Use Words to Fight Ghosts, and Avoid Falling Prey to The Thing

The Thing is a game that mixes different mechanisms to create an experience that is as faithful as possible to that of the original film. It is a "hidden role" game, in which one player is initially the Thing and the others players are humans. The purpose of the Thing is to infect others, to prevent the survivors from escaping from the base (which can happen three different ways), or to try to escape with them by behaving as a human.


In addition to these elements, players also have to manage Outpost 31. On the map are the same rooms as seen in the film, and each of these rooms allows players to perform a different action. Human players have to feed themselves and keep the boiler and the generator on to avoid being in the cold and dark. The Thing will try to sabotage these places to make life difficult for humans...or not, trying to camouflage itself among the humans and infect them when the perfect opportunity presents itself.

On one of the scorepads, the score sheet now includes twelve boxed spaces, with three boxes in each of the colored rows. Additionally, a row of twelve colored boxes lies below the colored rows. Whenever you cross off a boxed space, you cross off the next colored box in the row (e.g., a red box), then cross off the leftmost space of that color that you can legally mark off. This might cause a chain reaction, and it might cause you to complete a second row, which would then end the game.


On the other scorepad, ten spaces among the colored rows are marked with bonus boxes, with two each of five bonuses. When you mark off the second box of a particular bonus, you receive a special reward, such as crossing off the next two spaces of your row with the fewest marks, crossing off the next space of each active color, or doubling the score of your least valuable row at the end of the game.

In the game, the players work at an old-school letterpress printshop where hordes of little ghosts appear at night to steal their precious type blocks. These ghosts are called "Spukstaben", a portmanteau of the German words "Spuk" (a spooky commotion) and "Buchstaben" (letters). The players have to come up with words to defeat the ghosts and save their letters. The more type blocks they save, the more points they score at the end of the game.


The game is played over ten rounds during which new Spukstaben appear with stolen type blocks, then move towards the exit of the printshop — although some ghosts will jump towards the door immediately. Whenever a Spukstabe enters the game, its level of spook-energy is set with a ghost stone based on the number of players.

During each round, the players have one minute to separately come up with one word each that contains as many of the stolen letters as possible. These letters then hit the ghosts and reduce their spook-energy by one. However, each letter of a word can hit only one ghost and each word can hit a ghost only once, so the players have to work together to defeat the Spukstaben.

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