tabletoppingboardgames 
Deep underground, in an abandoned mineshaft no one really wants to visit anymore, things haven’t exactly gone quiet… they’ve just gotten a bit strange. Instead of doing typical monster things, whatever that means, a group of creatures decided to build a ghost train. Tracks start appearing, tunnels get connected, and slowly the place turns into a kind of underground railway system that probably wouldn’t pass any safety inspection.
In Ghosts Galore, you’re not hunting monsters or running away from them. You’re basically helping them organise their little train network. You lay tracks, place tiles, and try to make sense of all these creatures and how they interact. At first, you think, yeah, this seems easy enough… until your board starts looking like a plate of spaghetti someone dropped in a cave.
👥 2-5 players, ages 10+
⌛ Playing time: 20 minutes
📝 Designer: Michael Luu
🎨 Artwork: Nele Diel
🏢 Publisher: Lookout Games (review copy provided by Asmodee Belgium).
Gameplay Overview
The game plays over eight rounds. Each round, everyone takes turns choosing a track tile, but not in a straightforward way. You don’t just pick from a row. Instead, tiles are revealed one by one from a stack in the middle. On your turn, you either flip a new tile and decide if you want to take it, or you take one that’s already been revealed earlier.
The catch is that if you flip a tile, you can only take that one. You can’t suddenly change your mind and grab something else that’s been sitting there. So you’re constantly thinking, “is this good enough… or do I wait?” And waiting can backfire. Sometimes you pass on a decent tile and the next ones just get worse. It happens.
Players keep taking turns like this, skipping anyone who already picked a tile, until everyone has one. When there’s only one player left, all remaining tiles are revealed and that player just chooses from what’s there. After that, you place your tile on your own board. You can rotate it however you like, and it doesn’t have to connect to anything. You can build one big network or several smaller ones, or something in between that you didn’t really plan but now have to deal with.
Over the game, your board slowly fills up. Some tiles count as more than one track section, which matters later, but honestly, during the game you mostly just think in shapes and space. Each tile has monsters on it, and that’s where most of the scoring comes from. Different monsters want different things. Some like being together, others want space, some care about what’s on the same path. On top of that, you also score for how your tracks connect, especially between doors on the edges of your board.
After eight rounds, you place one final tile that you’ve had since the start. That’s your ninth tile. Then you score everything. Most points wins. If there’s a tie, the player with fewer dead ends wins, which feels fair. No one likes a train that goes nowhere.
Artwork, Components, and Visual Design
The game looks friendly. That’s probably the easiest way to put it. The monsters aren’t scary at all. They’re more like the kind of creatures you’d see in a children’s book, just hanging out in a mine. The tiles are clear and easy to read, and the colours help a lot, even when your board gets messy, which it probably will at some point.
Nothing feels confusing or hard to recognise. The monsters are all different enough that you don’t mix them up. Ghosts are simple, golems are chunky, bats look like bats. It all makes sense without needing to think too much about it. There are also some small details like diamonds and symbols that are easy to spot, so you don’t really have to search for them while playing.
The player boards frame everything in this mine theme with entrances and wooden supports. It’s subtle, but it works. As your board fills up, it does feel like you’ve built something, whether it’s a well-planned railway or a complete mess. The little mine carts are a fun touch as well. They stand up and give the table a bit more presence. Not essential, but I like them. They add a bit of charm.
Overall, it’s clear and functional. Not something you’ll stare at for hours, but it does what it needs to do without getting in the way.
Our Experience
The game is easy to get to the table. Setup is quick, the rules are not too hard to explain, and it doesn’t take long to play. It’s the kind of game we bring out when we don’t want something heavy.
The drafting is where most of the interaction happens. You’re watching what others might want, sometimes taking a tile just so someone else can’t have it. Not in a mean way, just… you know, it happens. There’s this constant small question in your head: do I take this now or wait? And I mean, sometimes you wait and it works out, and sometimes you wait and regret it immediately.
Once everyone has their tile, things move inward. You focus on your own board, and it becomes more of a personal puzzle. You notice that pretty quickly once you start playing. For us, that worked, but I can imagine some people wanting more interaction throughout the whole game.
Your board fills up faster than you expect. At the start, it feels open and flexible, like you can do whatever you want. Then suddenly you can’t. And now that weird gap you left earlier is a problem. You only place nine tiles in total, so small mistakes tend to stick around. There’s no fixing things later.
Scoring is where the game gets a bit heavier. There are a lot of different ways to score, and not all of them are equally easy to track. The overview helps, but the first few games can feel a bit like, “wait, how does this one work again?” We also noticed that sometimes the game gives you exactly what you need, and sometimes it really doesn’t. One tile can make a big difference, especially near the end. I know that’s part of the design, but it can feel a bit uneven.
After a few plays, it starts to click more. You see patterns, you understand better what to aim for, and the decisions feel less random.
Our Thoughts
For us, Ghosts Galore sits in a slightly unusual spot. It looks light, but it asks more from you than you might expect. The game is really about how you use the space you have from the very start. You don’t have many tiles, and you have to live with what you’ve already built, so you’re constantly trying to leave yourself options while still building towards something that scores.
What I found interesting is that the scoring systems don’t really work together nicely. One thing pushes you to build long paths, another wants you to group monsters, another wants the opposite. So you’re always compromising. There’s no perfect solution, just different ways of making things work well enough.
The drafting adds some pressure, but also limits how much you can plan ahead. You mostly deal with what shows up and decide when it’s worth committing. Some people in our group felt like you don’t really have enough influence over what happens. The hidden tile is a nice idea as well. You know what’s coming at the end, so you can plan around it, or at least try to. I’ll be honest, I forgot about it once and that didn’t go well.
One thing that didn’t fully work for us is the amount of scoring rules compared to the length of the game. It’s quite a lot to keep in mind for something that plays in about twenty minutes. It’s not complicated individually, but together it adds up. And the game can be a bit unforgiving. If you make a few poor placements early on, it’s hard to recover.
Overall, it feels more like a puzzle than a relaxed family game. If you go in expecting something light and casual, it might surprise you a bit. In a good way or not, that depends on what you’re looking for. For us, it’s a game we don’t mind playing, especially in the right setting. Just don’t expect your train network to look clean. Ours usually ends up looking like it was designed by ghosts… which, I guess, is accurate.
📝 We received a copy of the game from Asmodee Belgium.
