Bundle of Holding’s “Nightmare Alley” set currently covers seven tabletop games, including tributes to movie monsters and the classic Pacesetter System.
When we reported on last week’s Bundle of Holding, it contained a total of eight horror-themed RPG ebooks. By the time the bundle closed, that figure had expanded to eleven, including a fiction anthology that could be easily loaded onto tablets and Kindles. It was a great deal for tabletop fans, is what I’m trying to say, and that’s just the first package out of three. The second Halloween Bundle of Holding, called “Nightmare Alley”, is now available with yet another seven games for your digital library. George Romero fans will be glad to hear that three of these games focus on zombies and undead, while old-school gamers who liked 1984’s Chill might be interested in the modern version of the Pacesetter System.
Pacesetter’s Chill game was an RPG in which players hunted creatures straight out of Universal Monster movies, including vampires, werewolves, mummies, and ghosts. The game never gained the same kind of audience that Call of Cthulhu did, but it’s been fondly remembered by designers at Goblinoid Games, who recently relaunched the system for modern audiences. For example, this bundle’s Cryptworld is a spiritual successor to Chill, while Rotworld offers Pacesetter’s tools for a zombie apocalypse, complete with maps and customized undead.
Of course, relaunches of classic games aren’t all Nightmare Alley has going for it. There’s also Abandon All Hope, a game about convicts on a prison spaceship that falls into a Lovecraftian alternate universe. Exquisite Replicas takes a page from John Carpenter’s They Live, confronting players with aliens that replace people and objects with almost-perfect recreations. In Dark Alleys challenges players to discover the truth about their false reality, and the monstrous forces keeping it a secret. Outlive Outdead is a zombie game that puts deceased survivors into the zombie horde, decreasing your odds of human survival as time goes on. Finally, Unhallowed Metropolis is set in Neo-Victorian London 200 years after the zombie apocalypse, as players struggle against the undead and an insidiously oppressive aristocracy.
Nightmare Alley is a pay-what-you-want bundle with above-average purchases (currently under $15) rewarding customers with the full set. There’s currently no word yet on whether Bundle of Holding will be adding further ebooks, but given the precedent of the last set, it’s likely worth keeping an eye on.
Source: Bundle of Holding
