Violent Conventions – Final Girl – Shriek Review

One of the cool things about how the whole Final Girl franchise (from Van Ryder Games) has come about is that each group of feature films is tied into a series, with the occasional vignette or special feature.

That appears to be coming to an end with the conclusion of Series 4 in August, meaning that future releases won’t be grouped together like they are now.

They haven’t really explained how they’re going to do it, but I’m sure we’ll find out more at the end of 2026.

In the meantime, there’s a final special feature, which totally has its tongue in its cheek even as it frustrates you to no end.

And I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way.

Shriek was published in 2025 by Van Ryder. It was designed by Evan Derrick and A. J. Porfirio with artwork by Tyler Johnson.

And it takes place at a boardgame convention!

How meta is that?

If you thought The Killer From Tomorrow was busy with stuff to keep track of, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Shriek has tons of miniatures for the killer, though you are (barely) able to keep everything in the package.

There are also multiple “clue” cards and a handy-dandy red plastic clue viewer as well.

I haven’t seen one of those since I was a kid.

This is probably their most component-packed film yet, at least from the ones I’ve played.

And I’m here for it, though again it depends on how much work I want to do, because there is a lot of work involved in this one.

Let’s talk about what we get in this package.

As always, let’s talk about the killer first.

Mort, the Teenage Dirtbag (I love that) is a sadistic killer, but he’s cosplaying as one of the previous Final Girl killers, along with nine other people who are doing the same thing.

So you don’t know who or where he is.

Instead, you get a generic Killer action while you are trying to suss out just who he’s hiding as.

Because it’s different every game.

The film comes with 13 miniatures: 10 for the different killers who could be Mort, plus the two final girls from the film, and then Mort when he’s finally revealed.

The film also comes with a bunch of double-sided clue cards and a clue reader that will help you in your quest to determine just who is killing who.

Each former killer has a card with a bunch of different attributes, which you will use to eliminate them as suspects when you gain clues.

Until you eliminate suspects, they are all wandering around the location and Mort will be using his Killer action (and potential actions on Terror cards) to briefly masquerade as somebody else and kill a victim or two (or three).

Once you’ve eliminated all the other suspects, you flip the card over and that becomes the Finale card.

Doesn’t matter how many Terror cards are left. They are all discarded and it’s a mano a mano fight to the end.

How do you eliminate suspects?

By sharing a room with one and interrogating him/her.

As long as you roll a success, you will gain a clue (and the cosplayer in question will panic away from you).

You flip over one of the five clue tokens and then reveal that clue. That will eliminate at least one (and hopefully multiple) suspect. You remove that miniature from the board and place a tan “informant” meeple in its place.

When in the space with an Informant, you can Coerce them and get another clue!

That will also remove the Informant from the game, because they’ve had enough of this place.

So how does Mort actually kill anybody while you’re doing this?

There’s a little bag of tokens with all 10 former killers’ names. You draw one from the bag and for that action, Mort is disguised as that person, doing his killer action.

The same with Terror card draws. If the Killer is supposed to do something, you do this.

However, if they’ve already been cleared as a suspect, then nothing happens!

You don’t put the token back in the bag (like you do normally) so it won’t happen again.

But you get a breather.

That’s why it’s important to clear people as soon as possible.

All of the Dark Powers that Mort has have to do with this investigation phase.

Usually if you save an Informant (rather than Coercing them), you lower Horror. But with Relentless Paranoia, you don’t!

Toxic Whispers makes finding clues that much harder.

And Anonymous Terror makes the Finale really difficult, unless you’ve revealed all five clues before the Terror deck runs out.

If you have, then it doesn’t do anything.

That’s because typically the unrevealed clues when the finale hits just make things that much harder. And with this one, each clue is double the effect!

Speaking of dark powers, let’s talk about the Terror cards and the minor dark powers.

Since the Terror deck is discarded when Mort is revealed, all of these also are just about the investigation phase.

Taking damage when revealing clues really sucks!

Notorious Reputation makes it so you’d better enter the Suspect’s space and Interrogate them in the same turn, because they won’t likely be there next turn.

The good thing is that all of these minor dark powers go away once you’ve successfully coerced or interrogated somebody.

So they’re not that bad.

Other Terror cards can be annoying, though.

Take A Mask in the Crowd.

One victim is guaranteed to die in that one.

Meta Massacre, three will die, but only if the suspect happens to be in a room with you or any victims.

That might not happen!

The same with I Want to See What Your Insides Look Like, except that you don’t get the bonus of not having anybody attacked.

If nobody is attacked, Horror increases by one.

Managing Horror is so important in this game.

Finally, Mort has way too many ways to increase Horror, as shown above.

Swarm of Masks coming out early really sucks, because locations only have so many rooms in them.

There are bound to be multiple doubled-up rooms.

All in all, Mort is a really interesting killer and I love the clue mechanic for unmasking him.

However, the maintenance of all the other killer miniatures, drawing from the bag (which is way too small to really mix 10 tokens well, but if it were any bigger there’s no way it would fit in the container with everything else), and checking the clue viewer can be a lot of busy work.

Sometimes it can be annoying.

Also, a couple of the miniatures too closely resemble each other, though they have put the names on the bottom of the base.

Which is great if you’re not in low light like I often am.

Thankfully, after three plays, I’m starting to be able to tell the couple of murky ones apart, and some are totally obvious (like Geppetto).

I’m not sure how thematic Mort is in other locations? But I did ask on the Van Ryder discord and some members had a few interesting suggestions.

Halloween party at an Antarctic station, anybody?

Anyway, Mort is pretty cool, but you really need to gauge when you want to use him. He has an interesting mechanic that moves from investigation to all-out war pretty quickly.

How about Mega BG Con?

This is a truly inspired location, though again a bit more work than you might want to put in depending on your mood.

That’s because it’s not just the location, items, events and setup cards.

You have game company booths as well!

In addition to the booths themselves on the map, you have booth cards and potential booth events.

Each upkeep phase (before the finale hits, anyway), you draw a booth card and roll a die. On a 1-3, you just put a new victim at that booth.

On a 4-6, you draw a booth event, which can be fun.

I love the variety in all of this, though in my first play I forgot to do this for the first five turns.

There are a few interesting new rules that apply to the con, one of them extremely irritating when you’re trying to save victims and one of them that’s actually pretty neat.

It seems that everybody’s having so much fun at the con, talking to dealers and game publishers, that they don’t want to leave.

Who cares if people are dying?

Reiner Knizia’s here!

Thus, victims that are in booths will not follow you.

Booths have that Spade symbol on them, and that applies to the entirety of the center of the map.

How do you save them, then?

By instilling panic in them.

You can get an action card that will create a panic, and hopefully they will panic out of the booth.

You can then go and lead them out the door.

The awesome rule is that there are areas of the map, both the hallways as well as back room areas, where people typically aren’t.

It’s a convention, they’re at the booths!

So if you’re moving from a space with a double blue arrow into another space with a blue arrow (at least as your first movement), then you get an extra die for the horror roll.

That can make moving around a lot easier.

It’s a boardgame convention, so there should be lots of stuff to find and use, right?

Oh yeah, definitely.

First, I have to mention the other unique rule from Mega BG Con.

Since there’s stuff everywhere, everywhere is searchable!

Instead of the three item piles being for specific rooms, the three item piles are for three different types of rooms: the Food Court (just one space), General Areas (the back rooms and the hallways) and the booths.

You can search anywhere and you just draw from the pile that applies to the room you’re in.

Makes searching a lot easier.

And there’s some cool stuff to get too!

My favourite item in all of Final Girl has to be the Giant Board Game.

Is this a statement about overproduced games that are so huge and heavy that you can’t even take them to your game day?

Maybe.

It can only be used twice (I guess at that point, the box is bent and broken), but you can do two extra damage on each attack.

That is amazing.

Other typical convention stuff can also be used as a weapon that will help…a little bit.

Box cutters, folding chairs (which you can throw!) and hammers.

Then there’s merchandise and stuff that can be helpful.

The Van Ryder Games Bag gets you two items!

There’s an achievement for just taking the bag and not using it, though the item does say “immediately.” That’s been retconned so you don’t have to use it if you don’t want to.

The Convention Staff Badge will really help you get victims out of the booths, and the Coupon book makes searching in booths easier.

Then we come to my second favourite Final Girl item of all time.

Deodorant!

Conventions do have a reputation for some attendees spending so much time doing other things that they don’t seem to think they need to bathe.

It’s so prevalent that many conventions have “bathe” in their general policies.

Anyway, five times you can make a victim in your space panic by presenting them with deodorant, and you get to reroll if you don’t like where they panicked to.

Are they afraid of or allergic to deodorant?

Or are they just so offended by you suggesting they have some that they leave in a huff?

Either way, it’s hilarious, and I actually used it to get somebody out of a booth!

The Medical Buggy is another great Final Girl vehicle.

It will hold two victims and you can actually crash it into the killer to do two points of damage when you are moving.

It’s also a way to panic victims who aren’t following you.

Maybe getting them out of that booth?

The events are pretty cool too, with the typical special victims as well as other potentially nice, potentially annoying happenings.

The Popular Game Designer (hey, it is Knizia!) can come in very handy if you get them to follow you.

Getting a free reroll of a die once per turn is very useful.

Sure, if they die, you get an extra bloodlust, but just make sure they don’t die.

Industry Bad Boy is just hilarious.

Friend or foe?

You decide. And then, either try to save him or get him in the way of the killer, depending on how you chose.

They wanted special victims events so much that they actually give you another purple meeple so they can have four of these events.

She sounds fun.

An interesting note about the Setup cards.

There are only 8 victims on the board initially.

That’s because the Booth draws will be bringing out more victims so they didn’t want to overload things.

Overall I really enjoyed Mega BG Con.

I will enjoy trying it with a different killer, as Mort can make this one really difficult. All of those miniatures in that confined space can be hard to navigate.

When you have somebody straightforward like Hans or Krampus, it would definitely be interesting.

As I said, the booth upkeep and events can be a lot of extra work if you’re not up for it, but in my opinion it’s worth it most of the time.

I love the ability to search anywhere, I really enjoy the ability to race through the hallways, but I also have trouble remembering that victims won’t follow you from the booths.

Also, when you combine Mort with the Convention, it makes it more difficult because when Mort kills someone, victims don’t panic (unless the Finale’s been revealed). So it can be even harder to get them out of booths.

The same would be true for the Mark V/X from Killer From Tomorrow.

It’s definitely a location that’s up there in my estimation, though.

Finally, let’s talk about the two final girls that are in this film, because they are both completely different from normal ones.

Both of them have you put a saved victim on them and then you roll a die, rather than having multiple victim spaces to get a specific benefit.

If you roll lower than the number of victims on them, then you flip them to the ultimate side.

(You also get one time each time you save a victim, which I totally missed in my playthroughs!).

Their ultimates are different, but both are pretty nice.

Maureen lets you discard one or two victims from the card and then resolve any Action card from the action tableau (so not one you haven’t discarded yet).

That can be huge!

Discard one to then remove the action card, or two to keep it around.

Adrianne will let you discard a victim to get a minor boost (time, health, or movement) or two victims to get a major boost (reduce Horror, plus one damage on an attack, or an extra die on your next roll horror roll).

Both are very useful.

This makes saving victims almost a necessity for these two.

I don’t know if I would put them at Station 2891 then. Saving victims there is hard.

Taking Shriek in full, I have to say that this is a wonderful film with some really intriguing mechanics that take you away from the typical Final Girl experience.

If you’re in the mood for something different, or at least different enough (you’re still saving victims, trying to kill the killer, etc), then Shriek is well worth getting.

I just hope Mort doesn’t show up at my next game convention.

Though I may be too busy playing games to notice!

(This review was written after 3 plays)