Quiet House

For me "must have" for any type of players

Quiet House is an ingenious limited-communication cooperative game, where players are ghosts who must work together to move statues in their haunted mansion to satisfy specific position requirements.

On their turn, players reveal a card indicating which piece cannot be moved and must then move one statute according to its movement rules. Over the course of the game, players are cooperatively positioning these statues so that each piece meets its proximity requirement with respect to one of the four walls of the house.

The Quiet House feels like a mix of Magic Maze and Cryptid. Similar to Magic Maze, players here are not allowed to talk and must coordinate with others to move shared pieces on a board. And, like in Cryptid, players only have partial information about where something should be and must work with (or against, in the case of Cryptid) to uncover the correct position of these objects.

I haven't played this enough, but I can see playing the Quiet House to the point where the flow of the game feels like a dance, where players connect with each other at an unconscious level, moving beautifully in sync. I am not there yet, but that magical connection that limited-communication games can bring is what makes me love these coops.

While it comes with some advanced rules and a two-sided board, I feel like the game could've used a bit more pieces, a few more challenges, and maybe even a short campaign.

Review copy was generously provided by Mandoo Games.

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Simple but brilliant

This game keeps getting better with every play and with every group!

Very clever cooperative deduction game. Challenging but not unfair. The key (we think) is to manuever the Monkey and one other statue opposite to their desired locations, then make the Monkey swap.

A gamefied version of the 8 queens problem. I found the idea very clever and the game fun. Willing to play more times trying to win. Not sure about the replayability though. Despite the pieces moving differently and appearing in different places, the game can fell repetitive.