Re-Imagined Green Ghost Game

Hi all, This Instructable has been a long time coming. The original Green Ghost Game was one my brother and I's favorite as kids. It’s probably the game that led to my fascination/obsession with all things that glow in the dark.

However our original games box we had was destroyed and subsequently the plastic game board was damaged and the majority of the game pieces were eventually lost over the years. Recreating this game was something I had always wanted to do, then when Covid hit it was clear I’d have plenty of time to try and do so.

I’ll try and be as detailed with my process as I can. Just know that some artistic things are well part inspiration / part compromise. So if for some reason I seem to neglect explaining something feel free to ask. Especially since there is Soooooooooo much involved with this game.

Materials

• 1/2" MDF board
• 1/8" Plywood (scraps)
• 1/4" Cedar board (scraps)
• Spray Paint:
• Glow in the Dark
• Neon Green
• White
• Black
• Vinyl for Cricut:
• Red
• Neon Green
• Glow in the Dark
• Kraft Board
• Dowel Rods
• Carbon Paper
• Paperboard for Game Box
• Painters Tape
• Thin Black leather (scraps)
• Gold Foil
• Creepy Crawler Goop (good luck finding)
• Wood Glue
• Paint Pens
• Silver
• Black
• Brown

Tools

• Band Saw
• Drill Press
• Various Sanders
• Jigsaw
• Scroll Saw
• Cricut Maker
• Xacto Knife
• Ruler
• Creepy Crawler Maker (original)
• Pyrograpghy Wood Burner Tool
• Hand Trim Router with 1/2" rounded bit
• Adobe Illustrator for graphic design

Special Purchase

• Glow in the Dark 6 sided dice
• Glow in the Dark 12 sided die

Very brief history: With out getting to bogged down in a lot of the details about the history of the game, here are some basics. Manufactured originally by Transogram Company Inc. based in New York, NY in 1965. The game was actually distributed by a couple other companies Marx Toys and Ideal. The most recent version was a 1997 30th anniversary edition.  

Research was surprisingly difficult and easy. I was able to use some of my remaining game pieces for reference but ended up searching the internet to locate pictures of other parts. Its out there but depending on what version you'll find variations of some parts especially the game board pictured here.

Now there are so many parts to this game as I first mentioned in the intro. So I’ll break them down alphabetically in separate steps. The Game Board and New Dice Tower (replaces the ghost spinner) in separate steps.

In the original game the mini ghosts were made out of plastic (in fact almost the entire game was out of plastic) and I considered having them 3D printed (and may eventually) but I decided to make out of MDF and other materials I had available. So I created a simple tiny ghost design that I could easily cut on my scroll saw. The two eyes I used a tiny drill bit smaller than an 1/8". After cutting them all out (12 total) I based coated with White spray paint. MDF board is like a sponge so it took two coats. After this I gave it a coat of Neon Green, then two hits of Glow in the Dark Paint.

These mini ghosts are collected through out game play. Oh in all of these steps I've put a picture of what the original game part or parts looked like.

The pets (playing pieces) were also originally made out of plastic. There are 4 pets Cat, Rat, Bat, & Vulture.

I again made these out of MDF on my scroll saw. The MDF board was thick enough I didn't have to add any extra base for stability, they stood up right on their own just fine as is.

For the actual playing pieces I painted them a couple coats of white then a couple glow in the dark paint so they would be visible on the game board in the dark. I also went around the side edges with different colored Neon paint to make each look different as well.

The second set of figures I spray painted all 4 of the flat black two coats (will be used and explained in a later step)

But after the whole game was finished and played decided to make 3D printed versions. I recreated in Tinkercad and had them cut out of acrylic on CNC machine.

The pets are the playing pieces each player moves around the board during the game in search for the mini ghosts.

After the games completion I had my recreated art used to make new playing pieces out of Black Acrylic. These were cut on a laser cnc machine. Attached is the .stl file in case you want to create your own Green Ghost Game or some other Halloween themed game.

The original game board props (again plastic) had special plastic formed notches to attach to the game board. Plus with raised features. These are strictly for show to enhance the spooky game play. They serve no other function in the actual game.

i had to put some extra thought in on these. I made out MDF as well. And as you can imagine these took some time to cut out on the scroll saw, what with all the holes. But before I actually cut them I did paper cut outs to check my sizing so they would actually fit on the areas of the board they belong. You can see the paper version in the one pic with the finished wood burned props on top.

I felt I didn’t need to paint these black, but instead I wood burned the designs onto the MDF which worked quite well for the look and feel of the game, I made sure to do both sides. For mounting them to the game board I added dowels to help hold them in place during game play.

I decided after they were all done to go back around all the edges with glow in the dark paint to give some extra creepiness.

The Crypt, or as I call them Vault boxes, in the original game were just paperboard boxes that sit under the large openings on the game board. These areas are where the mini ghost hide during the game along with other creepy elements explained later in Step 13.

Lucky for me I work at a carton company and was able to have our cad engineer create me three perfect sized boxes to serve as the vault holes that go under the game board.

Simple design cut and folded that then fit perfect into the holes on my game board.

The vault doors were unique challenge in that they were originally (again) made of plastic with another raised plastic piece for the key holes. Each one of these had to have a unique key hole for a specific key to fit with it. I recreated the art work from the original game doors. Since each door is unique I decided to give each door a more unique appearance.

Each lock has a unique geometric shape that a corresponding shaped key works it. I took the art work and using my Cricut Maker cut out craft board in the door shapes. I decide to make the surface of each door themed to its position near the artwork on the board.

This first one is the shipwreck door. I recreated the artwork to the look of the original in Adobe Illustrator. I initially was going to 3D print these as well but due to Covid my access to 3D printer was limited. So applying my old world skills I designed and ran the SVG pattern thru my Cricut Maker using the Deboss tool burnishing the design on Kraft board. The keyhole locks I did separate to give it a raised look.

Once it was cut down I spray painted it Neon Green for the door and white for the Lock. The keyhole for the swamp door is a circle. I went back over the details on the lock with a Silver Sharpie. I mounted a small sheet of plywood to the back of the door with a large enough hole for the key to be inserted and not obstruct its operation.

In the next to last two pics you can see I toyed with the idea of adding lights to the inside of the vaults to where when the doors were close you'd see the keyhole illuminated. Eventually I nixed this idea as the light would be obscured by the mini ghosts and other vault artifacts.

The Haunted House Vault Door I had some scrap gold foil sheets that I ran my SVG file design again through my Cricut Maker and mounted it onto the Kraft board. I wrapped the foil around the edges before mounting the plywood portion. If I didn't mention it on the previous door the plywood actually serves as nesting feature to fit the door perfectly into the vault holes.

The keyhole is a triangle for this door and was painted white as well with Silver Sharpie details.

Again the last couple of pics show the show my nixed illumination idea.

The Hanging Tree Vault Door is made to simulate wood. So lots of wood grain in the original design. Again debossed into Kraft board. I took a ultra fine brown sharpie to bring out the details of the wood. I took the silver sharpie and went over the hardware hinges and door handle. Adding more detail with a black sharpie.

The Keyhole on this door is a square. Again cut out of a separate piece of Kraft board, debossed, painted white and detailed with Silver sharpie.

Last few pics the lighting scheme I decided not to do.

Again all the original keys from the game were plastic and I only had one from my original game, I found a picture online of all 4 and I recreated the look drawing them in Adobe Illustrator

Wait your saying to yourself why are there 4 keys when there are only 3 doors. LOL well its part of the game play. Will be explained in the Rules section.

I thought about using some old keys I had but decided to build new ones since that's pretty much what I've done so far. I took my drawings and ran them through Cricut Maker on Kraft board using the same Deboss nib. I did two copies of each. I glued them back to back. I mounted them to dowel rods. On each dowel rod I carved a texture effect so each one would feel different to the touch in the dark. Obviously the key heads are different shapes but thought the extra texture would help.

Players have to collect keys and swap them to get access to the different Vaults during game play. Since the game is played in the dark and the keys are black the players have to figure out which key they have by touch.

For the key heads I cut 4 geometrics shapes, out of 1/2" pine scrap I had laying around, one for each door lock plus the extra shape (Hex). Once all assembled I painted all black.

This was probably the most difficult part of this game. Since all the other elements to the game have to fit to it, it was kinda important that I have a pretty accurate size to work with. I didn’t have the actual game board anymore for size, so after searching online I came across estimated box dimensions of the original game.

Using that I worked inward for my measurements making the board 27.25" long x 11" wide x 4.625" in tall. Then using the pics I found on the internet of the actual game board (notice in the pics there were two variations of the artwork) I sized and cut down a 5/8"” sheet of MDF board. I then added all the holes in their respective positions.

On all of the holes game board with the exception of the vault holes I used a 1/2" round edge router bit with my Hand Trim Router to smooth the cuts out. Then sand it all down. I did some test for the vault door fits as well as the board props. I drilled 1/4” holes for the dowel rounds to line up with the props.

The legs had to be sturdy enough to support such a large piece of the game board so I used 3/4" dowels. I drilled partial holes for the 3/4" dowel rod (legs) on the bottom of the board. Measuring the dowel lengths to be the proper height of 4.625".

Prime coated the whole thing with 2 coats of white paint then gave it 3 coats of Glow in the Dark paint.

With the game board created I set about recreating the artwork using the pics of the overhead game boards I had found online. I used the thinner cleaner version and redrew all the art scenes in Adobe Illustrator.

I printed out the green portions and using carbon paper I lightly traced the designs onto the board. I had to be very careful not to press to hard as I didn't want to ruin the GITD paint on the actual board. Using a black paint pen I drew all the scenes on to the board.

For the spaces designed in illustrator I saved separately as .svg file and cut out red vinyl on my Cricut Maker. I tried to do as many large section to help when transferring to the board. Once all cut I carefully transferred the vinyl and burnished each into place. At this point I was getting excited as it was starting to look like the real game.

OK we now come to the chicken or the egg portion of this Instructable. I could explain the changes to game play or explain the added components. Lets do the additions first. There are certain components I could have probably created by hand from the original game (specifically the large Green Ghost Spinner). But given that I’ve already opted to make most of the parts out of MDF board I couldn’t think of an easy way to recreate such a giant spinner piece. At least not to my liking. A large wood spinner would be to cumbersome. 3D printing was out since my access to printer was pretty much nil. So because of that I opted to change the game to a dice throw instead of the spinner.

Adding dice throws meant rethinking how the game would be played. Normally for player movement they would spin the Green Ghost. For determining the end game winner spin the Green Ghost. Since no spinner this means I'd need to create new pieces for the game and changing the game play and directions.

The original game play also involved collecting the mini ghosts and placing them around the spinner at the games conclusion that wasn’t going to be an option. So for now let me just share with you the new components I made and will explain the game play changes in the Step 16.

I created graves for each players pet to place the collected ghosts during game play. This is basically another piece of MDF with holes partially bored for the mini ghosts to sit in. Here is where the second set of Pets come in (again painted black) and mounted each pet to a grave set. So 4 sets in all. Notice how I had a crackle paint issue. Made a mistake painting in full sun and caused the crackle. I decided to keep rather than sand down as it gave it more character.

The winner board, a long narrow piece of MDF with 12 partially bored holes for the ghost to sit in. I gave it an odd scalloped edge for effect.

I primed both graves and winner board 2 coats of white, 3 coats of Glow in the Dark paint, then painted al the bore holes black. Adding the pet names and glued their respective character to the graves. The winner board I gave a feathered hit of neon green paint and numbered each hole with a Black paint pen. 

I had recently came across my original Creepy Crawler machine. INSPIRATION!!! Each vault has three different elements in the vault boxes along with the mini ghosts. The original game, if you'll notice in the research section pic, had black feathers (bat wings? bats don't have feathers??), little black plastic bones (ugh more plastic), & rubber bands representing snakes.

Using my Crawler machine I made several new bugs. (NOTE: I can't believe we were allowed to play with this thing as kids, its super dangerous.) BTW I couldn't believe the goop that was in the box still worked after 58 years as well as the machine itself. Not bad for almost 60 years old.

I took small wood dowles for the bones and I had some small thin black leather I cut down into pieces to be bat wings (makes more sense that feathers).

The last pic shows all the parts in varying stages close to completion.

Since I was doing a die throw to determine the winner I thought it a good idea to take out some of the problems of throwing dice in the dark by creating a contained dice tower. This proved to be a challenge in that I’ve never seen or used a dice tower before (even with all my years of game playing). So more research. After finding some good reference I took and hunk of wood 4" x 4" square about 7-8" tall and using the band saw I cut down into 5 parts.

I first rounded the top portion to give the over all look like that of a Victorian haunted house tower. Once I had the shape I was happy with I lopped off the top portion and drilled a 1” hole through it for the die to fall through. I rounded the edge with hand trim router as well. Taking the bottom portion I cut the sides down by 1/2”. Then cut the inside ramps, simple cuts to cause the die to bounce around on its way down. I glued them all back together but before final assembly I added some green felt for the inner surfaces that the die would bounce off of. For the opening I cut and arched a curve. Check out the SloMo die test video.

Now here is where I went a little CCCRRRAAAAZZZZYYYY. I decided these were big enough surfaces that they needed something. So I did more artwork to make it look like a haunted house tower. I then cut out on the Cricut Maker Glow in the Dark vinyl for each side. FYI these too quite some time on the machine. In fact Cricut software kinda yelled at me saying WOW that's a large file this will take a few minutes LOL.

I then did my two coats prime white and then a couple coats of the Neon Green. After which I transfered all the glow in the dark vinyl to each side. As well as the top.

All in all I thought this was a pretty good replacement solution for the spinner.

In the searches for dice towers the majority of them had a tray where the dice would end up. Which makes sense, especially in the dark you don't want to be constantly turning the light on to look for the dice. I started off with just a plain walled tray for the tower to sit in and catch the die as it rolls out from some scrap cedar planks I had.

But after seeing how cool the tower turned out I knew this wouldn't fly how bland it was against the tower. So I re-cut the tray with Tombstones and a Green Ghost at the end of the tray. Glued it all together.

Did my paint regiment 2 white, 3 GITD and cut vinyl for it as well. Giving it all a really neat look. I lined the base green felt as well. In hindsight if you look at the original game the large Green Ghost spinner was really the star of the game. I think putting the extra effort into the die tower has made it my star of my re-imagined game as well.

I ordered Glow in the dark 6 sided dice for game play Plus one GITD 12 sided die for games conclusion.

The concept of the game is as follows: "Green Ghost" Is looking for his son "Kelly", who is out in Spookyville with other little green ghosts, stirring up the bugs, snake, and bones in the crypts(vaults) of Spookyville. Players act as Green Ghosts' "Pet," the Cat, the Bat, the Rat, and the Vulture. He sends them out to round up the 12 little ghosts back to the Green Ghost house, Olive, Mint, Emerald, Lime, Chartreuse, Jade, Bottle, Nile, Ever, Forest, Bilious (call him Bill) and Kelly.

Now the direction or game rules changes. With the physical changes I made to the game via no spinner and now a dice tower, I recreated the game rules pamphlet, retyping the directions first as they originally were. I then swapped out the original graphics with depictions of my re-imagined pieces. Then reworded all the directions on how game play changes.

For the most part game play is identical with the exception of using the spinner to move your pet (playing piece) around the board plus determining the final winner. The Dice tower now replaces all that. The nice thing about the dice tower there is no dice rolling off the game board or table in the dark. In the original game players would move their pieces (pets around Spookyville game board) visiting the 3 vaults and collecting mini ghosts. Originally they would just set these in front of themselves. But with the addition of the graves they now had a place to place, save and keep their ghosts safe during the game.

At the end of the game(the after all the mini ghosts that have been collected) each player places his captured mini ghosts on the winner board. Starting with who ever has the most mini ghosts placing them in 1 through however many ghosts they've collected. Keeping track of the numbers they occupy. Then the next player with the most ghosts placing theirs.

Once all the ghosts are posted. The 12 sided die is rolled by the person who collected the least amount of ghosts and the number rolled determines that ghost not to be the real Kelly (Green Ghost son) and is removed. The die is the passed to the next player to roll and remove the next number. Continue rolling until all ghosts are removed except the last one being Kelly. So everyone still has the chance to be the winner with such a random roll.

I formatted the game rules and printed out in booklet form to go with the game. PDF attached.

I had decided early on that what would a board game be without a decent box. So I set about designing the box to hold the game and give it a ghostly representation on the outside.

With a little help from my structural engineer coworker we created a carton to hold it all.

For the artwork I incorporated all the elements both original and new to my vision of the game. I designed each panel to represent parts of the game. The left panel is the ship wreck, the right panel the haunted woods. The front side panel is the haunted house of in Spookyville with the mini ghosts wandering around. The back side panel features the game playing pieces "Pets" with more mini ghosts floating around. The main top panel displays "Green Ghost" himself with Spookyville an the dice tower in the distance.

And not unlike the original games carton (as you can see in both the original pics and mine) its a biggie.

Final assembly was just a matter of putting all the pieces in their proper place. The vault doors, the props, vault boxes placed in their appropriate positions on the game board. Each player chooses their pet, and their appropriate grave marker in front of them. The Winner strip can be set asside until the end of the game.

I learned the best way to charge the GITD game board and the accessories was to leave it all out under lights in my basement all day (as the lights are all LED the GITD really holds a charge much better than under normal incandescent lights). Additionaly if you have a UV or Black light availabe it really kicks it into high gear. The main pic for this Instructable is under black light. Then at night when we're ready to play everything really glows well and for a sustainable amount of time.

I created a Green Ghost Game invite an mailed it to the Grandkids. On game night with everything created and assembled the grand kids came over to play my re-imagined game from my childhood. For their age and in this time of all things digital they were truely engrossed with the game.

I even created my own Green Ghost T-shirt for the occasion (of course out of GITD iron on from my Cricut Maker). The game stayed glowing for almost two hours allowing plenty of time to play. Surprisingly the kids loved the game and stayed focused through to the games completion.

Just goes to show you the power of Glow in the Dark!!! 

This was a real labor of love for me. When I shared it with my brother he was blow away and want me to make him one. LOL Sorry I said its a one and done.

I hope you all enjoyed this Instructable.

And again if I wasn't clear about any particular process feel free to ask.

Also I hope this inspires you to make or recreate your own favorite game.