Gathering Gloom - A Wonderful Hidden Gem

Hey folks, welcome back to the dungeon dive. Daniel here. I hope you're doing well and if you're not, I hope you are soon. Okay, I know I've said this before, but it's worth repeating. One of my favorite things about doing the dungeon dive is stumbling upon a game that is not on a lot of people's radar.

a game that is kind of off the beaten path. And that's especially true when the game is as good as Gathering Gloom. So, Gathering Gloom is a game made by Harvey and Carly Cornell. They are a husband and wife duo. This is self-published. They have a small little company called Dragon Phoenix Games. And I actually discovered Dragon Phoenix Games and Gathering Gloom when I was doing some research for some house rules for a game that we're going to cover in the next episode of the Dungeon Dive.

But, uh, Gathering Gloom, I would put this game in kind of the same bucket as something like A Touch of Evil or Arcadia Tanner. And those are two kind of horror themed games that I love a lot. And while I consider these games in kind of like a trilogy, I think you could play these games all on the same weekend for a kind of ultimate horror game marathon, uh, Gathering Gloom is not necessarily an adventure game.

At its core, it is a worker placement game. It is a deck building game. It is a threat management game. However, beyond its mechanisms, beyond the things that you are doing, what Gathering Gloom does so well is create lasting memories and stories. And the way that all of the different pieces of this game work together in interesting ways.

This is a fantastic game. Uh, this is one of the best games I've played this year. I don't think it's new. I don't know exactly when it came out. It's not a brand new game, but this is one of the best gaming experience if experiences I've had in 2025. So, this says that as a member of the charming family, you want to live peacefully in Banebridge Village and keep your home and family businesses running, but the villagers think you may be monsters, and they mean to prove it.

And they they're right. You are monsters, and you're kind of evil monsters. Uh, this isn't a situation like the Adams family or the monsters where they are just kind of misunderstood ex eccentrics or freaks or weirdos. Uh, no, the charming family, they're up to no good. Uh, Gathering Gloom is a worker placement deck building comic gothic horror game in which you play as the monsters.

So, yeah. So, you are playing as a member of the Charming Family. And the member of the members of the charming family include Jackson Cheronoff the werewolf, Hannah Deweiler the zombie, Samantha Charming the witch, uh Barnaby Kolier the vampire, Elmore Frankenstein the mad scientist. Mr. Eman the phantom, we have Annis May Lunar, she's a moonhag.

We have Alfred Byron Normal, he is Frankenstein's monster. Ezra Clay the Gollum. Joseanne Doolock the ghost, Erica Peabody the doppelganger, and Maggie O'Harley the Banshee. And so the game that I just finished playing a couple days ago was with Jackson Churnoff the werewolf. So each of the characters will have a certain number of traits that they can spin to match symbols.

This also has set collection and you're trying to match symbols to take certain actions and to solve a certain number of crises to win the game before your member of the charming family causes too much fear in the village in which case the villagers will band together with their torches and their pitchforks and they will come after you.

That's one way to lose the game. Another is to run out of time. the uh doom track. If it ticks up to 50 and you have not solved all of your crises, you not resolved all of those crises, then you also lose the game. And so there are four different traits. We have acumen, charm, horror, strength, and then a wild trait.

And so you need to collect those symbols in order to spin them to accomplish different things throughout the game. One of the ways you will collect symbols is through these deed cards. And this is where the deck building mechanism comes in. There is a huge stack of deed cards and each of the characters will have their starting hand or their starting deck.

And so uh the werewolf starts with six cards such as strain, dash, murder, terrify, deceive, and snatch. Now, these uh deed cards, they can be used for multiple things. You can spend them to order in order to match those trait symbols that you might need to accomplish things. And each of these deed cards also has a special action that you can take when it is your turn, such as murder.

You can kill one of the villagers. Or if the villagers become a stalker and they suspect you of being up to no good, then you can kill your stalker. And so during a game, there is no limit to the number of cards you can have in your deck or in your hand. You are trying to gather these as you play so you can spend them.

And like I said, there is a very very large number of deed cards throughout the game. Each of the characters has their own starter deck. And then throughout the game, there will be many opportunities to draw these cards and add them to your deck. So, in order to win the game, you have to solve, you have to resolve a certain number of crises depending on the difficulty that you are playing at.

I've played with 14 crises. So, as a member of the Charming Family up here in this village here, we have the Charming Family spaces. We have the Banebridge Universal Mining and Processing Plant, or Bump as it's known. We have Darkmore Manor, the Charming Family Home, and we have their other business here, the Elm Shadows Mortuary.

Throughout the game, various crises are going to be happening at these three locations. There is a main enemy group working against the charming family and they are called the Brotherhood of Light. They are a group of literal angels and dogooders and reporters who are out to expose the charming family for their wickedness and take them down and it's up to us to stop them.

Each of the crisis crises will have a certain number of traits that we have to match whether by spending the traits on our character, by spending the traits from our deed cards or by enthralling villagers and making them be our minions and then we can use their traits in order to overcome these crises.

So for instance, this one here needs one acumen, three charm, and two horror in order to resol in order to resolve. So, we'll take our uh little stack here. I've already uh uh selected out 14 and we draw three at the beginning of the game and we put them in their locations. So, the first one here goes to bump and this says that brotherhood causes quarry to lose orders.

Oh man, they're trying to sabotage our business. Uh we have the elm shadows mortuary. A priest inquires into mortuary practices. says, "Oh, we can't have some meddling priest uh stalking around our mortuary." And we also have Darkmore Manor, Unicorn's Headmmaid, tries to save the family. Uh so, another priest out there wanting to save us from our wicked ways.

We also have three different spaces that when we go to those spaces, we can trigger their powers. And those are usually ways to draw more cards or to interact with the board in various ways. Now, as we move down the board south from our the charming family territories, we move into the village. But first, we pass through the mockingb bird hill cemetery.

Now, this cemetery is super spooky. At the beginning of the game, there will be one dead body in the cemetery. And so right now, Mildred Luking has been killed. She was a reporter. Uh maybe she was snooping around and so we took her out. The various villagers might have a special power. They will have a trait that you can use when you enthral them.

So they're one of your minions. They have a strength that you have to overcome. They have a a fear that they have to overcome. Courage that you have to uh overcome their courage in order to scare them. And they also have some weariness. We'll talk a little bit about weariness later, but one of the interesting things about this game is the various spaces and the villagers are all suspicious of you.

They have a certain level of weariness. And if you ever match or have a certain number of the weariness symbols, then the villagers will become stalkers. And if they are a stalker, you will put them on your character card here. and they are constantly hounding you, they are following you around, trying to catch you uh up to no good.

And as your fear level that you are causing in the village as it ticks up, then that will trigger your stalkers. If your fear level ever gets up to 12 or you are just causing a ton of terror, a ton of fearer in uh the village, then that is one of the ways that the game ends. Now what's really interesting is these bodies in the cemetery they can actually be harvested for their soul and when they are they are ravaged.

So we have ravaged their body and we have harvest harvested one of these soul tokens from the body and then this becomes a trait that we can spend in order to uh overcome a challenge later on in the game. However, at certain opportunities throughout the game, these bodies in the cemetery, they might be exumed.

They might be dug up and used as evidence against you. If the body is unravaged, that's not so bad, but you it still might cause some suspicion. But if the body is ravaged, that is really bad, and you will have to deal with some peril if that comes out as evidence against uh the nasty things that you have been doing.

Next to the cemetery, we have the charming family staff members. And each of the various locations, the three locations has three staff members. So we have Bump, the manor, and the mortuary. So at Bump, we have Betty Karns, Matthew Bream, and Henry Wilcox. At the Manor, our staff includes Silus Lurch, Penelopey Adams, and Sandy Brown.

And at the mortuary, we are assisted by Janice Caroff, Sammy Green, and Buddy Smith. Now, staff members, they are villagers, so they can come out on the village track. You can enthral them to become your minions. They can become stalkers. But what's interesting about the staff members is they can be used for their trait anywhere that they are out on the board.

So, think of the staff members, you know, they are working for the charming family. Uh, they may be clueless about their wrongdoings. They may be willfully ignorant about their wrongdoings, but they want to help the charming family until the evidence is just overwhelming and they can no longer look the other way.

Next to our staff here, we have these cards that represent a town council and a mob justice. And at certain points when the timer ticks up, you might have to draw one of these cards. And this will be an additional thing that you have to deal with on that turn. Okay, let's move down a little bit more.

And we're uh moving into Main Street here. And Main Street, this is where the various villagers will come out. And the villagers, we have a stack of villagers here. So we have people like Beatatric Farley, Brian Rosenberg, Katrina Danforth. I love the art on these villager cards. I think it is so cool.

Martha Merkel and so on. Some of the villagers will have these additional special abilities that will trigger at certain points in the game. Uh when you're just learning the game or you're playing the non-advanced mode, you want to remove the villagers that have special traits. And so at the beginning of the game, you will shuffle these up and you will draw out four different villagers.

And so these are the villagers that we can enthral by certain ways, overcoming their toughness or scaring them, turning them into minions. However, these villagers can also uh gather up evidence and they can gather up items that can help them uh help them overcome the charming family, help them expose the charming family.

So, right now we have Ann Spencer, Rosie Parka, Martha Martha Merkel, and Helen Wait. And speaking of evidence and items, over here we have the evidence track. And at certain times, depending on the roll of the die, at the beginning of each turn, you roll. I think this is the doom die. This is the gloom die.

Um, evidence might come out. And as evidence moves up this track, if it ever leaves the track, then there is a opportunity where that piece of evidence can be slotted on your character card, thus adding some of those trait symbols, some of those weariness symbols. And if those symbols ever match up in certain combinations, then the villagers have gathered enough evidence to come after you and they might become one of your stalkers.

And if you already have a stalker, that stalker might force you to take some peril. And so we have all kinds of different evidence. A hear is seen. Uh some uh something in an old yearbook that somebody found maybe giving them a clue. Um, they may maybe they found the Necronomicon in an old library and it has a charming family's name written in it or various cemetery visits have unearthed bodies and found clues.

Uh, the villagers have started looking through old newspapers. So, there's all kinds of different evidence and you have to deal with the evidence. You can bury the evidence. You can get rid of the evidence. If a body ends up as evidence, you can sneak over to the evidence locker and move it to the mortuary or take it and bury it in the cemetery.

But these evidence cards are also used for items. And when they're used for items, you turn them over the other way. And so the villagers might be armed with a press pass or an MBA degree, a shotgun, a police source, a a journal, handcuffs, a camera. And so as the villagers gain their items, you will slot them underneath that will add a weariness to them that might add a a different profession or it might add a way that they can overcome or it will add strength.

that will add like silver or holy or herbal strength to the character uh to the villager because some of the characters such as the werewolf here, they are vulnerable to herbal remedies and silver. And so if a villager is armed with something that allows them to have one of these traits, then it is harder for the werewolf to uh enthral that villager or maybe the werewolf will be more susceptible to that villager's power.

That is super super cool. I absolutely love that. In my last game, I was playing as the werewolf and I had two villagers out and they were both lawmen and the lawmen are pretty powerful. However, the lawmen were both armed with holy weapons. And so in my game, in my story, you know, I I was saying that the either the lawmen, you know, maybe they weren't the brightest and so they didn't they didn't they had their mythologies wrong and so they thought holy items could take out a werewolf.

Or maybe they were just they had the wrong clues and say and so they were arming themselves with the wrong instruments of destruction. That is so cool. I love it. I love when the villagers get items because it just adds this little bit of of narrative and some mechanism in order to make the game more interesting.

Now, if a villager is armed with an item and you happen to enthral them, and one of the ways that the werewolf can enthral villagers is they can use their strain D cards uh in order to enthral them. And then that character moves to your character sheet along with their items. And so sometimes you want to enthral villagers that have items because those items might be able to help you.

So, as those villagers, as they gather clues, as they gather those symbols at the end of each turn, you are going to do a little check using this little kind of matrix here, but it sounds more confusing than it is. You are looking for either four different symbols. So if all of the symbols total up on the villagers or on your uh the spaces where you are or on the the evidence, if you have visual, deductive, oral, and intuitive, then you uh you gain a stalker and one of the villagers has gathered enough evidence and they become your stalker.

Then you have to deal with them. If they have four of the same weariness, then the same thing happens. Now what's interesting is they is they if they have three different ones so they need a possible fourth one or they have three of the same thus they need a possible fourth similar icon then you turn to the deeds deck and this is a little randomizer.

So there are three different uses for this deeds deck. If you have three matching or three different with a possible a possibility of getting a fourth, you turn over the deed deck and you look at the icon on the top. If that triggers a four of a kind or four different symbols, then that also triggers your stalker and they will start stalking you.

Again, super super cool. As you start dealing with stalkers and as things start getting really bad, as the threats start snowballing, then you have to deal with this peril deck. The this peril deck, whoops, that was actually a villager. He should have been in the village deck. But this peril deck is a whole bunch of really bad stuff that you have to deal with.

So, as the game progresses, the threats start snowballing and things become more and more dangerous. Uh, discard the first villager on Main Street. Add fear equal to the number of weariness symbols. So, you've done something that has caused fear. And so, that villager has maybe uh moved out of town, but everybody else is going, "Why?

Why did Annne Spencer move out of town? She left without any of her possessions. Where did she go?" And they're already suspecting the charming family of being up to no uh no good. And so your fear level will uh will move up. Move two D cards from your hand to the common discard pile. Okay, that sucks.

You would lose two of your deed cards. So if you were doing some careful deck building, uh you might get uh stymied there and then you'd have to kind of start over and building your deed engine. Uh the first two villagers on Main Street are killed and end up in the in the morg unless players in village location takes them as stalkers.

Interesting. So, these peril cards are super cool. They add a lot of story. They add a lot of little random events and elements that can uh really make your game much more difficult, but also just more fun because it's just it's fun to think of being a member of this monster family out there terrorizing this village and trying to keep uh their misdeeds uh secret.

Okay. And then finally, we move down to the very very bottom of the board. And these are the various spaces in the village that the monsters can move to that you can move to while you are playing. And when you are playing, you are going to use one of these absolutely lovely little painted standes. I love the art.

There are two main artists in the game. Uh one of them is is the designer. Um what's her name? I forgot her name. One of them is Carly Cornell. Uh the the wife of the duo. and she does some of the art and then somebody else does the art for the various villager cards. But I just I love the way this game looks.

I think it looks fantastic. But when you move into a location, you will be able to take that location's action. And so printed on the board, we have Acme Engineering, we have Dossia's Diner, we have Madame Zelda's Psychic Readings, we have the Theer Undead, we have the Bainbridge Town Square. This is where you want to go to lower your fear.

And I love this because, you know, you're just kind of mingling with the crowd. You know, hey, look, we're not up to no good. I'm not really a werewolf. I'm not really a ghost. I'm not really a mad scientist. And you can use your charm trait in order to lower your fear. I love that idea. And then here we have the constellar and the morg.

And so this is where you want to go to like remove that evidence or toh remove those bodies that might come back to haunt you. But what's really cool is even though each one of these has a single power, such as for a worker placement, when you place your character there, you do its power, each one of these also has a token that you can use that adds a double-sided uh different ability for each of the spaces.

And so you might want to not use Acme Engineering for one game. you want might want to use hook crook hook and crook accounting or maybe instead of Madame Zelda's psychic readings you want to use the mystical bizaarre and so there's all kinds of variety there and how you want to set up your spaces I think that is super super cool uh there is a little cheat sheet here that gives you an overview of all of the various spaces including those random spaces And we also have the spaces that are up there at the top of the board for uh for the charming family spaces.

And we also have an icon manifest because this game does have a lot of icons and it can be a little confusing to learn because there is so much going on. So, Gathering Gloom is not a simple game. I don't think it's overly complex, but there is a lot going on and it can be a little fiddly. It can be a little difficult to learn, but once you start playing, you really get into the groove of everything, and I think it just works.

The turns are rather simple. Uh, all of the spaces on the board are considered adjacent, so you don't need to count spaces. You can move from one space to the next. At the beginning of each turn, you will roll your gloom die here, and this will tell you if a villager comes out or if the gloom track ticks up.

As the gloom track ticks up, if it ever gets to 50, then you have lost. Uh maybe some evidence will come out, an item might come out. Uh what else can happen here? The gloom track might tick up twice and an item might come out. At certain points in the game, you will also roll the doom die, and this might trigger a peril or maybe some damning evidence or cause you to take more fear.

And then once the uh doom counter gets up to slot every uh spot 18, then you also have to start rolling the dread die. And this will cause more of those crises to appear at the charming family uh locations. So that's how more uh more crises come out for you to solve, for you to resolve. I think the uh rule book overall is pretty well written, but uh the game does a lot of things different, especially different than games that I am used to playing.

And so it did take me a little while to learn, but after one full game, I kind of have the game uh kind of memorized now. I mean, it's it flows. There's a really really good flow to the game. I think the most confusing part for people will be when it comes time to do your villager or your stalker check and counting up those symbols and just knowing what you're looking for.

But, uh, once you learn that, it goes really, really quickly. You also get a handful of tokens here that you can use to keep track of things. So, when you have a whole bunch of of icons to match for those crises or if you're trying to uh overcome some some type of challenge, you can use these tokens here to keep track of those.

As you use your character's abilities, as you use the abilities of your staff members, as you use the abilities of your enthralled minions, they will have to be exhausted. And so, you will place these exhausted tokens on the cards to show that they can't be used again that turn. But um yeah, overall man, overall, Gathering Gloom is just a fantastic game.

This is the exactly the kind of game that I love to discover and that I love to play. It plays well. It's unique. There's a lot going on. It's not overly complicated, but I would say it's kind of fiddly, you know. Think of this as kind of I don't know. It's almost a Euro style Arkham Horror or something like that or or a Touch of Evil.

You know, I could see this game really winning people over who don't typically like an Arkham horror or a Touch of Evil adventure style game, but they want something really thematic. They especially like, you know, hammer horror or gothic horror. I could see this game really winning over other types of game players.

you know, there there's kind of a there's a cross-section between uh games that we like on the Dungeon Dive and this game. And that cross-section could be a really, you know, crucial part to bring into this hobby. And so, you know, if you have a friend who maybe doesn't really like adventure games and you really want to play something adventurous and they want something a little a little more tactical, not tactical, but just a little bit more going on mechanically, I think Gathering Gloom might be a perfect game to play with them.

Um, especially if they're into horror. Now, I wouldn't want to play this game with people who aren't going to get into the theme because the theming is so important in this game. And that's why I think this is such a great uh solo game because I'm able to get into the story. I'm able to connect all of these various dots, all of these interlinking mechanisms and all of these various villagers and the dead bodies and people at the morg and the evidence and the brotherhood of light attacking the dark dark manor and these these priests and these uh these reporters snooping around trying to unearth my dark secrets.

you know, I'm really able to get into that theme and connect those narrative dots. The game isn't going to tell you a story. This isn't a game about telling a story. This is a game about creating stories and creating those kinds of memorable moments that only happen because of chance randomness where all of these various disperate elements come together to make something really special.

And I think Gathering Gloom is a very, very special game. I am so happy that I stumbled upon it and I can highly, highly recommend it. I think it's about $50 or $60 and I think that price is great. I mean, you get so much stuff, hundreds of cards, great art. Everything is mostly high quality. You know, the the the player boards are a little flimsy.

They're a little too big. They don't look great. Uh, some of the iconography is definitely a little amateur-ish. You know, it doesn't scream high production values. You know, you wouldn't see like Fantasy Flight Games or Seimon using icons like this. Some of these look like maybe stock icons or or wingings or something like that.

But if you can get over some of the amateuress of this game, this is a hidden gem. Well worth investing your time and money. So, uh, yeah, I hope you like this overview of Gathering Gloom. We will talk to you later. Bye-bye.