Horrorlogic

Modern (horror)
Self Published
2019
Complexity: 2

Horrorlogic is a game self published on Tumblr that I found via Reddit, and of course I am reviewing it as I can’t pass up a horror game and have literally no standards for what I will review on this blog. Basically, Horrorlogic is another one of those games that tries to adapt horror movies into a tabletop experience. A very specific category that includes the highest rated game I’ve reviewed, and one of the lowest. So let’s see where Horrorlogic falls in that range.


Character Creation: 3/5
Characters in Horrorlogic are defined by four attributes, each of which have three associated skills, and players are given a number of attribute and skill points to distribute between them. There’s also a Luck value that can be spent to re-roll tests, and is a little interesting since you basically have 5 points that can be assigned either to Luck or hit points. So the more Luck you give yourself, the more you’re going to need it. Characters also get a ‘cliche’—basic character concept—a ‘trait’—a character detail that could positively or negatively affect them—and a ‘problem’—a specifically negative issue. Examples are provided for all these, and it is stated you can just make up your own. The traits and problems are something I like, because instead of just fluff, they are actually something that has a mechanical effect, but one that’s general enough to allow a lot of freedom in choosing them.

Mechanics: 3/5
The basic mechanics in Horrorlogic involve rolling a number of d6 equal to the relevant attribute and skill, with success on a result that includes a 6. Which means you need four dice to get above a 50% chance of success, which is a little low considering with even distribution all skills would be at 3 or 4. It's not like inherently unbalanced, just enough that it could be an issue. There’s also a sanity system that I actually rather like. Characters start with 100% sanity, which can be lost throughout the game, and at any time the GM can attempt to roll over the character’s sanity on a d100, and if successful “misrepresent information” to them. And I think that’s pretty cool as instead of just giving some penalty, loss of sanity allows the GM to distort the character’s perception, which is a much more nuanced way to handle it. Of course there are also specific penalties that come into play, but not until a character’s sanity drops to 50%. Another interesting thing is the ‘spotlight’ system, which is a number or points that players can spend to invoke their trait or problem to gain two bonus dice on a roll—see, I told you they had a mechanical effect. But the GM can also invoke them negatively to give a penalty, in which case the player receives a spotlight point. It’s a neat way to allow a character’s strengths and weaknesses to apply to their actions sometimes, but not always, and the give-and-take of spending and receiving points makes the GM’s ability to invoke that penalty feel a little more fair.
The three types of bad guys—killers, villains, and monsters—are defined similar to player characters, but instead of cliches, traits, and problems, they have a type-specific thing—which provides a bonus until lost or figured out at which point it gives a penalty— a power—which grants a bonus—and a weakness—which provides a bonus to players if they discover it. They also have different versions of the sanity system which impart penalties as it progresses. While this isn’t something that I particularly like how it’s implemented, what I do like is the idea of using the same basic concepts that define player characters and tweaking their functions to have a similar character that works a little differently.

Writing: 2/3 [•]
Overall he writing is fine, so so, okay. Some things are explained a little minimally at times, but it’s still understandable. While some other things are unnecessarily repeated, like the sections for killers, villains, and monsters basically all start with the same paragraph about their stats. Which could have easily been put into a section explaining the function of the enemies and left a half page each to better explain their specific differences and abilities. Also, I think its another case of “not understanding that the reader doesn’t already know your game” syndrome, like I’m sure in the author’s mind there is a clear distinction between ‘killers’ and ‘villains’ and what the villain’s ‘classification’ actually means. However, the reader just kinda has to guess at it.

Presentation: 1/5
The layout in this thing is a little odd. On one hand, you have the pages laid out on a blood-splattered paper-textured background, and usually in that situation you get one or two splatter patterns being repeated, but here the splatter patterns are unique and not even on every page, notably a level of detail that even I wouldn’t bother with. Which is why it’s so weird that the rest of the layout is… awful. The most glaring thing is that the text is huge, like 28 point, most books are somewhere between 8 and 12. Once you get past that, almost the entire book is formatted with centered text, which is more than a little unusual. What’s worse is that the text boxes don't even have uniform width, sometimes there’s 3/4-inch margins, sometimes text goes all the way to the sides of the pages, sometimes the first line of text on one page lines up with the first line on the previous page, pushing the text box off-center, and the vertical alignment of the text is just all over the place. Now you might think that margins were forgone to fit more text on each page, but sometimes there’s a half-empty page with text going all the way to the edges, and if they wanted to fit more text on the page I think there might have been an easier way to do that.
Also, aside from big—or rather, even bigger—page headings there are no formatted headings, no bolded text, nothing to indicate you are moving from one section to another other than sometimes an extra line break. I don’t normally do this, but here’s an example

This page is listing five different types of story you can play, but comes off as one long stream of text.
So like I said, a little odd. There is a good amount of work put into one minor aspect of the layout, but everything else is just a mess. And there aren’t like small nitpicks, it’s elementary typography stuff. Like if they had smaller left-aligned or justified text, consistent margins, and identifiable section headings it would be fine. Also just as a final nitpick, the PDF file is just single image pages and there is literally no reason to produce an exclusively-digital document without searchable text… okay, maybe if the entire thing is hand written.

Final Remarks
Horrorlogic is a game with a lot of interesting ideas, but ones that make you go “that’s cool… but how well would it actually work.” Basically It is a game that needs significantly more polish to bring out the good bits and smooth over the bad ones. I’ve probably said this before, but ideas don’t matter, it’s how those ideas are implemented and presented that makes a thing good or bad.

Base Points: 7
Character Creation: 3/5, Mechanics: 3/5, Presentation: 1/5

Adjustments: +0
Setting: N/A, Writing: +0, Content: N/A

Overall Score: 47% (7/15 Points)