Review – The Bloody Inn

The Bloody Inn is a macabre card game set in 1830s France. Players represent a family of innkeepers who have devised a morbid scheme to get rich — namely, murdering guests and taking their money. It’s certainly a unique theme; let’s see how it plays!

Content Guide

In case the name didn’t give it away, this game is quite dark, involving themes of theft and murder. It’s absolutely not for children.

Review

As the Eagles said, “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” That’s basically the premise of The Bloody Inn, a game about inviting guests into a hotel, only to off them, steal their loot, and bury their bodies.

In this game, players compete to earn the most money. The game is played in rounds, and in each round, a new group of guests arrives at the inn. Represented by a central board, the inn has a number of rooms where guests will stay, and each guest card shows a type and the amount of money that the guest is carrying.

Players each keep a hand of cards, representing accomplices they have hired, and each turn, all players take two actions. The main actions are:

• BRIBE A GUEST: Take a card from the inn and add it to their hand
• BUILD AN ANNEX: Spend a card from their hand to build an annex, where bodies can be buried
• KILL A GUEST: Remove a guest from the inn and place its card in their player area
• BURY A BODY: Place a killed guest under an annex card and take that guest’s money

Each of these actions requires a player to spend cards from their hand, and most cards list a particular action that that guest is good at. (For example, one guest might be good at bribing, another at killing, and another at burying bodies.) When a guest is used for their corresponding action, they are not discarded, but rather returned to the player’s hand.

Sometimes, police officers will check into the inn, and if they stay through the night — that is, if they aren’t murdered or convinced to join the criminal enterprise — they might investigate. If any player has an unburied body when an officer is checking out, that player must pay $10 to have the gravedigger quickly dispose of the corpse.

There is one additional action, which allows a player to launder money. Since the score/money track is limited, players will periodically want to “cash out” their money for bills, so they don’t waste any by going over the maximum. (This isn’t a super important aspect of the game, but it’s worth mentioning, as it does play to the theme.)

At the end of the game, the player with the most money wins!

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Naturally, the theme of The Bloody Inn takes center stage in the play experience. Its dark humor comes through strongly, and while it may be off-putting for some folks, those who lean into it will chuckle at its macabre absurdity.

The underlying game works well, too, though it can be a bit difficult to explain. Each character has their own aptitude, so the strategy comes from knowing which characters to use and when. Players also have to pay each character they keep between rounds, and this creates an interesting decision: either use characters for their specialty but have to pay them, or use characters without the relevant specialty, discarding them instead.

The production of The Bloody Inn is striking, led by Weberson Santiago’s signature art style. The cards and tokens are easy to read, and the box feels like the right size. My main qualm lies with the rulebook, which, while fairly thorough, could have used more gameplay examples and clarifications.

Needless to say, The Bloody Inn isn’t for everyone. I certainly wouldn’t play it with kids, and I imagine the theme may turn some adults away, as well. That being said, for folks who are okay with the macabre setting, it’s a decently interesting game with a darkly funny exterior. If that sounds like your cup of tea, check it out.