Ghost Blitz 5 to 12

The spooky season is upon us, and ghosts are everywhere! And while we have plenty of horror-themed board games to choose from, I thought I might take a look at a more innocuous game featuring our season’s spectral mascot. 

Ghost Blitz is a deduction and dexterity game. One person will flip over a card, everyone will look at the image, attempting to determine the correct item to snatch, and then be the first one to pick it up off the table. Read on to find out how the card images work.

Flip a card and determine one of two things:

1. Does an object in the image match an object on the table, both shape and color? Or;

2. If the image only contains objects with mismatched colors, which color or object is missing? 

The answer to one of those two questions informs you which object to grab. If you’re the first to grab it, you win the card as a “point!” But be careful - if you grab the wrong object in a scramble to be the first, you not only lose out on the current card, but you’ll lose one of the cards you already scored! 

Let’s look at an example:

This card shows a grey mouse reclining on a green chair. Since the grey mouse matches the figure in both color and shape, the first person to grab the grey mouse wins the point!

This next card shows a red mouse holding a blue bottle. Since none of the objects in the image are the correct color, we are looking for what is missing! The red mouse eliminates the red chair and the grey mouse (color and shape, respectively). Likewise, the blue bottle eliminates the blue book and the green bottle. Therefore, we are looking for the white ghost! The first person to grab this object off the table wins the point.

And that is the game! Keep flipping cards over and award points, subtracting when necessary, until you cycle through the whole deck once. The person with the most cards wins the game! It is so simple, and so fun, and, importantly, word-free, meaning you can play with people regardless of whether or not you share a common language. 

Ghost Blitz 5 to 12 is my staff pick for the month, as not only does it feature the rule set from the original, but it introduces additional totems, bringing the item count to nine! With the colors doubled up, you won’t need to parse too much more from the color wheel, but the additional objects make things much more difficult! Add to that the special optional rules about objects that appear in mirrors on each card, or cards that feature the ghost-clock combo or the owl, and you have a LOT of complexity to keep things interesting and your fellow players on their toes.

There is also Ghost Blitz 2, Ghost Blitz Spooky Doo, and Ghost Blitz Junior, which makes the game more accessible with some cutesy farmyard animals for gamers beginning at 3 years old! 

Ghost Blitz 5 to 12 is available now from our webstore.