Zombie Survival: The Board Game

From the first look at Zombie Survival, I thought this would be a fun game to play. The outlook from playing this game, it is no where near as fun. The reason being the rule book, and nothing but the rule book. You have better clarification predicting weather for the next month than getting your head around the rules that Twilight Creations supply with this game.

Setting the game up is easy as it gets. Everyone gets a house and yard tiles, putting everything else in their respective places. The great part about setting up is the mass choice of items that you can put into your house.
All players take it in turn to fill up their houses by picking items that they think they will need in order to survive. It’s not as simple as it sounds though, as some items will need other items in order to use them (A torch/flash light will need batteries etc.). If you have more people in your house, you’ll need more food and water, thus more weapons (if you want) and items to be able to supply your people. It’s a great mechanic and is one I thoroughly enjoy about the game. You can finish filling up the house being satisfied with your picks or wondering whether you’ve made the wrong choice on one or two things.

From then on, the game begins and the problems start. The first player rolls the dice and which ever number it lands on, zombies enter all yard tiles on that number, on EVERY player’s yard. So everyone will get four zombies at once on their yard tiles.
Then the first player turns over the next event card which applies to all players. This will screw you over in some shape or form depending on what comes out.

The turn order goes through with players able to build barricades, combating zombies and sending people in to town to pick up supplies, if they wish.

The problems with the game starts with the event card. Other than screwing you over, some have writing on the bottom of the cards such as ‘food, batteries, water’, which all have a number next to it. The rules don’t properly indicate what needs to be done. It tells you briefly the details of the rule but it left me and the other players wondering whether it means one thing or another.

The next and most problematic part of the game is combating zombies. Selling you a game with the main aim being combat and not state the majority of the rules about combat perplexes me to no end.
The best part about combating zombies is the picture of the zombie on the underside of the box lid. This is where you throw dice to see whether you hit the zombie or not. It is one of the best mechanics I’ve seen in a game of this type as you are trying to aim to kill with the dice instead of just the luck of the dice roll, though the luck of the roll does occur if you don’t get an immediate kill. However, this is about as good as it gets.

At the start of the game, after all items have been picked, they are put into the grid of the house. When you fill it up, that’s when it’s at maximum capacity. This also includes the amount of people you’ve chose to have in your house. When you get round to killing zombies, there is no player movement. You essentially pick a person and weapon, pick a zombie and roll the appropriate amount of dice. There is no movement spaces, and the rules dictate that if you are more that one space away from it, you get -1 die. With no movement in the house, a player’s person might be in the centre of the house to combat a zombie. But does the person move to the window or go outside to kill the zombie? The rulebook has slight inklings of this, but it left my head hurting and wondering what the heck I do. There is also problems with barricaded doors and windows and the problems that comes with that for combat.

I could go on about the lack of rules but all in all, looking at the game from the set up looks great. There should be a great deal of fun about it, however, I would say only 30% of the rules are explained in the rule book, and not a great deal of that percentage is for when you are in combat. There is a lot of grumblings about this game and its rulebook. So if you were to purchase this or play the game, be prepared to make your own rules a lot of the time. It essentially stops the flow of the game play whilst you make house rules and because they’re so many, it can be very frustrating from the outset.

I have taken it upon myself to rewrite the rule book for this game so I can get it back out on board game nights instead of collecting dust in the cupboard.