The creators of Stranger Things, Matt and Ross Duffer, have long said that they wanted to create their own pop-culture monsters. Waffle cards don’t do anything in the game specifically, but if you want to play a series of games, you can keep points and waffles are worth 1 point. Will's next vision took place at school, shortly after he encountered Dart in the bathroom. Will found himself in the Upside Down once more, standing in the school corridor. Suddenly, the shadow monster's dark mist began to flood into the corridor before chasing after Will. After running outside and onto the field, Will stopped and turned to see the Mind Flayer looming high above the school. Remembering what Bob had told him as they drove to school, Will attempted to confront the Mind Flayer, yelling at it to "go away!" The Mind Flayer ignored Will, continuing to pursue him before entrapping him within one of its tornado-like appendages. I noticed that CMON chose this past week to announce Rob Daviau's upcoming Stranger Things game, which is a full year away from release. These are two different games for two different audiences, and the world can handle multiple Stranger Things games. I'm actually flattered if they were concerned my game would take sales away from theirs. In 1983, a gate to the Upside Down - a dimension somehow related to Dimension X - was accidentally opened by Eleven at Hawkins Lab. Henry, also known as Vecna, first actively attempted to take over the world in 1984. Acting through the Mind Flayer, he possessed Will Byers and an army of adolescent Demogorgons, or "Demodogs". Eleven interfered by closing the gate at Hawkins Lab, severing the psychic link between the worlds and killing the Demodogs in the process. As Eleven closed the Gate, Will's friends and family worked to force a piece of the Mind Flayer out of his body, which in turn became dormant after the Gate's closure.

In Beyond Stranger Things, the Duffers revealed that Eleven's reunion with Mike at the end of this episode was originally planned to have taken place at the Snow Ball of the season finale. [2] Despite having an episode named after it, the Mind Flayer is not physically present in said episode. Prolonged exposure to high temperature can weaken the Mind Flayer. When Will Byers was exposed to high temperature, it forced the fragment of the Mind Flayer within Will to flee his body. Similarly, when soldiers set the tunnels aflame, the possessed Will writhed in pain. Hopper and his allies returned to the base, hoping that destroying the particles in the cell could inflict damage to the Upside Down’s hive mind, and therefore assist in the conflict simultaneously occurring in Hawkins. After learning what had happened since their escape, the group started fighting the possessed creatures, still hoping to inflict pain on the hive mind. After chasing Hopper and Joyce around the Soviet base for a lengthy period, the Demogorgons gathered in the same spot, allowing Murray to burn the bulk of them to death with Yuri Ismaylov's flamethrower. The fully grown Demogorgon survived, but moments later, Hopper used a sword to behead the creature. The deaths of the Demogorgons weakened everything else connected to the hive mind: the bats, the vines, and even Vecna himself. By executing the Demogorgons, the group seemed to destroy various fragments of the Mind Flayer, or otherwise rendered its particles unusable.

After taking Will to Hopper's cabin, Joyce, Nancy, and Jonathan restrained him, surrounding him with numerous heaters. This eventually caused the fragment of the Mind Flayer possessing Will to be expelled from his body. The particles fled the cabin, escaping to the abandoned Brimborn Steel Works to lay low. Possessed humans are colder to the touch than average, to the point where the temperature around possessed humans significantly decreases. Mind Flayer players know who the other Mind Flayer players are at the beginning if you have at least six players rather than the eight-player limit in GROWL. My guess is that playtesting revealed the Mind Flayer players had trouble winning in casual game groups. On November 6, 1983, the Mothergate opened at Hawkins Lab, allowing the Upside Down - a realm somehow related to Dimension X - to begin to spread through. Will Byers, a young resident of Hawkins, was captured by a Demogorgon and brought to the Upside Down's version of the town's public library. Although he was safely recovered by friends and family, Will began to have visions of the Upside Down.

I began my journey by playing a bunch of other social deduction games. I wanted to make sure my idea was at least semi-original. The goal was to not reinvent Werewolf (or One Night Ultimate Werewolf, which I knew would be a potential rival). Visual-effects producers Paul and Christina Graff were tasked with designing the creature. Because the first season incorporated several electrical interferences, they knew the second season would involve storms. Once it was decided the monster was “storm-like”, the Graffs began reseraching the look of storms and tornadoes. Steve Messing, a matte painter who was also consulted on the designs of several other Stranger Things elements, created concept art of the creature based on tornadoes, volcanoes, and other natural forces. In addition, they were inspired by volcanic eruptions with lightning storms in South America. [1] After the gate was successfully formed, the Upside Down's psychic link to Hawkins was also re-established, reviving the fragment of the Mind Flayer laying low at Brimborn Steel Works. The cloud of particles began possessing hordes of rats, and had them consume different types of chemicals; many of the rats would then explode into bloody puddles of biomass to create a proxy form, through which Vecna (via the Mind Flayer) could operate in the human world. I sold about 12,000 copies of the game, and eventually decided to send a bunch of copies to bigger publishers as I was nervous that I would never get a distribution deal otherwise. I hired a wonderful Dutchman named Richard to demo the game at SPIEL '19, and he attracted the interest of Repos Production, which shortly afterward became a subsidiary of Asmodee. Matt Duffer told Entertainment Weekly that the shadow monster was inspired by horror classics: "There's an H.P. Lovecraft sort of approach, this inter-dimensional being that is sort of beyond human comprehension." [7]

Contributors

The Mind Flayer is very similar to the Elder Gods of H.P. Lovecraft, with his work actually tying into the Stranger Things universe, with Lisa from the novel "Darkness At The Edge Of Town" being a graduate of the infamous Lovecraftian college "Miskatonic University". In a news release, the companies said that “each title features fun, easy-to-learn gameplay based on themes and locations found in their respective series,” suggesting that the titles are aiming for an easy transition from streaming to cardboard, perhaps as a gateway to more involved games. Eulogy"- The group tries to deal with the events occurring at Hawkins Laboratory; Mike informs the group that Bob was the original founder of their school's AV club.

Lots of things about the Mind Flayer remain a mystery, and that's by design. "There’s an H.P. Lovecraft sort of approach, this inter-dimensional being that is sort of beyond human comprehension," series co-creator Matt Duffer told Entertainment Weekly. "We purposely don’t want to go too much into what it is or what it wants.” Though Vecna's control of the Mind Flayer's hive mind made him powerful, the two-way nature of the psychic connection was also a point of vulnerability. Any pain felt by the connected entities was shared amongst them; the physical suffering of his thralls would translate to every other being in the hive mind, including Vecna himself. This made the hive mind a prime target for his enemies.

The following morning, Hopper was called to Merrill Wright's farm to investigate a strange rot that had decimated the entirety of the pumpkin patch. Lots of events were canned, and there are several new events that I would not have included due to fears of balance issues — but this is a casual game, and I suspect Pierre knows what he's doing! While speculating the shadow monster's weakness, Lucas, Mike, Dustin, and Max theorized that if they destroyed the monster, they would also destroy the monster's army. When they realized that the shadow monster controlled everything in a hive mind, they compared it to the Mind Flayer, a monster from Dungeons & Dragons that similarly controls the minds of its victims. The boys' D&D manual also stated that the Mind Flayer's goal was to spread and take over other dimensions, making them speculate that the shadow monster wanted to do the same. The group decided to interrogate Will to find the shadow monster's weakness. The dimensional barrier puts hard limits on the Mind Flayer's ability to take over other worlds. However, if the barrier is damaged, the Mind Flayer is able to exert more and more influence in another dimension. The entity was discovered by Henry Creel between 1979 and 1983, following Henry's banishment to Dimension X. This version of the Mind Flayer was a storm-like mass of shadowy particles, or mist; it is not known if the mist possessed its own independent will, or consciousness, though it was certainly a living organism. [2] [3] Henry used his powers to reconstitute the mist into a form that satisfied him: a giant, spider-like entity with a flame-shaped head, not unlike a similar fantasy creature he had imagined as a child.

When Vecna emerged as a new threat to Hawkins in 1986, Dustin believed that he was essentially the Mind Flayer's "five-star general". Later, Vecna targeted Nancy Wheeler with the sole purpose of sending Eleven a message. He subjected Nancy to various disturbing visions, including a "giant creature with a gaping mouth" looming over Hawkins. I hadn't gotten to season 3 yet, but the Mind Flayer seemed to be an obvious match for the game, so Repos paired with another Asmodee subsidiary named Mixlore to make the licensing deal with Netflix, then a talented developer at Repos named Pierre began percolating ideas. The Four Horseman" by Metallica - Billy listens to some music while smoking and getting ready for his date. His father and step-mom enter his room concerned for Max's whereabouts. The initial idea probably started in 2017 when I was playing a prototype for Little Red Riding Hood: Full Moon Rising by one of my favorite designers, Ta-Te Wu. In that game, you can walk in the woods (draw a card), but there's a single Big Bad Wolf card that can turn you into a werewolf. (There's a similar system with the exposure cards in Who Goes There?)With the Mind Flayer at his side, Vecna’s powers greatly expanded. The Mind Flayer’s body could split into smaller pieces while sharing a collective consciousness. These smaller pieces could possess other creatures and beings, tying them to the same core consciousness; through the Mind Flayer, Vecna could connect various lifeforms to a shared hive mind, with Vecna's will at the top of the chain. Through the hive mind, a diverse range of beings fell under Vecna's control, including "Demogorgons", Will Byers and the tunnel-organism in 1984, the "Flayed" of 1985, and "Demobats", as well as the roots and vines strewn across the surface of the Upside Down. I vaguely remember that Bang may have played some small role as one of the inspirations for GROWL. I'm not a fan of that game (especially the length), but I remember that some weapons can target only your neighbors, which likely got me thinking about adjacency. I remember thinking I was very clever for realizing that wolves should have the ability to bite their neighbors only at night — then I got my copy of One Night Ultimate Alien and was embarrassed to learn that all my werewolves have the same rules as the cow in that game. Ob la di, ob la da. (By the way, Ted Alspach from Bézier Games has been very supportive and generous to me over the years, despite my game riding on a thread or two of his coattails. Thank you, Ted, and I enjoy your games very much.)