Abomination: The Heir of Frankenstein

The setup for Abomination: The Heir of Frankenstein involves placing the main game board in the center of the table and organizing the various card decks—including corpses, events, encounters, and research—next to their respective spaces. Each player receives a laboratory player board, a character card, starting funds based on the player count, and their specific set of worker pawns representing scientists and assistants. Additionally, players set their humanity tracker to zero, their medical prowess and professional expertise to one, and ready their initial supply of electrical storage jars and ice cubes. The event deck is prepared with random event and encounter cards, and starting corpse parts are distributed to the board's designated locations.

The primary objective of the game is to successfully construct and animate a complete creature made of flesh and muscle, following in the footsteps of Victor Frankenstein. Players must race against time and each other to harvest body parts from various Paris locations, preserve them in their laboratory's decomposition stack, and surgically attach and revive them. Beyond building the monster, players must carefully monitor their moral standing, maintaining their humanity and professional reputation while avoiding the watchful eyes of the police and potential scandals.

Every round is structured into four distinct phases: the Event phase, the City phase, the Laboratory phase, and the Preparation phase. During the Event phase, a new event card is drawn to introduce temporary effects or rule modifications. In the City phase, players take turns placing their scientists and assistant pawns on various worker-placement action spaces around Paris—such as the cemetery, morgue, hospital, and docks—to acquire body parts, money, and research. In the Laboratory phase, players spend their gathered materials and electricity to surgically attach and revive body parts on their monster board. Finally, the Preparation phase resets the board for the next round by clearing out old cards, refreshing market supplies, and advancing the captain tracker.

Victory points are awarded at the end of the game based on several criteria. Players gain substantial points for every body part of their monster that is successfully attached and fully revived by the end of the game. Additional points are accumulated through research cards, high reputation and expertise levels, and successfully completed bonus objectives. Conversely, players lose points for uncompleted monster parts, low humanity levels, and negative reputation standings.

The game concludes immediately when either the captain pawn reaches the final skull space on the story progression track, or any player successfully revives all six parts of their monster. Once the trigger condition is met, the current round finishes out its laboratory phase, and players proceed to calculate their final scores by tallying revived monster parts, completed objectives, and tracker values.