The look of the game
You get a rather small box, filled with zombies, 6 player figures, town tiles, counters, two dice, and a bunch of cards.
The plastic figures aren't the best quality, but they do the trick. The counters are ok, and the town tiles are sort of an overhead map. Many tiles are copies, however. We once built a whole block of cinema's.
The artwork on the box and cards is great. Recognisable scenes? You betcha! Anyone with a sense of (dark?) humour will think the cards are great.
Other than that, it's all pretty basic. Nothing too special, but it works.
Gameplay
Since there are not that many rules to the game, I'll explain more than I usually do in my reviews. So here goes:
Every player gets a full turn, consisting of 7 parts.
1: draw a new town tile and place it somewhere so it matches with another tile in a logical manner. So, every time you play Zombies!!!, the town is different. On every tile, zombies are placed. Some tiles have named buildings where you can get goodies, others do not.
2: combat any zombie on your current space. Combat is easily done by rolling a D6. You win on a 4-5-6, and lose on the rest. Everyone starts with 3 life tokens and 3 bullets. If you're out of life tokens, you die and start again on the town square, losing half your collected zombies. Bullets can be used to add +1 to a combat die roll.
3: if you have less than three event cards in your hand, draw cards until you have 3. Event cards can be anything. They can help you with weapons, or hinder your opponents greatly. Mostly, it's the latter
4: roll a die. You can move that number of spaces.
5: you may stop your movement whenever you wish, but if you encounter any zombie, you must fight it before moving further. A killed zombie is yours. (one of the ways to win is by collecting 25 zombies, the other way is to get to the helipad frst)
6: roll another die. That number of zombies move 1 space, in any direction you want.
7: You may discard one card from your hand. End of turn.
Feel of the game
First of all, this game is not meant seriously. If you saw any zombies film, you're bound to recognise a LOT of things in the game.
Second, it's a "like or hate with a passion" game. There's no grey zone.
Let's see what the good and bad points are:
Good:
- it's funny
- it's never really the same
- people who like zombie movies will probably like the game
- it's not about winning or playing together, it's about making your opponents miserable
- hoardes of zombies to fight through is just plain fun
Bad:
- it can take an awful long time to finish the game. I can't even put a time to it here, it really depends on the attitude of the players. I once had a 4 hour session (although I admit we used a lot of expansions then)
- there is no strategy, it's mostly luck
- you will have to buy more zombies. There's never enough to place in town
- yes, you will die often and lose half your zombies. Mostly, other players will be to blame for that
- weapons can mostly be found in stores, which are always on the other side of town, for some reason. Bullets, however, are less rare.
- it's not about winning or playing together, it's about making your opponents miserable
Final verdict!
The Court of Infernal Affairs is now in session...
Many, many people hate this game, let's face it. But why? I myself like it. Sure, it's no fun if you're winning and everyone gangs up on you, but it's fun if you do it yourself, right?
I think most people take it too seriously, or they just stare at the things they don't like about the game. Well, if you don't like something about it: just put some house-rules in it! It takes too long? Shuffle the helipad in somewhere, or make the zombie limit 15 to win.
Weapons are too hard to find? Buy Zombies 3.5, there's lots more cards to help you.
In the end, I don't think this game deserves the very low score it gets. It's fun to play once in a while, especially with a fun group of people. But it's also for a very specific group of people. This is not "ye standard boardgame". You should play it first to make up your own mind. In any case: I like it, and will certainly play again.
Posted Mon May 14, 2007 10:29 am
