Gamehelpescapefromthehiddencastle

Aim and Idea of the Game

The guests in the castle are having the time of their lives. But when the clock strikes midnight, the cellar doors creak open, and Hugo, the castle's ghost, makes his appearance. He glides up the cellar steps und moves onto the gallery. Now a great commotion is stirred when everybody tries to hide from Hugo in one of the castle's many rooms. A hectic chase for unoccupied hideouts begins.

Players try to bring their own guest figures to safety before Hugo can capture and banish them to the cellar steps. Each of your figures that Hugo captures will earn you spooky points. Players who manage to hide all of their guest figures in the castle's rooms will escape with no more than a fright.

The player with the fewest spooky points wins the game.

Game Setup

Each player starts with a number of "guests" as follows:

• 2 players = 6 "guests" each
• 3 players = 5 "guests" each
• 4 players = 4 "guests" each
• 5 players = 3 "guests" each
• 6-8 players = 2 "guests" each

Each player starts with 10 Spooky Points (you don't want these), which are indicated by the appropriately colored token on the outside edge of the board.

Hugo's speed (movements per turn) starts at 3 and is indicated by the blue clocks in the upper right of the board. (If he gets faster than 7, the game is over!)

Hugo's figure is placed on the cellar door, before the +10 space.

Each player, starting with the first player and continuing "clockwise", places one of their guests on any free gallery space until all guests are placed in the gallery.

On Your Turn

Roll the die, which has faces 1-2-Ghost-4-5-Ghost (anything divisible by 3 is a ghost).

If Ghost is rolled on the die, Hugo gets to move (see below) INSTEAD of one of your guests.

If a number is rolled, you MUST move one of your guests clockwise the number of spaces indicated (unless entering a room). You cannot pass your turn, so if you have no guests in the gallery, then you MUST move a guest out of a room or out of the cellar. You MAY pass or land on the same gallery square as another guest.

You can safely pass THROUGH Hugo and not be captured. However, if your guest STOPS on the same space as Hugo, they are captured.

Guests in a room start their steps INSIDE the room, so just leaving the room counts as moving 1 space.

The cellar counts as one room (for players) in that it only requires ONE "space" to get to the arrow at the top of the stairs, no matter how far down the stairs the guest started. (In other words, a roll of 1 will get you to the "arrow" square in the gallery, from anywhere in the cellar).

If you have multiple guests in the cellar, you must move the guest on the space with the highest number first.

Rooms

You can start moving your guests into rooms ONLY when Hugo is in the gallery. Otherwise the guests wouldn't have any reason to be afraid! :)

There are 9 rooms where guests can hide from Hugo, and each room can only hold 1 guest at a time.

Guests can enter a room only via the gallery space directly in front of its door (indicated by an arch on the gallery floor).
Note: Moving from the gallery into a room counts as moving 1 space.

Rooms with a RED coat of arms/shield (the Armory at the top, with Hugo Jr. (and the abandoned room in the Midnight Party variant)) or neutral rooms with no guest in them may be entered with AT LEAST the required number of spaces.

Rooms with a GREEN coat of arms/shield (the Ballroom and the Banquet Hall on the bottom) or neutral rooms with a guest already in them may be entered ONLY with an EXACT number of spaces.

Rooms with coats of arms/shields are worth positive (bad) or negative (good) Spooky Points as indicated on the coat of arms, scored as soon as your guest enters the room. Remember, Spooky Points are BAD, so negative Spooky Points is a good thing!
(Lore: The room with Hugo Jr. is scary and adds one Spooky Point. Guests in the ballroom or banquet hall are lucky and can relax with some lovely music and a scrumptious meal, so 3 Spooky Points are removed.)
Note: Green rooms have no effect if you're already at 0 Spooky Points (lucky you!).

If your guest moves into an occupied room, the guest already in there is expelled to the gallery space directly in front of the room's door. They can re-enter (expelling you) by rolling a 1 on their next turn, or by working their way around the gallery and back to the room again.

You cannot expel one of your own guests from a room. Why would you? :)

If you choose to leave a room, leaving counts as moving 1 space. So if you're in a room and roll a 1, you can only step back out to the gallery and cannot progress any farther around the board.

Tip: If you roll a 4 or 5, you could move a guest from the cellar steps straight to one of the first two rooms. You are allowed to move directly from one room to another if your die roll allows it.

Hugo's Movement

If the Hugo symbol is rolled, Hugo moves a number of spaces clockwise according to his speed counter (blue clocks in the upper right), starting with 3.

Hugo starts at the bottom of the cellar and must move onto each space to exit (unlike players who only need to roll a 1 to exit the cellar). Once out of the cellar, Hugo haunts the gallery for the rest of the game.

If Hugo passes or stops on a space with a guest, that guest is captured and sent to the cellar steps. Guests are sent to the first available step, starting from the bottom (highest number). (So the first guest to be sent to the cellar is put on the "+10" step. The next guest is put on the "+9" step, and so on.) At the same time, the number of Spooky Points indicated on the step is added to the player's score (which is bad!).

If multiple guests are on the same space in the gallery when Hugo captures them, all of them are captured and placed on the same step in the cellar, and the player(s) of the captured guests receive the appropriate Spooky Points for that cellar step (per guest, if multiple guests belong to the same player).

If all cellar steps are occupied, the next captured guest is put on the "+10" step with the other guest(s) already on that space. The player of the new captured guest receives 10 Spooky Points.

Hugo ALWAYS takes all of his moves, so it's possible he may capture multiple guests on multiple gallery squares in a single turn.

Each time Hugo moves onto or passes over the arrow space (at the top of the cellar steps), his speed counter (blue clocks in the upper right) is increased and he starts moving the new number of spaces on his NEXT move.

End of Game

The game ends either when a player reaches at least 46 Spooky Points OR when Hugo passes the arrow while his speed is 7.

The player with the LEAST Spooky Points wins.

Board Game Arena Notes

The standard "player score" section of Board Game Arena will show a player's Spooky Points as a NEGATIVE number, despite most of the values on board showing as a "+". This means the player with the LEAST NEGATIVE score is the winner.
When these rules mention points being "added" to a player's score, they are added as more negative points. (So if your score is -10 and you receive +10 from the bottom cellar step, your new score is -20.)

It is unclear how Board Game Arena handles a tie in Hugo, but it is assumed that all players with the lowest number of Spooky Points get to SHARE the win.

Variant - Midnight Party

• The game consists of 3 rounds.
• Hugo always move 3 spaces, unless there are 7-8 players, then he moves 2.
• Guests cannot be expelled from rooms. Guests also cannot leave the cellar once captured.
• If you only have one guest in the gallery, you still roll the die, but you can choose not to move your guest.
• If you have no guests left in the gallery, you still roll the die (since you might roll the Hugo symbol), but you cannot move if you roll a number.
• A round ends either (a) when there are no guests left in the gallery, or (b) when all rooms are occupied, in which case any guests left in the gallery are all placed on the "-2" cellar step.
• At the end of a round, players receive Spooky Points corresponding to each of their guests on the cellar steps. Guests in a room with Hugo Jr. receive 1 Spooky Point each. Guests in rooms with green shields remove 3 Spooky Points each.
• To prepare for the next round, guests in rooms are moved to the gallery space directly in front of their room. Then, players remove guests from the cellar and place them in the gallery on a space of their choosing, beginning with the guest on the "-10" space. If there is more than one guest on a cellar step, the player with more Spooky Points goes first.
• Hugo is placed back onto the "-10" cellar space, and the player with the most Spooky Points becomes the first player for the round.