A combination of video and board game, Atmosfear had players everywhere shouting at their tellies in the 90s.
Sarah takes a look back…
The board part of the game was pretty straightforward, a sort of monster-flavoured cross betweenTrivial PursuitandMonopoly.
What madeAtmosfearspecial was the video.
When you started a game, youd start the video playing, and a hooded figure would appear.
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The whole game relied on players being willing to talk back to their telly.
Which sounds silly, but people did.
After all, it wasnt really interactive at all.
As players, nothing we did could affect him; the tape played back the same way every time.
But that didnt matter.
What mattered was how we, as players, responded to the tape.
Like pretty much everything,Atmosfearisnt much fun if you dont commit to it.
To really enjoy yourself, you have to be able to embrace the silliness.
But if youre not going to get into the spirit of it, whats the point in playing?
I remember first playingAtmosfearas a young teenager in a friends living room.
All it takes to ruin a game like this is for one player not to get into it properly.
For that reason, you have to be kind of careful who you play it with.
Anyone overly self-conscious, overly cynical, will spoil the, ahem, atmosphere for everyone.
But get the right group of people together and its a lot of fun.
(Actually, we mightve only played the Anne de Chantraine game once.
As VHS gave way to DVD,Atmosfearstarted to seem a bit dated.
So in 2004, a new version was launched, with a DVD instead of a video.
Despite the clever new additions, though, Im still kind of nostalgic for the originalAtmosfear.
Your reactions changed, even if the Gatekeepers didnt.
