This Game Is Killer:
Frozen Horror Review

Last year, I came away from PAX Unplugged 2024 with a great little board game called This Game Is Killer: Alien On Board. I had seen it on the show floor, played it with a friend, and loved the chaotic concept. It was short, sweet, easy to fit in almost any bag, and most importantly, fun. While not perfect, it is a fun and fast party game that doesn’t outstay its welcome, making it a great way to break the ice at a gathering or wrap up a board game night with friends.

I say all this because fast forward to PAX Unplugged 2025, and I walk by the Smirk and Dagger booth to see they published a follow up: This Game Is Killer: Frozen Horror. Same size box, same overall concept, but with a different horror inspiration and some adjustments to the gameplay. It was an easy sell.

I was fortunate enough to get a review copy, and brought it home immediately to share. My local group had played its predecessor dozens of times, and in just a few game nights we’ve already gotten over fifteen games under our belts. There’s a lot to love in this small box of selfish survival, but again, it’s a game dedicated to a particular group and particular mood.

How To Survive AND Eat Your Friends

This review and explanation of Frozen Horror is going to be kept shorter than our usual articles, namely because a lot of the broad strokes are the same from the first game, Alien on Board. Everyone is playing a survivor, and the goal is to survive to the end of the game. Each round you are given two cards, and you play one for an action, and one for your movement around the board. Your actions might give you a better chance of surviving, or they might be more aggressive, getting other players killed. The end of the round arrives, cards are revealed, the actions resolve, and you keep going until the monster or simply every player is dead.

There are two main differences from the first game, and both feel like great changes that make sense from a theming standpoint. Alien on Board was based off of the movie Alien, with a xenomorph hunter slowly picking off the crew, making the human’s space vessel feel more and more claustrophobic and tense. In contrast, Frozen Horror is based off of John Carpenter’s classic The Thing, a movie set in an isolated antarctic base where there was no escape possible. Even better/worse, it turns out the creature could assimilate anyone and anything, causing paranoia to become as much a problem as the monster.

This means instead of having eight places to hide, there are only four… and your characters have a token to move on the map each turn, already starting on the board, using key cards to get around. This wouldn’t seem so bad… until you learn the second change: the monster isn’t controlled by cards or chance, but instead, by a player.

That’s right, there is a hidden traitor in Frozen Horror. More specifically, each round, when you are dealt your cards, you also get an identity card. One turn, you might be a normal human, holing up in the garage with two friends. The next round starts, and suddenly you are the bloodthirsty menace to society and REALLY think your friend’s face looks tasty; Good thing you are already within striking distance!

Damnit Becca, Stop Shooting Me!

In Alien on Board, it was easy to have rounds where the alien through sheer luck just missed everyone, the game becoming more tense as sections of the ship broke off and you had less places to hide. Here in Frozen Horror, the intensity kicks off fast as you simply cannot trust anyone.

This paranoia is made worse through the cards often being a lot more direct, setting up situations where blood will have to be shed in a round. Movement is pretty straight forward: each card has a set of keycards along it, letting you move through those particular doors. The actions meanwhile mess with every part of the game, sometimes allowing players lock particular keycard colors, reveal someone’s hidden identity, or even simply pick up a gun in a crazed act of self defense.

I’ve had games where players have been howling with laughter because one player had successfully revealed the horror, only for everyone to realize that another player was trapped in a room with the monster and no one could stop the inevitable. There has been games where a flawless plan to set a room on fire to kill the monster might have worked… except someone at the last moment played a card to make two players swap identities, causing innocents to be immolated as the creature ate the person who interfered gleefully.

Then, of course, we have my true nemesis: Becca Riley.

On my second night of playing this, my friend Bill drew her card. For three games straight, with player counts of five, seven, and six, I didn’t live past the first turn… because each time, Becca managed to find a gun, or a molotov cocktail, or something violent, and ended my miserable life. When the third time happened and it was revealed Becca had been the horror that round and had successfully killed half of the players, Bill and I were laughing so hard we couldn’t breathe.

And so, Becca’s local game lore was cemented that she’s trigger happy and only cares about herself, right alongside people taking bets that the first time the horror eats someone, it will be in the radio room. When Frozen Horror gets pulled out for a round or two, people inevitably either lunge for Becca’s card to play as her, or attempt to hide her so the curse cannot continue.

An Aggressive And Fun Second Entry In The Series

If it isn’t obvious already, this game is a hit for me. In only about a month’s worth of time, my gaming group has played at least fifteen rounds of Frozen Horror, and people gather around to get in on the next game as the laughter spreads in the coffee shop. It seats 4-10 players, and I can safely say that while it can be fun with four, it is an absolute blast if you can get six or more going. It makes sure every round has either someone dying or some dramatic twist in how the actions should play out, keeping tension constant until the end.

It isn’t a perfect game, naturally. Much like the first iteration of this series, this is a game built on chaos, not strategy. Yes, you can do things to increase your chances of survival, but sometimes the cards you are dealt leave you with no good options. However, that’s half the fun; my group loves watching good decisions go bad, and risky choices pay off. Again, the joy in this game is how much drama can be played out and laughing at the outcomes; it is a wonderful thing when you see a full table of eight players all glued to see who of the three surviving players is actually the monster, and whether or not anyone will be left at all. Even with such a high player count, you are usually shuffling the deck and setting up the next game within fifteen minutes anyway.

This Game Is Killer: Frozen Horror will stay in my bag for at least a few more months. The small box size and short time commitment has meant that it's become a favorite opener for game nights. If I had to give any real criticism, it would be that it’s a touch more expensive, sitting at $20 instead of Alien on Board’s modest $15. That might be a little pricier than people want out of a casual party game, but for our gaming group, it’s been more than worth it.

Be a scientist, survive the monster, don’t trust your friends. A fun little game, and I’m very curious what a third game in this series might end up looking like in the future.