If you haven’t heard, Mother Nature has decided to see if Chicagoans are as hearty as we claim to be. She started by lowering the temperature to a level normally incompatible with human life. She then whacked us with three of the four seasons in one week, placing the “all-weather-shorts-guy” on the endangered species list. Finally, she’s resorted to layering snow, ice, snow, ice until our pets learned to skate and pee simultaneously.

But are we broken?

Are we whining?

Nope.

We’ve simply put parkas on our dogs, laid in a month-long supply of antifreeze in the form of adult beverages, and hunkered down in front of the fireplace for a long session of board-gaming, punctuated by musings of whether or not enough ketchup could be put on groundhog to make it taste like beef.

The little ^$&#*&#^* did predict an early spring after all.

So, the news of this new game was perfectly timed, even if the release date means it will need to go on the agenda for next winter.

Coming with the amusing tagline, “The Stakes Have Been Raised,” Horrified: Universal Monsters brings the whole gang back together in a new board game by Ravensburger. There might be enough motivation to buy it simply for the “high-quality sculpted miniatures” of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Bride of Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon (sorry, Lon Chaney fans, but there’s no Phantom of the Opera or Quasimodo miniatures).

Beyond that, it’s a strategy game, where 2-5 players (ages 10 and over) work together to take down each monster; meaning players are the equivalent of pitchfork-and-torch-bearing villagers, which is why I’m calling this a “near perfect” way to spend an evening.

I mean come on, in the movies, the monsters usually have darn good reasons for being pissed off; the Mummy’s trying to reunite with his long-lost love; the Creature is reacting to scientists poking around his watery lair; the Bride is terrified at the mere thought of being, well, alive… and now us and 2 to 4 friends are meant to gang up on them as well.

Still, Ravensburger has done some impressive things with titles such as Saint Malo and Indigo, so we’re going to need to check this one out when it’s released on an unsuspecting public August 1, 2019 for $34.99.