The goal of the game is sad, but simple: you want your characters to suffer the greatest tragedies possible before passing on to the next life. You'll play horrible mishaps on your own characters to lower their Self-Worth scores, while trying to cheer your opponents' characters with marriages and other happy occasions that pile on positive points. Once all of your family members are R.I.P., the player with the lowest total Family Value (the most depressive family) wins.
Printed on transparent plastic cards, Gloom features an innovative design. Multiple modifier cards can be played on top of the same character card; since the cards are transparent, elements from previously played modifier cards either show through or are obscured by those played above them. You'll immediately and easily know the worth of every character, no matter how many modifiers they have. You have to have some sick sense of humour to play this game.
The base set GLOOM comes with four families and enough modifiers to get you going with your family and friends; however, like every other card game, there are expansions to this one as well:
1- Unhappy Homes:In this first expansion, you get a new family to add another player to the game and also houses for each family. There are new modifier, event and death cards but there are also new mystery cards that can be played on your households in order to have lasting effects for your family; which can also give you a lower family value at the end of the game. There are an additional 55 cards in this expansion and worth it.
The second expansion that adds, once again, a new family and a new residence for that family to be played along with the Unhappy Homes expansion (and if you don't have that expansion, then just the residence aside - along with any mystery cards in this expansion) and a total of 55 more transparent cards (modifiers, events, untimely deaths, etc.). However, this expansions includes 5 new character cards known as "Guests". These character cards will be placed on the table and throughout the game, they will "follow" a family once their card effect is triggered (ie. when you play a certain modifier, this guest will attach itself to the player's family that just played that card). The guest cards will do this the entire game, which could also make the player closest to winning the game, be the player who has to now kill off a guest in order to win the game. Great little expansion that lets you have 6 players when added with Unhappy Homes.
3- Unfortunate Expeditions:This third expansion adds another family in order to allow for a 7th player to join in on the Gloomy fun and again with a total of 55 new cards, you will be able to add new modifiers, events, mysteries and untimely deaths. Also included are expedition cards; these are placed on the table out of play until a player plays a modifier or untimely death card that has the expeditions' symbol on it and then that card is put in the middle of the play area and the effects are triggered and effect each player until a new expedition comes into play (there can only be one expedition in play at a time and when a new one comes into play, it replaces the old one. These effects remain as long as the card is in play.
Finally, the last (sort of) expansion for the Gloom card game; this expansion does not add a new family but does add 7 new undead modifiers. These new modifiers can change your character to an undead character such as a vampire, mummy, ghost, ghoul, wereduck, invisible person, or haunted portrait; these undead characters are both living and dead and can have modifiers and events played on them just like on living characters. These cards also count for your family's self worth and can help you kill off your family faster while still bringing down their morale. There are a total of 55 cards in this expansion which can be added to the the rest of the cards; in these cards there are new Story cards which players will want to have on their side of the table because these cards will give you special abilities until another player steals the story. Finally, they have added some timing symbols on the modifiers to show whether a card has an Instant effect that occurs when the card is played from your hand; an Ongoing effect that lasts until it is covered by another card; or a Persistent effect that can last as long as the Character is still alive ... or Undead.
For Cthulhu fans, there is a second base set entitled "Cthulhu Gloom" and it has it's own expansion as well, but I was not interested in this whatsoever.
Now when you look at all these expansions, 110 base cards and 55 x 4 expansions makes one hell of a big deck of cards to play with, and you are right; myself, I decided to create 3 separate decks using all sets (base and expansions) and mixed up all the modifiers, untimely deaths and events and distributed them evenly among the three decks. I also made theme-style decks; one regarding the undead (so I put less untimely deaths in this deck) which I believe is my "starter" deck, a deck with the stories and mysteries and another with the expeditions and the guests... I think that is what I did, I can't remember. Anyways, I think this is a better way to use all of these cards, but trust me, just the base set is a great way to play this with a few friends now and then.
Quickly, this is how you play the game of Gloom:
First you choose your family (take the residence that goes with it, if you have the Unhappy Homes expansion) and draw 5 cards. Each player has 2 turns; the first turn you can play any type of card (modifier, event, mystery, untimely death, etc.), discard a card or simply pass. The second turn is the same but you CANNOT play an untimely death unless a previously played card allows for an out-of-turn card to be played. Then, you draw back up to your hand limit (which can be modified by certain cards). Simple right, well it is... keep playing cards until one familly has been killed off and count up (or down) your family value and see who wins the game. Just a quick hint, try and kill other player's family members before they get to play modifiers on them.
The real fun of this game is storytelling; yep you can tell a fun story while you are playing this game just to keep it fun and entertaining while trying to be as gloomy as possible. There is a good example of this on youtube posted by TableTop:
Overall, I give this game 4.5 dice out of 5 and recommend it to anyone who has a sense of humour.
I really enjoyed playing this and it made us all have a good laugh.
This game is available at Multizone.
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