One final thing to note. There is a fifth action that the rulebook states you can leave out when you are new to the game and I definitely agree. It is to ‘Launder money’ and basically means you have to spend precious actions every now and then to manage your money or you risk losing some when you reach a certain amount. Feel free to include it in your games when you feel ready. Hotshot or Grave Mistake?

When you kill a Guest of the inn, you put him in front of you Dead-side-up. It pains you, but what can you do? This is the life you have chosen! Keep in mind that you have a code of honor: You only steal money from a Guest when you bury him! Everyone has skeletons in the closet. But you have them in the barn, the vegetable garden, and the butcher shop too. Well, you can't just leave them lying around for anyone to find! Growing a business means expansion and diversification. Parlors, parks and gardens, distilleries, and workshops will all amplify the attraction of your inn. Each new annex delivers a competitive advantage. Not to mention a few more places to conceal a corpse or two! Module 1: The Carnies — The carnies are a new type of guest. This module can be played with or without the event cards. Before the start of the game, decide whether you want to include the event cards. At the end of the round (phase 3), before the police investigation step, if at least one carnie occupies a room of the inn (or a trailer), you must resolve the event card this round. Great games start with great ingredients and on its surface, The Bloody Inn should be a game that I love. It has beautiful art, a quirky (if macabre) theme, cards that serve multiple purposes, and a publisher with a strong pedigree. Unfortunately, it’s peppered with enough bitter elements to temper my opinion. But rather than focus on the negative, I’ll give credit to what the games does right and how it’s almost a great game.The face up guest whose annex we have built will now either grant us an instant or ongoing ability. Finally, each card still in a player’s hand costs them 1 Franc per card they wish to retain for the next round.

Note: Your accomplice has allowed you to build this annex, but you won't be able to count on his abilities thereafter, because he is too busy! When you take one of these actions, you choose a Guest card in play (in your hand or in the inn, as appropriate). Example: Madeline wants to build the distillery associated with the distiller she has in her hand. Because the distiller is rank 2, she plays 2 other cards from her hand 1. When it comes to the engine building aspect of the game, it’s definitely on the slower side of the bell curve. With those limited rounds, it will take you quite a few rounds to acquire the annexes you want to build and the people to build them. It’s got almost a slow burn feel to it where you can see the game ramping up, but it takes a while to get there.Set in a remote area of France in 1831, a family of rural farmers are determined to make their fortune. Their diabolical plan? Invest in an inn so the can rob travelers and get rich. And since people tend to complain after they’ve been robbed, there is only one sure-fire way to keep their victims quiet. Make sure they don’t leave the inn alive. The First Player is responsible for welcoming travelers for this round. He must perform the following steps: Module 2: The Notables — The notables are a new type of guest who replace the nobles from the base game. The Bloody Inn is a card game by Pearl Games, with a macabre yet tongue-in-cheek theme. Up to four players are greedy farmers that run a 19th century inn, within a sleepy, remote French village. Your aim? Get rich by killing the guests, and then looting them before burying the evidence! But look out: the local police have heard suspicious activity around your establishment. If any of them survive the night, they’ll start sniffing around and you’ll have to buy your way out of trouble… The end of the round is divided into 3 steps: police investigation, travelers leave, and pay wages. A. Police Investigation

Whether or not their plan will work out, one thing is certain: Not every guest will leave this inn alive. Gameplay If i were to instead decide to Kill the Count, he is rank 2 so i still need to play two cards. Let’s say I played the same two cards from my hand as in the image above, neither of which have the kill symbol (a gun), so both will be discarded to the exit pile. When a guest is killed, you flip the card to its ‘dead’ side and place it on the table in front of you. There is no limit to the amount of dead guests you can have in front of you.Another very small thing, from a thematic point of view, I think the names of the actions are a bit strange. When someone uses the term ‘bribing’ all I think of is money changing hands. So it seems unnatural that in the game you are actually just drawing cards into your hand. No money is transferred. And on top of that the symbol for the action is a wad of cash. I think maybe it can cause confusion for what the action is. But maybe that's just me. Example: In a 3-player game, Anna is responsible for greeting the travelers because she is the first player. Finally, when it comes to player scaling, The Bloody Inn plays well with any of its player count. I do think the game plays best with four players though. Not only does it have more cards coming into the game, but since you can bury your corpses under any players annex, it allows you to spread out the wealth a little bit. In a 2 player game, I never wanted to bury under my opponent’s annex because it’s giving both of us money. Final Thoughts: Even if you kill a guest, you are not allowed to rob them until they get a proper burial. We’re civilized people after all…

Each round is divided into 3 phases: welcome travelers (evening), player actions (night), and end of round (morning).The Bloody Inn has an odd reverence for the dead in that you can’t actually steal money from the deceased until you’ve given them a proper burial. You choose one of the bodies in front of you, discard characters to help you hide the body and place it under an annex. Annexes can only hold a number of bodies equal to its level. Only once a body has been properly disposed of can you collect the money. At the end of the round, if any room of the inn contains one of the police, then they conduct an investigation; if a player has any unburied victims, then he must pay 10F per victim to the local gravedigger to hurriedly — and quietly — bury the bodies! The Bloody Inn does a lot of things right, from its fantastic artwork down to its solid mechanics. I could see the macabre theme being a turn off for some, but to be honest, there is nothing gruesome about artwork that should turn anyone off. So I think only the most sensitive of players need to worry about the theme here. Bribe a guest: Choose a traveler in the inn, play as many cards from your hand equal to the rank of the guest being bribed (0-3) and take the bribed guest into your hand. Any cards you played that have the bribe symbol are returned to your hand with the rest being discarded. France 1831: In a remote corner of Ardèche, the little village of Peyrebeille sees numerous travelers pass through.