Pick a set from the website. For your first games, just play the starter set.
Each player receives 5 Hand Cards. Hand cards always show two options: you pick only one of them when you use the card. Place the remaining Hand Cards as a shuffled facedown deck.
Each player places 1 random Person Card faceup between them and their left neighbor.
- With 2 or 3 players, place 2 Person cards each.
- With 2 players, include each Person only once.
Randomly place the remaining Person Cards faceup in the center of the table, in a row.
The scariest person is start player.
The game ends as soon as 2 or fewer Persons remain (unscored) at the start of a round. Players sum the points on the Persons they scored: highest score wins!
Play happens in rounds. Rounds have two phases: PLAY and WALK.
What’s the general idea? During the game, players create a row of cards in front of them. (They decorate their home.) You need that to attract Persons and ask them to stop at your beautiful front door.
But that’s not enough. Balance building your decorations with building your bowl of treats. Because to score any visitor, you also need to pay the Treats they require.
Take clockwise turns, beginning with the start player. On your turn, take two actions.
The possible actions are add or remove.
ADD: Add a card from your hand to any home. Make sure the side you want ( = which specific decoration) points up.
If you add it to somebody else’s home,
- They decide how to rotate it.
- You steal a decoration of theirs, but only one that matches an icon on your card.
- A wildcard () matches any icon, even disregarding the type (decoration or treat).
REMOVE: Draw 2 new Hand Cards, either from the facedown deck or from the discard pile. Pay for it by discarding 1 card from your home or hand.
All Persons currently in play will walk. They can do so simultaneously.
Each person moves clockwise to the first player who fulfills their Home wishes. If no such player exists, they take one step and stop between their current player and the next.
Home wishes are fulfilled if a player has at least the decorations shown on the Person’s card.
Once all Persons have moved, scoring happens in turn order. You may score anyone at your home, except a Person you have already scored. For each Person,
- Pay their Treat wishes. (Discard cards from your hand that contain at least their Treat wishes. As always, you can only pick one side per card.)
- Place the Person card facedown in your score pile.
- Grab the first Person card from the row in the center of the table. Place it between you and your left neighbor: it’s now in play.
Start player moves one to the left. Next round!
Once you’re familiar with the base game, you can try the more advanced sets!
Want an easier game? (Perhaps when playing with kids or first-timers.) Add this rule:
If a person comes from between two players ( = they didn’t start walking from another’s home), you may ignore any one decoration from their wishes.
This makes it easier to attract Persons in certain situations, without being overpowered.
Want a less cutthroat game? Don’t allow placing decorations in other player’s homes.
Want a more strategic game?
- Start with 4 cards each.
- Whenever you add a new Person to the game, you may pick any card from the row in the center of the table.
- (If that’s too overwhelming, keep a market of 4 faceup Persons at any time. Keep the rest as a facedown deck, unpickable until revealed.)
This set adds two new mechanics.
Powers: people can have a special power. Such a power is indicated by the heart icon, and replaces the funny tagline.
These can be permanent or triggered at a specific moment.
- “On walk”: execute at the start of the walking phase ( = “just before walking”).
- “On visit”: execute at the end of the walking phase ( = “everyone is done walking”).
- “On score”: execute when you pay treats and score this card.
“At Most”: some people have an “at most” requirement. They will only visit if you have no decorations besides the ones they accept.
Example:
- Say somebody wants “at most 2 pumpkins”
- They will visit if you have 1 Pumpkin
- They will not visit if you have 1 Pumpkin and 1 Spider, as the Spider is “too much”.
- They will not visit if you have 3 Pumpkins, as the third Pumpkin is “too much”.
It also adds new treats and decorations. These have a different value / probability behind the scenes, but change no rules for players.
This set adds two new mechanics.
Card wishes (): instead of requiring specific types, they just want a number of cards.
Set wishes: instead of requiring specific types, they just want a set. There are two options.
- “Same” (): they want X icons of the same type. (The type itself doesn’t matter, as long as the whole set is the same one.)
- “Different” (): they want X icons that are all a different type.
This adds no new rules. It simply contains the people with the toughest powers, and of course uses everything introduced before now.
Firstly, there’s no need to play with exactly 16 Persons (2 of each type). You can shrink the Person pool for a shorter game, or include each person only once and add more types.
Secondly, you can combine sets to create your own deck.
- Make sure the icons on Person and Hand cards match. (That’s why it’s recommended to include all or most of a set.)
- Make sure there’s enough variety in the Person scores.
However, sets are randomly generated! This means a specific card (e.g. “Vampire”) is never the same, and also that a set is balanced with itself. It’s recommended to just play specific sets or generate an entirely new “Random” set.