Welcome to what will hopefully become another regular feature you can find here at Geek-tastic, the weekly board game review. We here at Geek-tastic are rather large gaming nerds, it really doesn't matter the format. Video games, board games, card games, RPG's, you name it. If it's a game, chances are we've either already played it or have heard about it and want to play it.
Board games seem to have been making a comeback in popularity over the last few years, which I think is great. People seem to be re-discovering the fun that can be had over a table with a group of friends and a good game. In response to increasing sales, the game market has seen a large influx of new games on the store shelves. Some of them are top quality games, some not so much. The purpose of the board game review will be to suggest some of the gems that we love to play, while helping you avoid some of the games that aren't a lot of fun. Some of the games we review will be new, some will be older, some may even be considered classics. But enough with the introduction, let's get on to the review.
The Breakdown
Title: Zombies!!!
Maker: Twilight Creations Inc.
Number of Players: 2 to 6
Length of average game: Can vary from 30 minutes to 3 hours (depending on how many players there are, and how much you decide to screw each other over)
Box Contents
100 Plastic Zombies
50 Card Event/Item Deck
30 Map Tiles
6 Human Figures
Lots of Bullet and Life Tokens
The Premise
You and the other players are survivors of a zombie invasion. You start the game in the center of town and must fight your way through the zombie hoards to the helicopter somewhere on the outskirts of town so you can fly to safety.
Gameplay
The zombies game doesn't have your standard game board. The board will be made up of 30 map tile pieces that connect together as players turn them over andplace them during their turns. At the beginning of the game, only the town square is in play. The rest of the deck of map tiles are shuffled and placed face down. Every character starts the game with three life points and three bullets.
On each players turn you flip over a map tile and place it on the board somewhere. The tiles show the city from a top-down view with streets and buildings clearly seen. You must connect all of the roads so that the board makes sense, but other than that the board is yours to create as you will. Here's an example of what two connected map tiles looks like:
After placing the map tile, you place the correct number of zombies that tile is supposed to have on it (explained in the rules) as well as any bullet or life tokens that go there as well. Then you roll for movement. You roll D6 (a six sided dice) and get to move as many spaces as you rolled. If you step onto a space with a zombie, you must fight it. Combat is resolved by rolling another D6. If you roll a 4, 5 or 6, the zombie is killed. If you roll a 3 or less the zombie wins and you can either choose to lose a life point, or you can use a bullet to add a +1 to your roll. So for example, if you rolled a two, you could use 2 bullets to change your roll to a four. If you're out of bullets though, you're screwed and you lose a life point. Once you're out of life points you die and go back to town square to re-start the game.
After all combat is resolved, you roll one more D6. The number you roll is the number of zombies you get to move on the board. Zombies are slow (of course) and can only move one space at a time. If you roll a 3, then you get to move any 3 zombies one space. Play continues like this, with each player placing a map tile, moving, fighting and then moving zombies until the last map tile (the helipad) is placed on the board.
Cards
At the start of the game, each player is dealt three cards. The cards do many things, but they boil down to either events or weapons. Event cards do all sorts of things like making other players lose turns or drop objects they're carrying, prevent people from going into buildings, temporarily stop the zombies from trying to eat you, etc. Weapons cards are items you can carry that will add bonuses to your combat abilities. In the deck you'll find wonderful zombie repelling items such as shotguns, grenades, molotov coctails, fire axes and of course...a chainsaw. Weapons can provide either a temporary or permanent bonus to your combat roles, and can come in very handy. Weapons are good, you want to find them as soon as you can. Especially the fire ax.
Here's an example of what some of the cards look like:
Victory Conditions
There are two ways to win Zombies. Either be the first person to the center of the Helipad, or be the first person to kill 25 zombies. The killing of 25 zombies is harder than it sounds really, as when you die you lose half of your zombie kill count. Generally it's easier to get to the helipad, but if you get some good weapons and your dice rolling skills are hot, it's possible to kill that many zombies.
The Review
Likes:
There's a lot to like with this game. First off, it's zombies, and zombies are always cool. You get to wade through tons (and I mean tons) of them as you try to make your way across town. You're always low on bullets and life. The game does a great job of capturing the survival horror aspect of zombie movies. There's also a vicious "survival of the fittest" thing that I love in games. You're out to save yourself, screw the other players. Maybe it's just the evil bastard in me, but I love games like that.
The game pieces too are something to really like. The map tiles, once all layed out, create a full city to explore. The art on the cards shows a city that has been overrun with the undead. Trucks and cars have been overturned, windows are broken, you can even see the lights from street lamps as the game is supposed to be taking place at night. The deck of cards too offers some really great horror art. Each card has a wonderful picture to accompany that captures a specific aspect of zombie film lore such as hiding out to bandage yourself up to chopping a zombie in the head with an ax. The artwork is deliciously bloody.
I also really like any game where the board is different every time you play it. By using a shuffled deck of map tiles instead of a standard board, you are assured that no two cities will come out with the exact same layout. This adds a lot to the replayability of the game.
Expandability. Much like all good zombie movies, there are always sequels. The folks over at Twilight Creations have released a number of expansion for the game already. And following the canon of George Romero's movies, the expansions add such things as a shopping mall and a military base into the mix. There's even a full standalone expansion that is a board game version of the Evil Dead movies.
Dislikes:
Certain weapon cards can only be played after you've gone into a specific shop in town. While this makes logical sense, it can be annoying when you finally draw a cool item like the skateboard, but the skate shop is all the way on the other end of town. You end up having to discard some really good things sometimes.
With six players, the game can go a little long. Which can be fine if you're having a good game, but sometimes you want a game that goes only an hour or so, but if you have 5 or 6 people playing, that's just not gonna happen.
FInal Opinion
If you're a fan of zombie films in any way, this is a must have. It's a great board game version of a classic zombie movie. Even if you're not the biggest zombie fan, the game is a fun survival/race game where you are trying to beat the other players to the objective. This game is definitely worth the money.
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