History TabletopGame / Atmosfear

* AwesomeButImpractical: Several Time cards give a potentially game-winning bonus near the final minute or later, but by that point, you may not have the time to use them.

* AwesomeButImpractical: Several Time cards give a potentially game-winning bonus at the 59 minute mark or later, but by that point, you may not have the time to use them.

* AbsurdlySpaciousSewer: The sewers beneath the Other Side in ''The Harbingers'' appear to be this as the one beneath Elizabeth Bathory's province is large enough that Ja and the Death Rattle band are able to tour venues in it.

** The duelling system in ''The Harbingers'' was significantly different from the 2004 game in which it (and ''The Soul Rangers'') used a dedicated set of cards for each Harbinger to duel each other with; dice duelling was also limited to doing so with Soul Rangers.

* UnrealisticBlackHole: The Black Hole is portrayed as some kind of space the Gatekeeper/host can send anyone to and release at any point, but nobody can move while they're there. Ways that the player can be released from the Black Hole, other than the host releasing them, included having a corresponding Fate or Time card, trying to roll their own number each time their turn came around (in the 2004 game), or having possession of the corresponding key.

* A ''30th Anniversary Edition'' was made available on Kickstarter in 2021 that replicates the contents of the original ''Atmosfear'', with various bonuses available based on how much money users had pledged, including new Time, Fate and Chance cards.

* AbsurdlySpaciousSewer: The sewer beneath Bathory's province is large enough that Ja and the Death Rattle band are able to tour venues in it.

* AbsurdlySpaceousSewer: The sewer beneath Bathory's province is large enough that Ja and the Death Rattle band are able to tour venues in it.

''Atmosfear'' (also originally known as ''Nightmare'' in Australia, the game's country of origin, and America) was a horror-themed board game developed and released in 1991, and followed players as they attempted to confront their greatest fears while taking on challenging odds and a creepy host.

''Atmosfear'' (also originally known as ''Nightmare'' in Australia, the game's country of origin, and America) was a board game developed and released in 1991, and followed players as they attempted to confront their greatest fears while taking on challenging odds and a creepy host.

* AdaptedOut:
** "Time" cards were left out of ''The Harbingers'' but were reinstated for the 2004 game.

* RoadBlock: The Gates in ''The Harbingers'' serve this purpose. After the Gatekeeper introduces them into the game, they can be used to block a player's passage. Players would need to roll their number to get past them unless, as a Harbinger, they had the Keystone that allows them past (also allowing them to reposition the gate anywhere they like).

** Various spaces from the original ''Nightmare'', specifically "Chance" spaces (and their associated cards), spaces marked with an X, spaces where you had to roll your number to play again, miss a turn and even release all players that were stuck in the Black Hole were removed for later entries. The coin that came with it was also left out for ''The Harbingers'', but then reinstated first as a possible minigame in the 2004 game, and then fully reinstated in ''Khufu'' primarily as part of one of its Chamber challenges.

* AllThereInTheManual: ''The Harbingers'' has a 15-minute primer/introduction to the game rules for new players (and gives some brief information about the various Harbingers), which is only found at the ''end'' of the included VHS tape, forcing players to fast-forward through all the Harbinger segments to view it.

* ButtMonkey: In-universe, all of the expansion's hosts choose one player to be the butt of demeaning jokes and disadvantages, as well as give them a humiliating nickname. Baron Samedi refers to one player as "Dirtbag", Anne identifies three as "Toad", "Wart" and "Rat", and Elizabeth identifies one as "Scab".

** As pointed out in the Spoony One's review, starting from ''Nightmare II'', more and more sets of cards started to be introduced that broke the game flow. Chief among them was ''Nightmare III'''s "spell cards" - there were several named spells, but they wouldn't work unless you had a specific pair of cards from the deck ''and'' someone read the activation phrase off a specific time card, which was virtually impossible to do in the course of an hour-long game. Likewise, cards that expressly gave one player permission to ask another for a specific spell card wouldn't work because the one being asked wouldn't voluntarily give an advantage to someone else.

** ''Nightmare IV'' introduced a new rulebook and game mechanics involving vampires, with UsefulNotes/ElizabethBathory notably telling players to turn to specific pages of their rulebooks and read it all the way through while in the middle of a game (and at one point, the screen froze for several moments so the players could read through a list of commands). Any player who had become a vampire (usually if they were unlucky to roll a 1 during certain times when Bathory was on the screen, or being "bitten" by another player who had become a vampire) to start drawing from an entirely separate card pool, and they could either be killed off permanently if another player found a card that countered or destroyed them, or restored to normal gameplay if their target had the corresponding card. Likewise, there was two infamous twists, one when there was under eighteen minutes left where Bathory would automatically turn a player into a vampire unless they had a certain card, and one when there were under five minutes left where she would eliminate a player from the game if they were unlucky to have their number rolled on a die by an opponent (unless they had the Time card that allows them to continue). This may have contributed to declining sales and the decision to retool the series.
** ''The Harbingers'', to the point of the developers fearing they made the game too complicated (leading to a segment demonstrating the rules being included in the VHS tape). Between the various abilities associated with each Harbinger, the Soul Ranger/sewer mechanics, the Time/Fate cards and the Gatekeeper's twists, most players have to speed through their turns in order to have a hope of winning within the allotted timeframe.

* RegionalBonus: The UK releases of ''Nightmare IV'' came with an exclusive set of Chance cards, something that the other versions of it didn't have, at the expense of half of its Time cards.

** ''Harbingers'' had two further booster tapes released (with shorter runtimes for a greater challenge), along with an addon/SpinOff based on the Soul Rangers.

* UnrealisticBlackHole: The Black Hole is portrayed as some kind of space the Gatekeeper/host can send anyone to and release at any point, but nobody can move while they're there. Ways that the player can be released from the Black Hole, other than the host releasing them, included (depending on the game, having a corresponding Fate or Time card, trying to roll their own number each time their turn came around, or having possession of the corresponding key.

** Various spaces from the original ''Nightmare'', specifically "Chance" spaces (and their associated cards), spaces marked with an X, spaces where you had to roll your number to play again, miss a turn, could take a key if your number was the same as the one on the space and even release all players that were stuck in the Black Hole were removed for later entries. The coin that came with it was also left out for ''The Harbingers'', but then reinstated first as a possible minigame in the 2004 game, and then fully reinstated in ''Khufu'' primarily as part of one of its Chamber challenges.

* CheatersNeverProsper: In ''Zombie'', TheGMIsACheatingBastard as Baron Samedi gives the player who has his token a Time, Fate, and Chance card. If one of the players has the correct TTime card, they can take ''all'' of their cards seconds later!