Don’t Look Back: A Review
A group of teens, a cooler full of cans, a campfire. And don’t worry about the snapping branch. Probably just a deer…
What is Don’t Look Back?
Don’t look back is a solo or cooperative tabletop game that pits the player, in the role of a range of slasher film trope characters, against an AI controlled Killer. Don’t Look Back is written by Matt Burns and produced by Black Site Studios - a small Texas-based company that make some fantastic models and scenery and have been going into producing games more recently. Don’t Look Back had been on my radar for a while, since my friend stateside picked it up. His description of the game was dead on (pardon the pun). It throws you into the middle of a slasher film such as Halloween, Scream or Friday 13th. The AI that controls the Killer is simple, but it works very effectively, placing the Killer into one of two states - Stalker or Enraged. But I’ll get into this more later on. We have a few bits to cover first.
Each player character, usually 4 characters per game, is chosen randomly between The Nerd (Seth), The Jock (Max), The Spoiled Girl (Denise), The Cheerleader (Alice), The Tough Guy (Holden) and The Park Ranger (Ranger Sandy). You can add to your pool of survivors with expansions which dives even further into the tropes, but in the game I played, I just used the Starter Box characters. These characters all have their own stats to show their wounds count (how much damage they can take), their Fear level (when you go over this level, your ability scores have a negative modifier applied for each fear point, and when doubled, they succumb to terror), their Awareness (this gives you your target score for different tests) and Combat (target score for melee and ranged attacks). Characters also have an ability to help you survive your encounters and an item. The items can be anything from a weapon, be it Max’s Baseball bat or Holden’s Shotgun, to Denise’s mobile phone.
Fear Tokens populate the board, and I really like these. At the start of each turn, you test to see if the tokens activate. If they do, there’s a chance they are nothing. Maybe it’s a rat scurrying around in the woods, or that creepy laughter you could hear turned out to just be a steam vent that has worked itself loose. These tokens are removed from the board. Maybe the noise is coming closer, whatever is creating it is just out of sight, and the token moves towards the nearest character. Or they’re there. The Killer is spawned in. When you activate within 4” of the token, you take a terror point, and these points build up FAST, so do what you can to catch your breath and drop a Terror level when you can.
When the Killer is revealed by the Fear Token they are placed in place of the token, and that is removed. They then move according to the M.O. card they have (Killers are generated with a type of Killer which determines health, special abilities, and their attacks, 2 Traits which can effect things such as modifying the roll for seeing what the Terror Tokens represent, or causing Terror in characters if they activate in the Killer’s Line Of Sight, and 1 M.O. card which determines how the Killer enters the game. Perhaps they’ll target a character furthest from the rest of the group, but keep their distance, hiding behind cover, or they will lunge towards their target and attack immediately. In the Killer Phase, their M.O. is triggered again when certain things occur, but the most common one will be if no one can draw line of sight to the Killer, and they aren’t in base-to-base contact with a character. They then move based on a D10 roll, which is modified if their target has tripped and is not stood up, and for each point of terror on the target character. And when a Killer has a target, they ignore everyone else and move through them in order to get to their target, however they don’t get away unscathed. They take a point of damage and terror automatically.
The Character Phase allows the player characters to activate and perform a range of actions from two lists. Quick Actions and Long Actions. You can perform 2 Quick Actions, or a Quick Action and a Long Action in your turn, plus there are some free actions you can perform at any time after an action. There are even attacks you can make as quick actions (handy if you use your first action to stand up) but with a big negative modifier. Think of it as a blind shot from the pistol, or wildly swinging a bat or knife. And it wouldn’t be a horror film-inspired game without tripping over! If you use your second action to move, and you have Terror points, you risk tripping over after the movement, if you roll equal to, or under your Terror level. If you’re the target of the Killer and you trip over, you’re in a pretty bad spot, but there is no turn order for the characters, so you can plan around what has happened in the Killer turn, and with what your abilities are. But be careful if you’re moving around scenery, because like in all horror films, a good old-fashioned Jump Scare is right around the corner! These can be devastating to the player, having the Killer appear in base to base contact behind them, attacking them immediately. Perhaps any lights will flicker between on/off nearby, or all of the Fright Tokens will move towards the character, making you very likely to take some Fear points. But it’s not all bad news! There’s a chance that the clatter of metal was just a cat knocking over some pipes, or you’ve bumped into a mannequin, not the Killer! So you have a laugh to yourself and lose a Terror point! Or you’ll be able to get some backup with a character nearby making you jump as they put their hand on your shoulder. But if there’s no character nearby, you gain a Terror point. JUST WHOSE HAND WAS THAT?!
Max has the Killer sneaking up behind him as Ranger Sandy shouts for him to get down, reaching for her pistol.
I played the first mission in the Rulebook, Camping. This mission has a pre-set Killer, so you have the Visage, Traits and M.O. selected for you. The characters I drew at random were The Jock, The Spoiled Girl, The Cheerleader and The Park Ranger. I set the board up with the characters starting in the campsite and having to get to the diagonally opposite corner and complete an Awareness check at the road/Ranger Truck. Only one character has to do this to complete the mission.
Sounds pretty easy, but the Killer made sure it wasn’t. He spent a lot of time stalking the Spoiled girl and the Jock, mostly targeting The Jock. He would cause Terror in anyone who activated in his line of sight, and his stalking made sure that he was staying behind everyone. The Cheerleader managed to find a Hunting Rifle at one of the Points of Interest, and she took a shot at the Killer. She managed to hit, but the Killer is a hardy foe, reducing all damage by 2, to a minimum of 1. He would take 3 hits during the game, each dealing 1 damage, but Max’s Bat would knock the Killer back 2” since he had damage. This would make some space for him to get his full movement away from him. But he would risk tripping up, which he did. The Cheerleader and the Spoiled girl would end up trying to get the Ranger Truck started, but couldn’t get it started before they succumbed to their Terror. Ranger Sandy would try and get the attention of the Killer, but it was too little, too late. She and Max would both succumb to their Terror afterwards.
Once you get into the swing of things, the game plays very quickly. I would be flipping between different parts of the rulebook for the first few rounds, but before long, the Quick Reference pages were all I needed. I really enjoyed the game, and I want to play this scenario again and survive it before moving on. I picked up towards the end on a couple of rules I messed up, which probably made things harder for me, but it’s part of learning the game. For scenery, I used the trees I made for The Walking Dead (VIDEO HERE) plus the two Campsite kits I got from TTCombat years ago (also for The Walking Dead). The Ranger Truck is the Toyota Hilux from Antenocitis Workshop (RIP).
Playing the game has helped me get my head around some ideas I’ve been floating around with regards to videos, and it’s getting me pretty excited for it!
Alice and Denise struggle with the truck while Ranger Sandy readies the pistol to shoot the Killer
