As you can tell from the title, I really dig Shadow Hunters.

So, I generally try to give you a synopsis tagline of how I feel about a game and its comparative equivalent at the beginning of most of my games. Shadow Hunters really eludes that kind of summarization, but I will try. "A Gamer's Werewolf"

I picked this up recently and took it to Games Fest South, and I was dying to get my first game of this one in. However when I told people it was "Sort of Werewolf-y" from the rules I was literally met with disgust from my fellow gamers. Its really a better more interesting werewolf that doesn't play too long and offers a lot of fun and a lot of choices. I'm glad to say my persistence paid off and Shadow Hunters found a group to play it and we had an absolute blast playing this game.

Shadow Hunters is a game for 4-8 people. You are given a secret identity card, and you keep it face down and secret. (Duh.) These cards come in 3 flavors, Hunter (Good Guys), Shadow (Bad Guys), and Neutral (Duh x2). Each of these flavors has 3 or 4 cards that are unique characters and each one has a special game ability. Each character also has its own hit point value that is different from most of the others. (This is important)

The Good guys win if the shadow players are dead, and the bad guys win if the good guys are all dead. The neutrals have their own win conditions that really spice the game up nicely. Examples of Neutral win conditons: "If you are the first player killed, you win" or "Kill a character with 3 dead characters already and you win"

So, you have your secret ninja identity, now what? You place your card on your colored player mat. Then you place one same-colored cylinder on the Damage Track at zero. Then you place your 2nd cylinder in the center of the movement board with everyone else.

Then the first player rolls the dice and moves to the appropriate numbered card on the movement board. The cards essentially let you draw cards from the White, Black or Green decks of cards. White and Black are usually good and evil items and abilities respectively, and the green deck is really a deduction deck. These green cards you draw an they will read something like "If you are a shadow player take 2 damage" you read this card to yourself and then you decide who to give this card to. They read it privately, and then either take 2 damage, or they don't. They then hand the card back to you, where it is discarded face-down. You now know whether or not they are a bad guy. This is helpful.

Then the last part of your turn you *may* attack players who are on the same card as you or adjacent to you. You roll 2 dice, and deal the difference between the two d6's to said player. Next player goes. A big part of the gameplay is the tabletalk and deduction of who is what role. To further screw up the works, one of the evil player cards "Unknown" is the name of the creature, is allowed to lie whenever he is handed a green card. So you can really screw with people's minds.

When you are dealt damage, you advance along the little damage track. Generally players have 10 or so hitpoints, and the spots are marked on the board where hitpoint threshholds for characters are. So if "Amy" has 12 hitpoints, there's a "A" marker on the board at 12. Obviously if you have taken 12 points and not died, you can't possibly be Amy. This helps the deduction along as well.

The game plays in around 20m depending on how your group plays it. Both times we had the game out for extended periods playing several games, and noone wanted to put the game away. We actually had a nice little crowd of people who wanted seats at the table. This is really an excellent game.

At this point I know, I hear you "Oh god, what about player elimination". Honestly that was NOT a problem at our tables, even with 8. Everyone who played stayed in their seats to watch/witness the rest of the game with no complaints. The game was entertaining to watch, and it progressed very quickly, and if you died 15 minutes in, most players were more than willing to wait the 5 minutes for the game to end just so they could see it play out and find out who was on what team.

I know in Japan there is an expansion for the game, and I *really* hope Zev imports it. I want more of this game.

This game is really fun, and really affordable. Any time I have a chance of a table of 8, I will bring this game along with me.

9/10 - Excellent

Pros:
Short play time, but not too short
Lots of decisions and table talk, but with a purpose
Interesting cards and good production quality
Fun to watch, more fun to play
Great theme, perfect for Halloween Parties!

Cons:
A couple of the token colors are rather similar, orange and red I believe...but with 8+ colors I suspect this would happen no matter what.