While a massively powerful being, the Mind Flayer was not without weakness. Most notably, it had a low tolerance to heat, particularly fire. All hosts within its hive mind shared this weakness, resulting in the creature feeling pain whenever a connected entity was exposed to heat, or burned.

Waffle cards don’t do anything in the game specifically, but if you want to play a series of games, you can keep points and waffles are worth 1 point. I really like Stranger Things. I like the writing and characters and friendships, and I like how rarely the show dips into the postmodern; the characters treat the world they live in as their real world; they don't see things as merely a stereotype of their decade. These are characters who learn and grow, and the show has value and stands on its own (all the Easter eggs and nostalgia shout-outs aside). I suggested VAMPIRES! (Maybe, they said, so I whipped together a version in which three stakes kill you.) The Duffer Brothers experienced much difficulty in writing the episode, particularly because it featured the tragic death of their favorite new character Bob Newby ( Sean Astin). They liked his performance and didn't want him gone, but decided eventually that his demise was the right thing to do narratively. [1] While speculating the shadow monster's weakness, Lucas, Mike, Dustin, and Max theorized that if they destroyed the monster, they would also destroy the monster's army. When they realized that the shadow monster controlled everything in a hive mind, they compared it to the Mind Flayer, a monster from Dungeons & Dragons that similarly controls the minds of its victims. The boys' D&D manual also stated that the Mind Flayer's goal was to spread and take over other dimensions, making them speculate that the shadow monster wanted to do the same. The group decided to interrogate Will to find the shadow monster's weakness.

Should I Stay or Should I Go" by The Clash - Jonathan plays a song that he and Will first listened to together: They then distract him while Chief Hopper figures out the Morse Code with Dustin, Lucas and Max. I needed a neutral card. Someone suggested that food could be neutral, and two food could supplant a wound, but I thought it would get too complicated. I am not sure why I ended up going with gold as a neutral card, but I think it was the idea that you can collect gold over several games and thus collect personal "points". Some players like this, but ultimately I think this was a mistake. I now think I should have gone with the food concept, especially since each night could require players to eat dinner (discard a food), which could reveal information. With the Mind Flayer at his side, Vecna’s powers greatly expanded. The Mind Flayer’s body could split into smaller pieces while sharing a collective consciousness. These smaller pieces could possess other creatures and beings, tying them to the same core consciousness; through the Mind Flayer, Vecna could connect various lifeforms to a shared hive mind, with Vecna's will at the top of the chain. Through the hive mind, a diverse range of beings fell under Vecna's control, including "Demogorgons", Will Byers and the tunnel-organism in 1984, the "Flayed" of 1985, and "Demobats", as well as the roots and vines strewn across the surface of the Upside Down. The Mind Flayer is very similar to the Elder Gods of H.P. Lovecraft, with his work actually tying into the Stranger Things universe, with Lisa from the novel "Darkness At The Edge Of Town" being a graduate of the infamous Lovecraftian college "Miskatonic University". After biting her with one of its tentacles, the Mind Flayer's proxy left a piece of itself inside Eleven, severely weakening her telekinesis later that evening; her powers would eventually fade completely, and would not be restored until the events of March 1986.

The house phone rings and Will realizes where they are. They sedate him again and the group arms themselves as they hear demodogs approaching, but suddenly hear the dogs being killed off. One is thrown through the window, and the front door opens by itself, revealing Eleven. She and Mike look at each other, both of them becoming emotional. After taking Will to Hopper's cabin, Joyce, Nancy, and Jonathan restrained him, surrounding him with numerous heaters. This eventually caused the fragment of the Mind Flayer possessing Will to be expelled from his body. The particles fled the cabin, escaping to the abandoned Brimborn Steel Works to lay low. I sold about 12,000 copies of the game, and eventually decided to send a bunch of copies to bigger publishers as I was nervous that I would never get a distribution deal otherwise. I hired a wonderful Dutchman named Richard to demo the game at SPIEL '19, and he attracted the interest of Repos Production, which shortly afterward became a subsidiary of Asmodee. Prolonged exposure to high temperature can weaken the Mind Flayer. When Will Byers was exposed to high temperature, it forced the fragment of the Mind Flayer within Will to flee his body. Similarly, when soldiers set the tunnels aflame, the possessed Will writhed in pain. In Dungeons and Dragons, Mind Flayers are a race of psychic humanoids with tentacles on their faces who eat brains. They primarily use their powerful psychic abilities to mentally enslave other beings. More recent editions have given the Mind Flayers the proper name "Illithids".That night, Will and his friends went to play at the Palace Arcade. While his friends argued with the arcade's employee, Will became distracted by another vision. He walked out of the Upside Down version of the arcade. To his horror, he witnessed a blood-red storm raging in the sky above, before hearing an unearthly howl. However, Will's friend Mike Wheeler snapped Will out of the vision. I don't worry about people who don't like my games; my goal is to brand them correctly so that people who would like them can discover them. This gets risky when working with IP because there's a lot of love for Stranger Things, and it isn't easy to satisfy everyone. My guess is the Walmart crowd will buy the game but not play it, and the hobby gamers will play it but not buy it — except for you delightful people (you know who you are) who will buy every version of the game. Salut!

The scene in which the Shadow Monster infects or enters Will bears resemblance to the possession sequence in 1973's The Exorcist.Thankfully offsetting this slightly is the short game length. It will generally take 15-20 minutes to play one full game, although there is a way to score points over multiple games. Players start the game by choosing one of the sort of recognisable characters from the show. Not only is the art style weird and sometimes almost comically so, but there is an omission of characters too. Billy is available but Hopper is not for example. Visual-effects producers Paul and Christina Graff were tasked with designing the creature. Because the first season incorporated several electrical interferences, they knew the second season would involve storms. Once it was decided the monster was “storm-like”, the Graffs began reseraching the look of storms and tornadoes. Steve Messing, a matte painter who was also consulted on the designs of several other Stranger Things elements, created concept art of the creature based on tornadoes, volcanoes, and other natural forces. In addition, they were inspired by volcanic eruptions with lightning storms in South America. [1] The entity was gigantic, looming at least fifty stories tall [1], and sported a distinctive spider-like appearance. The Mind Flayer exercised supreme control of the Upside Down via a psychic link, with Demogorgons, vines, and Demobats forming a shared hive mind; for a period in 1985, possessed humans known as "the Flayed" also comprised part of the hive mind. In a sense, the entirety of the Upside Down was like one gigantic organism, with all its contents and agents mentally connected via the Mind Flayer. On October 29, 1984, Vecna began acting through the Mind Flayer in his first attempt to conquer the world and exterminate humanity.