SoraRabbit Short Hop 018: The Horrifying Return of Santa Billy!
Happy holidays everyone! If you recall, last year I covered one of my favorite slasher movies, the cult classic Silent Night, Deadly Night. At the time I didn’t realize just how popular the film had become. Shortly after uploading that post, my brother texted me a link to a Kickstarter that just happened to be for a board game version of the movie. Of course I backed it immediately. That’s right, this year we’re revisiting our favorite killer Santa!
Tadahh!!! (Credit: Wonderwheel Entertainment)
I love when things come together like this. A board game is released based on a movie I covered last Christmas. The game arrived just in time for this Christmas, so I had the chance to do a sequel of sorts to last year’s post. And Cocoashade kindly joined me for a play session to help me complete it.
So iconic. (Credit: Wonderwheel Entertainment)
Our game collection is growing steadily. I went from having one shelf of games to having three dedicated bookshelves nearly full of games. I haven’t gotten around to reviewing many here on the SoraRabbit Hole yet, but I do intend to cover more of them. So far I’ve only featured Yu-Gi-Oh, Marvel Champions, and the Ms Marvel expansion for Champions. Some day I’ll really have to do a post on Killer Bunnies, one of my favorite games of all time.
Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Silent Night Deadly Night: The Game was released in 2022 by Wonderwheel Entertainment through crowdsourcing. It was commissioned by the creators of the SNDN film, Scott J. Schneid and Dennis Whitehead. All artwork featured here was by Justin Osbourn and Joe Guy Allard.
Game components. (Credit: Wonderwheel Entertainment)
The game is very well constructed and comes with a lot of pieces. You get a deck of cards, three metal weapons, a Sheriff’s badge, three dice, a cardboard spinner, a bunch of roadblocks and little foam snowballs, and sturdy game pieces with plastic stands. It also comes with a bag to keep the pieces in and a cardboard chimney. The purpose of the chimney is unclear… I think it’s just there for amusement, but I stuck all the smaller pieces in there.
The stretch goals of the Kickstarter included two expansions. Expansion #1 included more cards and four more characters. Expansion #2 included a small timer and an optional trivia round to stall Billy if he gets too close to the goal. I didn’t think my circle of friends would be quite as proficient in SNDN trivia, so I only added on the first expansion. More cards to play with are always welcome. And besides, with the expansion I got to play as one of the best old cooks in the history of film, Grandpa Chapman!
Santa Billy versus Grandpa! (Credit: Wonderwheel Entertainment)
There are eight players to choose from between the two sets. I, of course, played as Grandpa, while Cocoa chose different characters each time. The Billy piece and the board features painted art and look very nice. The other character pieces and cards have photo art.
The rules of the game are fairly simple. You roll three dice every turn. One for your moves, one for Billy’s moves, and one to determine if you draw a card at the end of your turn. If you run into Billy without a weapon or the badge, you die instantly. If you run out of snowballs, you lose. The snowballs represent your health, but they do not save you from Billy… they are added or subtracted by some of the cards. If Billy reaches the orphanage he exacts revenge on Mother Superior and you lose. To win the game you have to pick up a weapon and land on a space with Billy to do battle. All players shout “PUNISH!” as you spin. The spinner has three areas: Still Fighting (spin again), Billy Kills You (instant death), or You Kill Billy (the surviving players win the game).
Some of the cards. (Credit: Wonderwheel Entertainment)
The way the cards work is a pretty unique mechanic. There is no discard pile in this game. Every time you have to draw a card, one of the other players quickly shuffles the deck and fans the cards out for you to pick one. After doing what the card instructs, it’s returned to the deck to potentially be drawn again in the same game. The cards do various things such as remove or give you a snowball, add a roadblock to the board, take away your held weapon, or move Billy forward or backwards on his track.
To earn a weapon you have to land on the weapon space and roll the black die. If it comes up with a blank side, you get the weapon. You can also earn the badge the same way on a different space. The badge can be traded in for a snowball from another player if you’re running low. The badge can also serve to scare Billy away once. Roadblocks stop your movement and deactivate spaces. They also serve to speed Billy up, as he jumps over the space as though it was no longer there.
The game board. (Credit: Wonderwheel Entertainment)
The board contains a set track for Billy to run across, while the players can move anywhere. (Except diagonally, back the way they travelled that turn, or across roadblocks.) The board has a Naughty side (with blood and mild nudity) and a Nice side that’s a bit cleaner. (Of course we chose the Naughty side.) There is also a drinking game aspect on the Naughty side where you take a drink whenever someone lands on the “Naughty” spaces.
The artwork on the board is very busy (especially the Naughty side) and so it’s not always easy to see the track Billy travels on. They included a reference card as a reminder of his path, though. There are “Kill Zones” designated on the board which mainly just do harmful things if you draw certain cards while standing in them.
Poor Pamela. (Credit: Wonderwheel Entertainment)
Here are our experiences play testing the game. We quickly discovered that it’s kind of rough with only two players… when one dies, it’s all up to the other one to win, and even that is up to chance because of the spinner mechanic. Ultimately winning boils down to a one in three chance with every spin. Still, the games went quickly so we were able to play three times in a row. Our first game went pretty quickly.
Game One: We had bad luck having to draw cards a lot. Cocoa didn’t plan her movements carefully enough because she was focused on snagging the weapon and so Billy walked into her. Since she hadn’t gotten to the weapon space yet she was insta-killed. I stayed alive long enough to collect both the badge and weapon, but then lost all my snowballs to cards. We didn’t get close to winning and Billy only made it about halfway along his track.
Special guest star: Gobo! (Credit: Wonderwheel Entertainment)
Game Two: I managed to get both the badge and weapon again, but lost them both while battling Billy. Our card drawing luck was much better this time. We kept rolling the blank side of the draw die. After I fell in noble battle, Cocoa kept plugging away and snagged the weapon. She couldn’t get to Billy in time, however. He made it to the Orphanage and it was game over.
Also notably we were visited by Gobo, who attempted to remove Cocoa’s hit points as she batted at the snowballs.
Grandpa goes in for the kill! (Credit: Wonderwheel Entertainment)
Game Three: Cocoa got the weapon and I got the badge. I traded it to her for one of her snowballs so she could fight Billy safely. He wasn’t even halfway down his track when she went into battle. She flicked the spinner five times and kept getting “Still Fighting” until she landed on “Billy Kills You”. So she lost both her badge and weapon. I quickly fetched the weapon and just made a beeline for Billy next turn. It took six spins but I finally got him… we won!
These cards are great. (Credit: Wonderwheel Entertainment)
SoraRabbit’s Thoughts: This was clearly made by fans. A fun celebration of a fun cult movie. Creative use of the IP. All around a solid and enjoyable game.
Cocoashade’s Thoughts: Fun and fast. Good mechanics and concepts. I like the cooperative part of it. The designers knew what they were doing.
Pros: The game is very well-crafted and a lot of care went into the design and art. The concept and mechanics are creative and memorable. I really like the interactive aspect of everyone yelling “PUNISH!” to help cheer you on as you spin. There is just enough strategy and chance involved to create a nice balance. The games go quickly, so there isn’t much down time.
Cons: There was a little confusion after starting the game even though I studied the instructions carefully. The badge mechanic was not explained well in the booklet. The explanation was instead on the “reminder card” that was packed with the game. The book just says you can scare him away, but neither the book or reminder card states if he moves forward or backward to get away from you. (We made a judgement call and said he moves one space back.) The snowballs were also explained vaguely. This isn’t really a knock against the game design itself… Cocoa and I are big tabletop gamers and we have found that instruction books in general are notoriously vague and confusing. The spinner didn’t turn exactly smoothly, but it does the trick.
All in all, this was a great game and if you’re a fan of the movie or of cooperative board games in general, it’s worth a try. I’ll definitely be pulling it out on our next game night. I’m looking forward to trying it with m brothers and friends.
He’s back, in comic form. (Credit: American Mythology Productions)
I mentioned at the beginning that Silent Night Deadly Night is much more popular than I thought it was. This is reflected in the fact that it didn’t just have one successful Kickstarter recently, it had two. I missed this one somehow, but there was also a Kickstarter to bring out a comic book with a brand new story set in the Santa Billy Universe by American Mythology Productions. Luckily my local comic book shop had the foresight to order it, so I was able to get a copy.
The comic takes place in a universe where Billy didn’t die at the end of the movie and was instead committed to an asylum where he’s spent the past couple of decades in a near catatonic state. Another significant change in the story is that his little brother Ricky does not grow up to also wear the Santa costume and go on a killing spree himself. Instead he moves away, gets married, and has a daughter. So basically they retconned the ending of the movie and ignored the 2nd and 3rd films… which is probably a good thing. (They were… well, they were there. I’ll just say that.) (I still may cover those two next year… we’ll see.) Anyway, the basic plot is that Ricky and family come to visit Billy as they do every Christmas. (I liked the juxtaposition where now Billy, who visited his crazy grandpa as a kid is now the crazy Uncle.) One of the orphans grew up to be a successful horror writer and is visiting the town just as a new rash of killings start.
The comic was pretty good. It was a little clumsily written in places and confusing at times… I had to backtrack a couple of times to keep the characters and timeline straight. The art was good though, and the concept has promise. I found it entertaining overall. I will certainly be adding it to my pull list and getting Issue 2 when it comes out.
A couple of my favorites. (Credit: Wonderwheel Entertainment)
Thank you for joining me in revisiting the Silent Night Deadly Night franchise! As I said, I may cover the next two movies in a post next year and maybe the comics… we’ll see. If you’d like to see more SNDN content, please let me know. I hope you enjoyed reconnecting with our old pal Santa Billy. As always, have a nice holiday and make sure to be good. Otherwise Santa will PUNISH you!
Everyone has been adequately punished. (Credit: Wonderwheel Entertainment)
