Play This Thing has a review up for Gloom, a fun-sounding gothy card game that reminds me of the Lemony Snicket book — the objective is to make up miserable things to happen to your characters, and the most miserable wins.
The object of the game, in fact, is to make your characters as miserable as you possibly can. Each player has a family, a group of characters that they then play event cards on…The really interesting thing about Gloom is the story-telling aspect of game play. Though not required, when you play an event card such as "Terrified by Topiary," you may explain how this event occurs. Each character develops as more and more event cards are placed on it, so the character’s life story becomes increasingly unfortunate and, well, abnormal.
