Terror in the Abbey – Final Girl – A Demon in the Shadows Review

Don’t you hate it when you’re just minding your own business, sitting serenely in some kind of religious building, praying and all of that stuff, and then suddenly a demon comes in and possesses you, forcing you to do unspeakable things to all of your companions?

Is that just me?

Maybe it is.

The next Final Girl feature film that I have completed takes that scenario and runs with it, with your two final girl possibilities either being a fellow nun or, perhaps, the church organ player?

Or maybe she runs the church rummage sale?

A Demon in the Shadows was designed Mike Martins with artwork by Lars Krause.

It was published by Van Ryder Games in 2025.

The Series 4 feature films have been adding a bit of complexity to the killer, or sometimes having interesting ways to have to deal with them.

In this one, the demon Berith has possessed the body of a nun, Ursula, and you are having to try and kill him, all while trying to save Ursula.

That’s a lot harder than just wailing away at him/her with a crucifix.

How does this one shake out?

Let’s take a look.

As I said, Berith is possessing Ursula’s body, making her go around killing people.

Ursula is an innocent, and thus you have to protect her…even as you beat her with a vial of holy water.

In essence what that means is that you have to spend as much time trying to expel the demon as you do smiting her with some saint’s sword.

Berith comes with two action cards: Expel Demon.

For each dove you achieve, you place an unused final health token on the topmost (I forgot that a couple of times and was choosing where to place it) space, facedown so you don’t know if there are any hearts on it or not.

This will give you some bonus (or, if you’re on the Hellish side of the card, some penalty) and it’s one step closer to saving Ursula.

When you have finally killed Berith, you flip over all of the final health tokens on this card (there are 7 unused ones, unless they have been used for some other purpose in the location you are playing, in which case you have fewer).

If any of them have at least one heart on it, then you win!

If none of them have hearts, then you lose, even though you killed the demon.

Ursula has to live for you to win.

Which also means you can’t kill Berith by blowing up the USS Konrad if you’re playing that location, because Ursula’s body blows up too.

This is the first time I’ve ever actually paid attention to how many final health tokens there are, and how many have hearts.

Did you know that there are only hearts on 3 out of the 10?

So if yours has hearts and Berith’s has hearts…you have a 1 in 7 chance of saving Ursula, and only if you manage to expel demon 7 times!

That’s kind of disheartening.

Anyway, this mechanic is very cool, and I actually ended up losing one of my games (as shown above) because of that scenario. There was only one out of seven left with hearts and I only blessed her four times.

I love how the designers are coming up with interesting new ways to deal with the killers they’re creating.

Berith’s Dark Powers can be maddening, though.

Keeping Ursula Alive is devastating, because you either have to keep hitting her at least a little bit (though she’ll heal up right away) or Horror will keep increasing.

Or you could hit her really hard once and then leave her for a little bit.

Lamb to Slaughter is a good way to lose all of your victims in subsequent turns, though you could just make sure you’ve saved them all first.

Right?

Rejecting God makes expelling Berith really difficult, because when you do it, you’re not going to be able to stock up on action cards.

With one, maybe two exceptions, you have to be in Berith’s space in order to play that action.

I hope you have a reaction card or two saved up, since you won’t be able to buy them!

The finales are pretty brutal too.

Hell on Earth will make you lose all the benefits of saving so many victims before the finale that the bloodlust didn’t get that high.

Spiritual Attack makes your reaction cards a bit more painful, as even if you block all of his damage, you’ll still take one.

Finally, It Wants You just has him go after you, but he’ll attack twice so you’d better have health, reactions, or preferably both.

Because unless you’ve kept bloodlust down, Berith is also very fast.

The Terror cards are really interesting, but also can be very intense as many of them just have Berith following victims (or you) and attacking.

Berith is just relentless!

However, other cards of hers aren’t quite as bad.

You can even get a dove or two if you’re lucky!

Or you can have Ursula appear and just knife you to death.

The Minor Dark Powers can be extremely annoying, especially when both of them come out one after the other.

Demonic Curse really limits you, as you have to discard down to 6 action cards and can’t have any more until you deal with this.

Not being able to Expel Demon is also pretty harsh, meaning you’re going to have to do her some damage before you can try to save her.

That’s sad.

Berith is a really cool killer. I love the “save Ursula” mechanic, which adds a bit of nuance to how you deal with him.

I like how it’s possible that you lose even if you manage to kill him.

The ratio of final health tokens with health versus those without makes it so you really have to get a lot of doves. Especially if you know that both you and Berith have health on your final health tokens.

That leaves one!

I haven’t figured out how to defeat him yet, unfortunately. He’s a bit overpowering, especially in the Abbey.

Which leads me to…

L’armes Abbey has an interesting map layout, with two whole branches that are almost separate with a couple of connecting rooms.

The Cloister in the middle makes it a bit hard to navigate because you either go into the Refectory or you head into the Sanctuary area.

From the Refectory, you get into the dorm, the library, etc, and you can move around to get to the Sanctuary another way, but those two paths don’t intersect at all before you get there.

I really like the look of it and the artwork on it is amazing.

The three search locations are separated pretty well, with at least 4 spaces between them so you can’t Sprint from one to the other without playing another movement card.

The mechanic that the Abbey uses to make your life miserable is called Malice.

You start with a Malice token on the killer’s space and three adjacent spaces (or nearest spaces if there aren’t three literally adjacent).

Any time you’re in a room with a Malice token, all horror rolls have you replace one die with the cursed die (the black one).

I’ll talk about the white blessed die in a minute.

The cursed die only has a star on the 6, and if you roll a 1, you lose a health!

Also, if all fourteen Malice tokens are on the board, you lose.

So that’s not good.

How do you deal with those?

The Benediction action will let you clear one or maybe more Malice tokens from your space and/or adjacent ones.

Or, if you fail, you get to add another one!

When placed, they always go to the killer’s space, or an adjacent one if there already is one there.

Many of the terror cards will be adding Malice to the board.

There’s one for each deadly sin, and then the Witch’s Totem above.

You could get lucky and no victims are on a space with Malice, or they could die by the dozen.

They also do other cruel things to you, like making you discard an item (though blessedly not if you only have one) and many bring out events.

However, some of the items that you can find actually counteract that curse!

The blessed die has 2 stars on the 6, as you see above, and when you can roll it, that’s wonderful.

Also, the 2 has a star as well, meaning you’re successful 50% of the time and can only fail (unless you don’t have the cards to discard) once.

There’s armor that gives you the blessed die when reaction, or the Spear or the Sword that give you the die when attacking.

The cloak for moving, or St. Lucy’s Eyes when you’re searching! (Eww, gross)

There is so much cool stuff here that you have to wonder who really built this abbey way back in the day.

If you ever have to have a blessed and a cursed die, they cancel each other out and you just roll normal.

If you have multiples of one or the other, you use whichever one you have the most of (so two cursed and one blessed results in a cursed die).

Other items can be very helpful too, especially the Holy Chalice, which can either heal you really well or bring you back to life even if your final health token is blank.

The Holy Bible would be really helpful to get in this film as well.

As usual, there are three event cards that bring annoying (or sometimes helpful) special victims out.

The Abbess is wandering around forcing people to go back to the Dormitory.

Yeah, let’s concentrate everybody so that Berith can pick them off en masse.

Father Damian can really help you!

All horror rolls get a blessed die if he’s in your space, and you can get rid of one Malice token for free each turn?

Sign me up!

Oh, if he dies while in your space, that’s three horror?

Not good.

I only had him show up once and he was all the way across the map from me, so he died before I could make use of him.

The Quebecer will just cost you time, but if you can get him and two other victims out before the Upkeep phase (the Dormitory is only 2 spaces away from an exit space), that can be really helpful.

The Demonic Crocodile is just so weird and fun (well, deadly too).

Other events are really handy or really terrible.

Black Mass may make you lose by being overrun by Malice really quickly, adding one per turn if none were added.

However, Breaking the Curse and Leap of Faith are extremely helpful.

Who doesn’t like taking an unused item card?

The Abbey is a really interesting location that I did enjoy, though the Malice tokens can really make things difficult.

You have to manage them, which is why it’s great that Benediction only costs 1 Time to purchase.

Inevitably (though not always), you’re rolling the Cursed die as part of your Benediction attempt, since the token is in your space.

The movement paths in the building are really interesting and having an exit area right outside the cemetery is very nice.

As I said above, the artwork on the map is wonderful too.

A great location that I look forward to using with another killer.

The two Final Girls that are included are once again unique in that, for the first time, you’re not assured of what you are going to get when you save victims.

Rita doesn’t have victim save spaces.

Instead, when you save a victim, you roll a die.

You might get nothing.

You might get to heal or get some time.

Or, you might get to do that and either decrease Horror or move one space.

When there are 6 victims saved, you flip to her ultimate.

Lindi, on the other hand, does have save spaces (but only 4) so you choose which reward you want to get.

But then you have to roll to see if you get it, or you might even get it twice!

The ultimate sides are really powerful.

Rita will almost always have you rolling three dice, because she can decrease Horror each Upkeep phase, and possibly decrease it by 3!

Lindi does the same, but with healing.

She can heal in the Upkeep phase, if she’s lucky.

I love both of these Final Girls, though they do add even more randomness to this already random game.

It’s disheartening when half of your saved victims don’t end up benefiting you, except by moving you toward their ultimate side.

But their ultimate sides are so amazing that it’s almost worth it.

Overall, A Demon in the Shadows is another really good feature film in the franchise.

It doesn’t reach the heights of Into the Void or Madness in the Dark for me, but it’s still very good.

However, this is yet another feature film where the killer is especially terrifying in the location that comes with them.

Berith mixed in with all of those Malice tokens, trying to Expel Demon when you’re using a Cursed die, is just hard.

The theme of this one is wonderful and I really did enjoy it.

(This review was written after 4 plays, one of which was so wrongfully played that I went past my normal 3 plays before reviewing)