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In Zombicide you take the role of a unique survivor of a zombie apocalypse. It’s a co-operative game, and it means it. Often I stay away from co-op games because I’m a very competitive gamer, and I also don’t feel the threat of failure is there enough in these games. Zombicide definitely takes care of that for you.

Components
The game comes with a large array of zombies, of course, as well as six unique survivors. The plastic is of good quality, but not superb. Where the minis really shine is in the sculpts. The amount of detail that has been put into them shows a true passion for making a great game. And while there are only four types of zombies (Walker, Runner, Fatty and Abomination) there are multiple sculpts of both the walker and runner variations, so the horde shambling on the board never looks identical.

The cardboard punch outs are of nice, thicker stock and the dice are … well, dice. The only fault I have here is you will likely want to invest in an alternative storage method than the plastic trays. Each sculpt has a specific spot on the tray and can make breakdown of the game take some time. Battlefoam does offer a set of trays that will fit inside the box, likely the best course if you plan on painting the minis. Else some ziplock bags would do.

Gameplay
The game comes with 10 scenarios and downloadable scenario generator is supposed to be on the way. You lay out up to 9 double-sided tiles according to scenario that the survivors and zombies will move about. As well as some closed doors, zombie spawn spots and possibly even cars and objectives.

Each player takes their turn, doing various actions such as moving, attacking, searching or opening doors. Certain actions performed with specific items may create noise. For example, a crowbar is able to jimmy open a door silently but the fire axe makes a nice clang when doing the same. This comes important on the zombie turn.

After all the survivors have completed their turns, then the zombies on the board go. They follow simple rules: if they are in the same zone as you they *will* eat you. In that, they automatically hit and take one of your items and replace it with a wound. Two wounds and you’re dead. These are lethal zombies, folks.

If they can’t attack they will move towards the closest survivor they can see, or failing that the loudest noise on the board (that’s where the noise created on the player turns comes in).

After all of the zombies have acted, then a spawn card is flipped for each spawn zone. As players kill zombies, they will level up gaining skills. Each spawn card has a different result for each of the four levels. You use whichever level is the highest reached by any survivor. And the difficulty ramps up quickly once you start leveling up.

Each scenario has its own goals and can even allow for things like getting into cars and running over zombies and doing drive-bys.

Conclusion

I backed the Kickstarter of Zombicide and by the end of my first playthrough I had zero question that my money had been well spent. The survivors each have their own unique playstyle, with different abilities as they level up. Plus many of them are modeled after actual media characters/actor likenesses which is a huge play benefit. Want to play as Machete (Danny Trejos)? Done, El Cholo the dual machete wielding survivor. Sheldon from Big Bang Theory? Dave the Geek. Bruce Willis in … almost any of his tough guy roles? Nick the Bad Cop. Michael Douglas from Falling Down, Rick Grimes from Walking Dead, you get the picture. And there are just more promo survivors on the way in Quarter 2 of next year. I don’t know if they’ll be made available to non-Kickstarters, but I surely hope so.

Anyways, this is a great game that has challenged every time and great fun to boot. The tension builds great and survival is never assured. Best zombie game I’ve ever played.