Killer: Dr Fright

Location: Maple Lane

Inspirations: Nightmare on Elm Street

Final Girls: Nancy Lang & Sheila Smalley

In the original Final Girl crowdfunding campaign, this wasn’t listed in the initial funding, instead getting added as the campaign went on and its price reduced as a stretch goal until it became free. It’s weird thinking that what’s the default length of a ‘series’ would have been different without this, and frankly this feels like an essential part of series one.

In my opinion, Maple Lane is the main reason for my glowing praise. It’s not that Dr Fright isn’t fun, but a small suburban neighbourhood is a perfect setting. It’s Nightmare on Elm Street, it’s Halloween, it’s Scream, it’s the setting for so many horror movies. You have a central intersection and then four quadrants of little houses. In theory it’s fairly straightforward with a number of exits and even better, every house can be searched for items! You have to mark them with an X to show they’ve been looted, but that freedom of searching is really helpful. Then you have the gimmick. The people in their homes need to be convinced to let you in before you can rescue them. You get an extra action card called, “Convince”, which is nice and cheap, it might even get you an item if you’re lucky. But a lot of the time you won’t be and the suspicious suburbanites will keep you out before getting hit with a meat cleaver or a pitchfork.

The events also make the set pop. I remember one game when I was fighting Hans in South Street, just going at each other with weapons only to stop as a Terror card summoned a new Event. A police car popped into existence and slowly drove through the streets without stopping to help. I had that desperate moment of, “What the fuck, buddy?” That final girls get in horror movies when their plight is somehow unnoticed. There are firework nights, there’s a deadbeat boyfriend who frankly is better dead. There are roadblocks which can help even out the higher than usual amount of exits.

Along with Camp Happy Trails and one of the series two locations which I’ll get to in time, this has been a go-to for testing out vignettes and more complex killers. 

Dr Franklin Wright was a horrible “Dream Therapist” in life and when his crimes were discovered, he vanished into the dream world. He exists as Dr Fright in a kind of boiler room and hunts people in their dreams, cutting them up with a pitchfork. Local myths about him have only helped give him power.

It’s tricky to fight a person who exists in dreams and that’s reflected by Dr Fright and the Final Girl’s inability to harm each other while they’re both awake. Victims are still on the table as they could fall asleep at any moment. In order to cause any lasting harm to Dr Fright, you need to fall asleep. There are cards which can do this, but your main technique is probably going to be the Long Rest and Short Rest cards, which gives you easy access to go under. When that happens, you’re ignored by Victims as you’re in the dream world, but you can finally fight Dr Fright. At the end of every round in the dreams and sometimes through other events, you play a little sliding puzzle type game to see if you stay or get attacked. There’s a stack of cards under the Awake/Asleep card, each a picture of a hellish boiler room split into four, with Dr Fright popping up on a different quarter. When you make a check with it, you slide one of the cards out from the stack and if you see the doctor, you’ll get attacked. If you’re done with the stack, you wake up. This means you’re on a clock when you find him. He also has Terror cards which move him around the board quickly to hunt down sleepers, and can even kill someone you’ve already saved as it turns out they were already dead! What a bastard.

Playthrough

I played Sheila Smalley. She’d been adopted by the Smalleys of Maple Lane after their daughter died at the hands of Dr Wright before he became a monster. She had a deadbeat boyfriend who was staying home from the neighbourhood block party and bugging Sheila about when she’d come over.

The block party meant that most people were out enjoying the summer evening, barbecuing, chilling, having some drinks. The Smalley family were there, having a fun old time, apart from Sheila who was reeling from horrific dreams. She tried to focus herself and walked into the street, towards the party.

Dr Fright stalked his way towards Chet, Sheila’s boyfriend. He had no idea the dream monster was there and ran through him, trying to get to Sheila. Mechanically, if The Boyfriend was ever on Sheila’s space, she would lose two time and time equals money for buying cards. I had to make sure they didn’t meet up!

Turn two was pretty limited, with just Walk and Sprint cards, so Sheila ran over to the block party, grabbed her parents and got them out of the map via the East Street exit. All while Dr Fright found someone sleeping off all the day-drinking and murdered her. Multiple events popped up from the Terror deck, meaning that roadwork blocked the South Street exit and the real reason for the block party became clear. It was the 4th of July! Everyone in their houses left them, which meant the Convince card I bought was going to be a waste. 

Shiela started her next turn with the shady guy from one of the southeast quadrant houses on her space, so she shoved him into the exit and failed at a Focus, so more burning of cards had to happen (I’ve got more cavalier about burning cards in this replay of Series One). Sheila ran up to the next space and found a couple admiring fireworks. She doubled back, shoving them through the exit. I bought a Furious Strike, figuring I’d start saving up for the future. Speaking of aiming for a good future, the clingy boyfriend was murdered, so I didn’t have to avoid him anymore. Unfortunately the wife of the couple I’d saved had been acting strangely, and it turned out she was already dead, puppetted by Dr Fright! I’ve not had a Victim removed from the ‘saved’ pile before. That was inconvenient.

As much as I’d have liked to keep stocking up for the future, there were more victims to extract. Sheila took two more partygoers from the intersection over to West Street. She looked back sadly at the remaining person at the barbecue, realising it was unlikely she’d get back to him in time. They were extracted, along with a suburbanite who was already at the West Street exit, having popped out of their home to watch the fireworks. That was enough to trigger Sheila’s ultimate ability! Normally cards can be binned off for one extra time, something I basically never do. Sheila’s ultimate meant that you could bin them off for two time. Now that’s an exciting prospect! She walked into one of the north west homes and found a knife. It wasn’t the best weapon, but it’d do.

The person at the barbecue drifted off while grilling and dreamed of a burning boiler room. He tried to escape, only to have his skin burnt off by acidic steam. That was enough for Dr Fright’s Dark Power to activate, making him increase his Horror level whenever he damaged Sheila. Damn, and after I did a lot of work to keep it down. 

He cornered a man trying to get past the barricades to the South Street exit. It wasn’t working and his chicken mascot costume came to life with Dr Fright inside. He froze in fear, then was impaled on his pitchfork.

Sheila was in an inconvenient spot, far from Dr Fright. It meant a bit of an admin turn, walking slowly towards Dr Fright and binning cards for the bonus time, gaining a Critical Blow, a Sprint and a Close Call (a reroll of one dice or all of them for -2 Time). The good news was that with no one else left on the board, Dr Fright was stalking towards me, even though neither of us could hurt each other.

He started cutting his own fingers off, raising the Horror level and undoing all my good work. Sheila had to panic, diving into a house in the southwest of the neighbourhood.

Sheila steeled herself, pulled out her knife, walked outside and knocked herself out. Time to bring the fight to Fright! Sheila’s Critical Blow was my first two-star roll of the whole game, managing to deal half of Dr Fright’s damage to him. Then with a failure on the Furious Blow, I had to burn necessary cards to cause any damage. I bought Retaliate and realised there was going to be a problem… I’d used the two good fight cards. I needed to block him and avoid him in the boiler room until I could buy them back. A quick look at the Terror deck meant that I should have time before his ultimate ability was unleashed.

Sure enough, he attacked and my Retaliate card did… pretty much nothing. I burnt more cards and dodged the damage, dealing another two to him. An event popped up with a road closure on Shiela’s spot, but that didn’t matter. It was victory or death at this point. Then there was another event, a fire at the Smalley House, which freaked Sheila out, but she had to keep going, especially as the Boiler Room card didn’t show Dr Fright.

I binned Focus cards for more Time, couldn’t buy Retaliate as I’d just used it so I had to stock up on Guard and fought a Critical Blow.

Things got quiet. Too quiet. The Horror level went up again. Ugh. Not in the red, at least. Another Boiler Room card, another lack of Dr Fright. Phew!

Dr Fright only had two health and I only had two dice for my rolls now. I used Weak Attack first as it had fewer results which would end my turn. With one hit, Sheila took some damage and dealt two thanks to the knife. I flipped the final health token and it was blank!

Another game, another shockingly close resolution.

Similar to Inkanyamba, I think I overlooked Dr Fright a bit in my plays. I’d only fought him once before, and I think in the future I’d love to try him in places like the Sunnydaze Mall. I kind of wish the Feature Film books would have DLC or extra scenarios which crossed series. Speaking of which…

Lore & Scenario Book, Gruesome Deaths and Feature Film Book

I’ve mentioned the lore about some of the Final Girls and Killers in my reviews, and those come from the Scenario & Lore Book. The book’s divided out by set, with a page on the Killer and then a series of scenarios making horror series featuring them, after all, what’s a horror movie without a lot of sequels? Some of the scenarios are pretty basic combinations and they skew towards the default Final Girl, Location and Killer combo for each set. They move things along as they go, requiring specific setups, events and terror cards. Some even add special mechanics which are shown on the red bar at the bottom of each scenario, making them easy to reference.

This being Series One, a lot of the scenarios will find ways to run through most of the locations, sometimes double-dipping. It feels a little contrived with that, but I’ve seen Jason Takes Manhattan, contrivance is part of any long-running horror series.

Finally, there’s a page for each Final Girl, giving them their full names and backgrounds. 

The Book of Gruesome Deaths is something I’ve not got physical copies of for Series One, but is enabled on the Final Girl App, so I have some experience of it. 

What’s worse than a Killer chasing down and murdering little yellow victim meeples? It’s if their name is Harvey and you get to hear how he’s brutally destroyed by a monster. Humans anthropomorphise things. You look at the front of a car and see a face. People hear a Large Language Model has a name and they treat it like a person, even going psychotic as it gasses them up. Giving a name and personality to each of the Victims makes their deaths feel bad. 

Between the behaviours of panicking Victims and the Book of Gruesome Deaths, you can interpret the results and give them more autonomy. Each Killer and Location has random entries for where death may come from. That way if it’s from a specific Terror card or Event, it’ll be tuned to fit what happens. There are plenty of general ones, too, as that’s the most common way a Killer will dispose of them.

The final book to cover is a Feature Film Guide. This one’s nice and easy, it’s basically just all of the scenario rules for each location and Killer in one space. It also has achievements which can be tracked. If you have the app, then the achievements are included, but there’s always something satisfying about ticking a box.

That’s a wrap on Series One! Once I get the birds back from Steve, who’s diligently painting them and trying not to go mad, I’ll pick a random location and try them out. Last time, they devoured me, so hopefully things will go better in my replay.