheds those cottage-cheese thighs is by viciously dismembering the people trapped in her room. Nine pounds in two seconds! Beat that, Ozempic!

Each monster has its own vibe. Also its own means for eating cinemagoers.

Because this is a Talton game, part of the beauty of Spooktacular is that all of these characters make use of the same rules. Even as you progress through trickier characters (Rated I for Intermediate) and into the game’s upper reaches (Rated A for Advanced), the bump in difficulty has more to do with how much combo-building your monster will have to pull off rather than an actual linear increase in complexity.

Consider Hell Chef. He’s a chef from hell. His special power revolves around the preparation and serving of special dishes. These are effectively time-delayed landmines he can scatter in his wake. But because he serves dishes at the beginning of his turn and prepares them at the end, there’s an entire round between courses. Rival monsters have plenty of time to duck out of the way before his Tentacle Tartar steals a wad of their points. Hence, much of his strategy has to do with cornering or locking down those opposing monsters. He isn’t more complicated to understand. His moves are just tougher to pull off.

How about the Beasts of Business — sorry, the Bea$t$ of Bu$ine$$. These jerks place their tokens not on the main board, but on the scoring track. Now when any monster reaches the corresponding tally, they become “scareholders” in this gang’s twisted game. Sometimes that means losing or gaining points. Other times it means chowing down on multiple theatergoers. Point is, there’s something new and inventive around every corner, the work of a master designer reveling in every single corner of his creation.

At the same time, these monsters all function according to the same logic. Most of their cards are identical. They all scare guests to rearrange the composition of adjacent rooms and score points. They all move between locales to pursue the juiciest morsels. And they all devour guests to create sets that can be exchanged for point-winning movie tickets. Those sets, by the way, are red, pink, blue, green, and yellow meeples, but we told our twelve-year-old they were children, teenagers, horror aficionados, long-suffering spouses, and grandparents who are probably only in attendance because they bought a moviepass subscription and they’re going to wring every dime out of the deal. She made quite the exclamation of disgust at that, then directed her animatronic guest show host to chow down on three of them.

GULP

Spooktacular, in case you hadn’t already guessed it, functions best when everybody works tooth, nail, and claw to win, but doesn’t invest much emotional energy into who walks away from the buffet with the tallest portion. It’s the kind of game where you can lay painstaking plans, maneuver everything into position, and then watch as one errant move from an oblivious opponent throws a wrench into your clockwork, and scores twice as many points in the process. It’s light and fluffy and not especially filling. It’s theater popcorn with so much butter that it soaks through the bottom of the bag and stains the knee of your jeans.

Which isn’t to say it’s a perfect experience. It’s a little long-winded, especially at higher counts, and its more involved turns can stretch on once it gets going. The same capriciousness that keeps the rules light and strategy distant also prevents players from evaluating their turns in advance. Each new turn requires a fresh assessment of the playing field. This can nudge its massacre into more of a torture session.

(If you want a really niche quibble, one that I must preface is absolutely not serious, I also wish it had been a little more based on mancala! Spooktacular would have to change very little, and there are even a few monsters like the Killer Car and the haunted pinball table Devil’s Game that approach it with mancala’s sowing sensibilities. With a firmer unifying mechanism as its foundation, it would probably move more rapidly, not to mention feature fewer underutilized corners. But, again, this isn’t an actual critique, just a brief fantasy, and a fantasy that has nothing to do with Brian De Palma erotic thrillers.)

Trying to master that Stairway intro.

Even with a few scattered problems, Spooktacular stands out as a strong contender for a beer-and-pretzels evening. It’s the little touches that make it so good. The references behind the monsters. The texture to how each one acts and moves and snacks on human tendons. Even the way the scoring track is presented as cop cars wheeling around the block to respond to the theater’s distress call. Brad Talton has always been a master of creating wild casts of characters, and Spooktacular showcases him in his element. This is the sort of game I could see myself settling down to play every Halloween.

A complimentary copy of Spooktacular was provided by the publisher.

(If what I’m doing at Space-Biff! is valuable to you in some way, please consider dropping by my Patreon campaign or Ko-fi. Right now, supporters can read about which films I watched in 2025, including some brief thoughts on each. That’s 44 movies! That’s a lot, unless you see, like, 45 or more movies in a year!)