Video board game whereby players race around the board collecting keys. Each
key gives the player a certain
ability, from not having to roll to get out of the
black hole (think of the 'jail' square in
Monopoly) to being nigh-invincible when on your home square (your
sanctuary). Players are assigned numbers and characters
randomly before play begins, for purposes that become clear later on. The players all wrote down their greatest fear on wipeable, reusable cards, which were shuffled and placed in a pile in the centre of the board.
Available characters were:
Hellin - The
Poltergeist
Anne De Chantraine - The
Witch
Khufu - The
Mummy
Elizabeth Bathory - The
Vampire
Baron Samedi - The
Zombie
Gevaudan - The
Werewolf
All of this sounds pretty easy, except that you play this game in the same room at a TV and
VCR, with the included tape playing on the screen. The tape has a counter that ticks down from 60:00 to 00:00. This is accompanied by creepy atmospheric music and is interspersed by
The Gatekeeper, some strange old man who runs the
game. He pops up every couple of minutes, meanwhile the game stops play. He assigns
names ("Come here,
maggot!") and
challenges to different
players, depending on their
character,
number,
age or simply who's turn it was when he appeared. As the time went on, he became more and more freaky-looking, and his voice went squeaky in a "
tortured screaming" sort of way.
One of the best parts of the game was the
fate', '
chance' and '
time' cards. They included the obligatory '
get out of jail free'-style cards as well as giving you the power to
take a key from other players. The time cards were the best though, because you had to keep an eye on the
on-screen clock and perform your
action at a certain time, such as
11:50
Scream as loud as you can. For every player you scare in this way, take a key.
The game also used time cards that countered other time cards, such as
11:50
If anybody screams, they lose all of their keys.
The game generally became
chaos in the dying seconds of the clock as the game ended when the
clock reached 00:00. Anybody who could collect all six keys and then get to the centre of the board, drawing a
greatest fear that isn't their own won. If it was your fear, you were out of the game.
There were 3
expansion packs released with new videos and rules.
Atmosfear II: Zombie
Atmosfear III: Witch
Atmosfear IV: Vampire
These expansions were all "presented" by a character that you could play, and they
invariably got it the easiest throughout the game.
There was meant to be an Atmosfear V: Mummy being released but the
company who published the games went bust shortly before it was
released. Everything mentioned up to now went by the name of
Nightmare inside the
United States, but everywhere else it was called Atmosfear as far as I can gather.
Atmosfear: The Harbingers gave a new twist to the game, as you started out without a character and had to get to a square that allowed you to change into one fast. The board was
segmented and split into six
double-sided pieces, one for each character. As soon as you reached a square that allowed you to turn into a "
Harbinger" as they were then called, you flipped that segment of board over and started
hunting for keys. If you didn't get a character by the end of the first ten minutes, you became a Soul Ranger, and could only collect keys by
stealing them from other players, and couldn't leave the unflipped sections of board until you stole your first key. The game pretty much played the same as the original after that, except you could "dice-duel" with other players and steal their keys.
There were two other add-ons to the Atmosfear universe, the Soul Rangers add-on for Atmosfear: The Harbingers, and the Atmosfear: The Duel Card Game, neither of which I owned and know nothing about.
There are rumours of a
DVD re-release from the people who made the game, A Couple A Cowboys Ltd, which will probably include the Gatekeeper running the show once again.