Zombies!!! (2ed)
Your heart pounds in your chest and you are finding it very hard to breathe. The zombies are everywhere and seem quite intent on making you lunch. With so many of them, it's hard to tell if the scraping footsteps and moaning are down the hall or just around the corner. One thing is for sure, they are too close for comfort, you are almost out of bullets and your luck seems to have just about run its course!
Zombies!!! puts you in the middle of the action as you try to escape the ever-advancing zombie hoard. Players must use a combination of wits and brawn to be the first to the heliport and certain escape. The only problem is, the zombies are everywhere, they appear to be very hungry and your opponents would really prefer if you didn't escape.
The game, for two to six players, features and ever-changing map and an ever-growing army of the undead. Players take turns playing map tiles, placing zombies, running furiously, fighting and generally creating havoc for the opposition. Combined, this makes Zombies!!! a different game every time you play it.
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- Themes
Horror / Spooky, Monsters, Murder, Zombies - Mechanics
Dice Rolling, Hand Management, Modular Board, Roll and Move - Designers
Todd Breitenstein - Official Game Site
🔍 Zombies!!! (2ed) - Rulebook
🔍 See official rulebook - Price (MSRP)
$27.99
Zombies!!! is a fun game, and has a pretty easy learning curve. Basically, you race to get out of town, avoid/kill zombies while gathering weapons, ammo, etc. and (in true zombie apocalypse style), mess up the other players in order to ensure that you are the one to get away alive. (“If zombies are chasing us, I’m totally tripping you.”)
The game is easy to set up and plays fairly fast paced, though it lacks the color and depth of gameplay of some other zombie games (such as Last Night On Earth). There are a vast array of expansions, but some of them (such as Zombies!!! The End and Zombies!!! 7 Send In the Clowns) don’t integrate terribly smoothly and are better as stand alone games, in my opinion. The basic premise of the game remains the same – get to the helicopter and escape before your fellow survivors. So no matter how many expansions you add, it remains more or less the same game.
There are lots of fun references to the genre (including a card called “They’re coming to get you [insert name here]”) that are bound to entertain zombie movie fans. The artwork on the cards is good, though the game board pieces and figures are fairly basic.
If you’re looking for a quick, easy to play zombie game that will give you some laughs with your friends, this can be a fun game. Make sure you play with good friends who have a sense of humor though, because winning this game almost always involves doing some pretty underhanded and horrible things to screw up the other players. Those seeking a more elaborate or story-based game may not find it completely satisfying, but if you just want to run for your life, kill some zombies, and leave your friends to die horribly, Zombies!!! will provide you with some good, albeit not-terribly clean fun.
For people who like zombie movies this game may be for you. The game plot is as close to a tongue-in-cheek zombie movie as possible. Basically, you want to collect as many bullets and hearts (life points) while hindering all of the other players from doing well. An important strategy is knowing when to lose a life point and when to spend bullets. This game can be as cut throat as games like Family Business or Illuminati.
The game is well produced with nice artwork and 100 plastic zombies
Gameplay (Rules Synopsis):
To begin, the map tile with the town square is placed in the center of the game table. The player figures are placed on the town square. All remaining map tiles are shuffled except the heliport tile. The heliport is placed on the bottom of the map tile stack.
Players are dealt three action cards each.
Players decide who goes first. Each player is given three bullets and three life points.
Game Turn:
1. Reveal a new map tile from the map stack. Place it on the board linking it to the other map tiles.
2. Place zombies on the new tile. For every road entry point, add 1 zombie, unless it is a special building tile. If the tile is a building, add the number of zombies inside the building as well as any life points and bullets that the tile specifies.
3. Fight a zombie if it is on the same square as your pawn.
4. Draw action cards so that you have three in your hand.
5. Roll a 6 sided die for movement points.
6. Move & fight zombies.
7. Roll a 6 sided die and move that number of zombies 1 square each.
8. Discard an action card (optional.)
Players may play action cards whenever they apply. However, they are only allowed to play one card per round.
Combat is fairly simple, roll a six sided die: 1, 2, or 3 means you lose; 4, 5, or 6 means you win. If you win add the zombie to your collection. If you lose, you either lose a life point and fight again, or use a bullet to modify the roll of the die.
Each bullet adds 1 to the die roll. (a 3 becomes a 4).
If you lose all of your life points you are dead. Your turn is over (except for moving zombies.) Half of your collected zombies are returned to the “zombie pool.” Discard any weapon cards that you have and your pawn is returned to the center of the town square. You restart with 3 life points and three bullets from there.
Winning – The first player to reach the center of the heliport tile or collect 25 zombies wins the game.
Impression:
I personally love zombie genre games. My favorite being Last Night on Earth which has a better “Zombie Movie” feel. Zombies!! is a fun game that can be taught very quickly to novice gamers who always seem to have a great time playing it. Over the years we have played this game many times but since the purchase of LNOE we have not taken Zombies!! off the shelf.
ZOMBIES!!! was the first zombie-themed game I’d ever played and as such, it holds a special place in my heart. While it isn’t my favorite zombie-themed game, it is fun, fairly straightforward, and it is a good value considering all that is included in the box:
30 Map Tiles
50 Card Event Deck
100 Plastic Zombies
6 Plastic Pawns
30 Life Tokens
60 Bullet Tokens
2 Dice
Instructions
ZOMBIES!!! has about a dozen expansions as well as Humans! and Martians! spin-offs. In fact, as of the writing of this review, Twilight Creations has a Kickstarter in the works to produce a new expansion (Zombies!!! 13). We’ve added a number of the available expansions to our collection in the Moore household and use a select subset of the rules and cards.
What I Like
The Event Cards – The artwork on the cards is well done. The cards themselves help keep the game interesting and humor is incorporated on the cards. (The cards also indicate which expansion they come from, which is very handy when you want to mix them together and later be able to separate them back out.)
Hurray for the Helipad!!! – Some zombie-themed games on the market know seem to be a trial to find out who can last the longest. If there is a winner, it was only because they were the last to die. While this can be very intense and dramatic, it is also a bit depressing when there is no getting out alive. I enjoy the fact that the goal of ZOMBIES!!! is to get to the Helipad tile, or safety.
The value of the game is appropriate for the cost. For about 20-30 bucks, you can get a fun game with 106 plastic miniatures. I wouldn’t complain if the cardboard life tokens and bullet tokens were replaced with plastic or resin tokens, or if the map tiles were made out of heavier card stock, but given the price of the game, everything is pretty well fair.
The rulebook is very clear, short, and simple. Just like the game itself, it is pretty straightforward. I didn’t have an appropriate appreciation for this when we first got the game, but after having gone through the Zpocalypse rulebook, I can definitely applaud ZOMBIES!!! for providing such a basic and easily understood rulebook.
What I Don’t Like
The bumpable, shifting, creeping map tiles!!! – The map tiles are fairly thin and end up getting bumped and shifted with the slightest provocation as we play. This is very frustrating. When we play this game, we have a sheet of construction paper with ***** to hold the corners of the cards and thus, the cards, in place. Heavier or interlocking tiles might mitigate this “shifting” problem.
Can be too simplistic – While the event cards are fun and I dig the miniatures, ultimately, the game can get a bit boring. So much of the game is just rolling the dice. Roll the dice to move your pawn. Roll the dice to fight the zombies.
Overall, it is an enjoyable game, but there are better ones out there. However, for the price, it is definitely a worthwhile investment and a game that will make its way out on the table time and time again.
Zombies!!! is a good game for it’s price, but if you don’t like Risk or other types of popular games, with dice-based movement and random cards ruining your day, you might not like this one. Proceed with caution, which is a zombie rule anyway…
Is it Pretty?
Yes, but in it’s gross ways. The cards that come with the game having great art and the city tiles are well designed. You get a hundred zombie figures, of two colors, but they do the job. My only real gripe about the art work is that the tiles repeat a lot. It’s funny to see Bob’s Burgers show up once, but when you have eight of them on your table, the joke wears off a bit. Still, you’ll feel like you’re in a zombie movie, or at least, a self-aware one.
Who’s it For?
This is the tough question for me. I played it with some family and friends and they all liked it, but I don’t think anyone was jumping for another go. It sort of plays like a game of Sorry and Risk, maybe a bit of Clue. If you don’t like randomness, you won’t like this game. I think I learned that it’s best to only play with four or less people, and never at a late hour. I think if you can find or make houserules for a co-op mode, you’ll enjoy it more. When buying this game, just measure you love of zombies, randomness and constant death to inform your decision.
Why is it in My Collection?
It’s a cheap game, easy to teach and has plenty of humor and mean cards to satisfy that dark hunger in my zombie soul. It’s fun, but frustrating and while I like and own it, I will only be taking it out with the right crowd; one that is more relaxed and not easily upset, and one that can play a game that goes on a little longer than it should. I don’t think I’ll be getting any of the expansions since it would only add to the game length, but it’s definitely a good Halloween game or a random pick of the night.
So, by now many people know the general gist of Zombies!!!. In case you don’t, a general breakdown goes like this: you and up to five other players pick a plastic character (called “Shotgun Guys” in the rulebook), place them on the starting town square tile, and roll dice to determine movement and attack success or failure. Bullet tokens allow you to make up for a bad attack roll, and life tokens represent how many licks it takes to get to the center of your Tootsie Pop (or in this case, your brains). At the end of your turn, you also roll to shuffle some zombies around. The game board is built by placing new tiles down that branch off of existing ones, and the game ends when any player racks up 25 kills, or gets to the helicopter tile and escapes.
Everyone has a small hand of cards that allows you to break the rules in some way, such as moving more spaces than you normally could, or adding +1 to your attack rolls. Other cards screw players over by doing things like surrounding them with zombies, or making them skip a turn because their shoelaces are untied.
And screwing people over is what you will do in this game- it’s not cooperative by any means. Sure, you might form temporary alliances to try to slow a mutually disliked player, but in the end, only one person wins.
So with this basic setup, you would think a game about blasting away zombies in a ruined city would be quick and full of action, but then you would be wrong. And frustrated. Because you just spent an hour and a half slowly slogging through waves and waves of zombies, dying often because health and ammo are annoyingly scarce, and not in a good “zombie apocalypse” way, but in a “I have to travel halfway across the map and kill 15 zombies to pick up a couple more bullets and many of the action cards I have only let me use my special abilities in infrequently occurring specific instances and why are we still playing this.” way.
So why give this a 6/10 instead of something lower?
The reason why Zombies!!! isn’t an abject failure is that the rules are so easily customizeable. In fact, the rulebook actually encourages creating your own house rules if you don’t like the ones they provide (and you won’t). Changes to make the game run faster, like the ability to play and discard any action card at any moment, or putting a health / bullet token in the middle of every new area tile, gives you incentives to keep moving and using cards. Shuffling the helicopter tile into the upper half of the deck makes a mad scramble to win soon after the game starts, instead of having people groan as it shows up halfway across the map, and the realization that another boring half hour awaits just getting over to the thing sets in.
Even with these changes, Zombies!!! isn’t the best game you will ever play, but it provides quick, light filler between heavier games, or while waiting for more players to show up to your game night. At around $25, it’s not that expensive, the rules are simple, and heck, you could just use the 100 provided zombie miniatures in another game if you decide you simply hate it. Either way, it will certainly help you pass the time when the actual zombie apocalypse comes.
There is no shortage of zombie board games. Some are thematically entertaining, like Zombicide, and some are pretty much Yahtzee featuring the undead. But as with most things, different strokes for different folks.
The other day, my wife and I checked out a newly-opened sci-fi themed cafe in Toronto’s Junction neighbourhood. It’s called See-Scape and worth a visit. For five bucks a person we could play board games all-day from their growing catalogue.
I’ll post reviews of the other games over the next few days, but for now, this one is on Zombies!!! (with the superfluous three exclamation marks).
This is a simple game to teach and learn.
You start with three cards that either boost your chances of winning or ruin someone else’s shot at victory. For example, my wife seemed to have an unusual surfeit of “tie your shoelaces” cards she threw at me, which prevented me from smiting walkers.
Because slaying zombies is a goal.
They spawn like mad and the first person to either wipe out 25 or take off at the zombie-free helipad can dream of one day being lazy and generally unprepared in a walled community.
Players also start with bullet tokens which can be used to boost your rolls (I need those the most because the dice gods hate me) and heart tokens which give you re-rolls.
On your turn, you’ll flip a map tile, place it Carcassonne style, play cards if you want/can, roll to move, hope to encounter zombies, roll to slay them, and pick up additional bullets and hearts.
Rinse and repeat until you meet the victory conditions.
Pros:
A compact and speedy game that can be taught in minutes
Miniatures aren’t CoolMiniOrNot quality but there’s a massive pile of them and it’s fun to have them shambling around the map tiles
Lots of options with cards that benefit you or Munchkinize your opponents
Cons:
Not particularly deep or heavy on strategy, but it is what it is
Relatively luck-based so if you roll terribly, things fall apart
For some, this will feel unnecessarily long – rolling to move, rolling to slay, rolling to move, rolling to slay, play a card, flip a tile, rolling to…Know thy gamers and adjust the victory conditions accordingly (e.g. be the first to dispense with 12 or 15 zombies and not 25).
Verdict:
An entertaining filler, Zombies!!!, is worth playing occasionally. It wouldn’t make numerous appearances at my gaming table, but if I want to play a light, competitive game with people relatively new to the hobby, Zombies!!! fits the bill.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
“Zombies!!!” is fun game, its not very complicated and easy too learn.
I would say that the game has an 2/10 strategy rate and 9/10 luck rate. This makes the game highly unpredictable, fun, sometimes very difficult and frustrating, but still fun. Unless you pick up a great weapon along the way you can never be certain if you’ll come out of alive from an building or an horde of zombies.
There are some things that unfortunately makes this game just “a good game” instead of an awesome one.
The game depends to much on how good your movement rolls are, if you throw a “1” you’re chances to pick up the “health” and “bullet” tokens and progress further in the game are really bad, not good.
The deck is filled with a lot of cards (good ones) that you’ll never use because they are either locked to a specific place or you’ll first have to visit a certain place until you can use them.
Often you´ll end up discarding a good card because its just to far away to “that” place from your location.
You need a 4 or higher on 6 dice to kill an zombie and you will probably encounter at least 20-40 zombies during a game, the odds are a bit too low to keep the game flowing for every player. Especially when there´s not a lot of good weapon cards in the deck.
I personal enjoy games with equal luck/strategy rate but i still enjoy playing “Zombies!!!”, especially with some of the great expansions that are out there.
GAMEPLAY
A zombie thrashing game with simple roll and move turns and gotcha card playing. The goal of the game is to kill 25 zombies or reach the helicopter and live to tell the tale. The city is built each player turn as they are randomly laid from the stack. Each player takes it in turn to roll for movement fighting zombies along the way. Play cards with weapons on them to more effectively kill zombies or move faster. Other players play cards to add more zombies in your way. This game is a blast to play as you get stuck by your opponents. Unfortunately also because of this the game can drag on quite a long time. There are some house rules to help (check out the strategies).
COMPONENTS
The art is a generic modern city setting of good quality. The cards used for the city are too thin and need some back bending to flatten. Thicker stock would also help prevent the board shifting during gameplay. The models are about 15mm, there is a shotgun toting hero of six different colors and a bag full of zombies. You can and should augment your collection with a second bag purchased separately which will help for bigger games.
THEME
Everyone loves zombies! The simple mechanics and the unexpected twists and turns of the cards makes the game feel very cinematic and full of story. Brains…..
WHO IS IT FOR?
This is not a very deep game, with lots of dice rolling luck. That and the gotcha cards its hard to plan, there is chaos abound. Its tricky to recommend an age because of the subject matter, the game’s length is more of a factor try 12 and up. Games can be as short as 90 minutes but they can go on much longer.
MMMMMM…brains. There was a time when zombies were silly monsters in movies with bad visual effects, worse plots, and even worse acting. But times have changed, and zombies are cool. But what about Zombies!!! the game? Is it cool, or has time not been kind to one of the first true zombie games?
Components
In the box you will find 30 Map Tiles; 50 Card Event Deck; 100 Plastic Zombies; 6 Plastic Shotgun Guys (pawns); 30 Life Tokens; 60 Bullet Tokens; 2 Dice; and instructions.
This game came out in 2001. It’s important to keep that in mind when looking at the pieces. The tiles are thin, and slick, and less than ideal for this type of game. The cards once again are thin. Better, thicker stock with less gloss would be welcomed if the folks behind the game do a 3rd edition. That being said the artwork on both are really good and fit the theme well.
The tokens are not good. They are small, oddly shaped with generic icons. This is another place where an update would be welcome, as personal player boards ala King of Tokyo or D-Day Dice would keep things much cleaner.
What about the zombies then? These are fun little miniatures. Not much has changed in production quality of little plastic guys over the years, and these hold up very well. In fact, I know people who use bags of Zombies!!! zombies for other games.
Overall, a mixed bag based on modern games.
Set-Up
The setup of the game is fairly basic. One player plays dealer and shuffles the event deck and gives out 3 cards to each player. The Town Square tile is placed in the center of the table. The Helipad tile is kept separate as the dealer shuffles the remaining tiles and randomly places the Helipad tile in the lower half of the deck.
Each player takes a pawn (Shotgun guy) and 3 life and bullet tokens.
Finally, each player places their shotgun guy on the Town Square tile.
You are now ready to play.
Game Play – Basics
On a player’s turn they first draw a tile from the map deck and add it to the city. Tiles may be rotated in any direction but must be placed so that all roads are connected. If a player starts his turn on a spot with a zombie, he must engage in combat.
Once any start of turn combat is resolved, the player will draw back up to three event cards, if you have less than three.
Next, the player will make a movement roll. For each pip on the die, players can move that many squares. No diagonal movement is allowed. While the player may move up to the number of spaces indicated by the movement roll, they must stop and resolve combat on any space occupied by a zombie. The player may continue moving until they have moved the number of tiles allowed based on the movement roll.
After moving, roll a six-sided die. The active player must must move that number of zombies, one space each, if able.
The game ends when either a player has reached the center tile of the“Helipad” tile & killed any zombies there.
Alternately, a player can also win if he is the first to collect kill 25 zombies.
Game Play – Advanced Tactics
Here’s where I’d like to talk about the combat system of Zombies! because, it’s really simple, and really good.
Combat is resolved by rolling a six-sided die. If you roll a four, five or six, you win. The player will collect the zombie miniature to indicate a successful kill
If you roll a one, two or three, you lose
and must either, forfeit a life token or spend enough bullet tokens to raise the roll enough to make it successful. For example, if you rolled a two, you could discard a life token and roll again or spend two bullet tokens to raise the total from two to four.
You can also use event cards that add more flavour to the game.
This combat system is super simple and smart players will be able to use their bullet tokens wisely to mitigate most zombie encounters.
The way to make other players play is the movement of the zombies. One or two zombies may not be a big deal. 5 or 6? Now a player has to think where they want to go.
Theme
In 2001 it would have been easy to say that this is the best example of a zombie movie made in tabletop form. But in 2015? It’s good, but there are better games that do the same thing.
In fact the theme has been done to death at this point. So unless you know people who love zombies, and have to play EVERY zombie game, the theme may actually hurt you when trying to get the game to the table.
Replay Value
The game plays long. For a pretty simple game that can be a negative. The game also offers up limited strategies for victory. And because many of the Event cards only activate on certain tiles, you may end up discarding a cool card after 15 minutes when you realize there is no way you’ll be able to use it.
Over All Impression.
Zombies! has a really fun and simple combat system that deserves a better overall game.The problem is…is there really a market for a 3rd edition of Zombies! when we all ready have Zombicide and Dead of Winter? Would it compete with Last Night on Earth for counter space at you LGS? Or maybe the system should be re-purposed by and skinned with a Walking Dead theme.
I really wish I had a game like Zombies! a long time ago. It would have been fun and different. But age has not been kind to this game, as your time and money can be spent on better games that deliver an even better zombie experience.
My daughter positively loves this game. My wife and I enjoy it for about an hour, before it starts to grate on us a bit. The board tiles are very light/thin (oversized, square playing cards, basically) and get pushed around easily during play. There is near constant fiddling with small tokens, zombies, and tiles (OCD gamers need not apply, the fiddly nature will drive you mad, constantly working to keep the board together and/or pick pieces up carefully enough).
That being said, the game is really fun otherwise with some variants and/or house rules implemented. Some of the cards are really cool and fun to use, when the game is moving along in the beginning, it has a great action-horror-comedy movie feel to it. Then the helipad comes out and it’s usually a race to see who gets there first (or someone bags the last few zombies they need on occasion, getting the win). When it gets to that end-game point, the game can start to feel like it’s dragging a bit. Add in expansions and you need a larger table and more time. This is a game best played with others into the theme and in shorter bursts. Longer play sessions tend to wear out their welcome with most I’ve encountered, but neither my wife nor I dislike the game. The “screw you” gameplay can be great, and killing zombies is always fun for a while! The price isn’t bad either, so you pretty much excuse the weight/thickness of the tiles, until someone tries to get a bullet without tweezers and sends 2 tiles full of zombies and tokens out of the setup. Its a fun game, but far from perfect.
The first time I played Zombies!!! the game lasted almost three hours. My friends and I were disheartened: we had sought out the game, anticipated playing it for months, and were already talking about buying expansions.
The problem was that we played with the Second Edition rule book, and nothing else. So what was supposed to be a fast, action-packed survival game turned into a slog in the third act, as we all tried to get to the chopper.
Not one to throw away $25 on a one-time board game play, I went to the internet. I wasn’t the only one who found the rule book, and the rules, a little hard to follow and occasionally tedious. The game NEEDS house rules. It benefits from rule tweaks (mainly changing how movement works). The second time we played the game, with a heavily modified set of house rules I downloaded from BoardGameGeek.com, it was if we had picked up a completely different title. Zombies!!! was suddenly fast, ruthless, suspenseful, and absolutely fun.
The more you play the game, and introduce it to more people, the more quick and playable it feels. It’s like breaking in a brand new baseball glove. Twilight encourages you to change the rules to your style of play. The expansions also help (some way more than others), and add in some cool options for more advanced players.
I have been going back to this game every couple of months for two years now, and have played it with a dozen or so different people. It’s easy to teach and not SO strategic that it’s intimidating–but there is a fair amount of strategy. It probably won’t appeal to Eurogamers, or folks who get angry when dice decide just about everything… but for a fun, heavily themed, ultra-gross zombie experience, there’s none better.
This was the game that started it all for me. The insanity and all the dollars spent is fully owed to this small box of chits, plastic zombie minis, cards and tiles. I happened upon this gem at a Chinese Souvenir shop of all places! I thought “This looks cool”, bought it and the rest is history.
Zombies!!! although not very complex has just the right amount of theme and a kind learning curve that has proven to be the perfect virus to spread the more advanced gaming bug to the Monopoly crowd. It has been THE gateway game for most of my weekly game night crew. After a few plays with a newb I usually hear “so what’s Arkham Horror all about?”.
The rule book is a bit of a disaster but is clear enough and with tons of on-line info you won’t feel stranded for long, well not until you start populating the game tiles with hordes and hordes and hordes of zombies! With 10+ expansions house rules are inevitable but I see this as a strength to the game. It can easily be tailored to your liking or style of play. Zombies!!!7: Send in the Clowns is a crazy expansion that I recommend after picking up the core set.
This series has endless possibilities and tons of cool minis in the expansions. The cards and abilities are hilarious especially if you love scroning your friends a la Wiz-War. If you’re a Zombie nerd this one is a no-brainer well actually an all brainer!
Zombies! is one of my favorite games. What’s to love about it?
1. The expanding tile-based board. I love the way the game evolves as you play adding more zombies, more health tokens and more brain tokens. The final tile is the helicopter pad which players race to in an attempt to be the sole survivor of the game. There is only space for one player so run for your life!
2. Gameplay is brisk. This is very cool because nothing makes a game less enjoyable than bad pacing. There can be a little lag if a player is indecisive about what to go for; should I try to get that health or some weapons on the new tile… or will I take more damage than I can repair facing all those zombies? Some players have trouble with decisions but other than that the game has great pacing.
3. Cool zombie figures that seem to reaching for the players in a creepy and threatening manner. Love this!
4. Easy to learn, hard to master. Chance plays it’s part here in the random appearance and layout of the tiles as well as the dice rolls resolving combats but a player can still get a feel for what works more often than not.
Overall a great game, fun for our gaming group who love this sort of theme and definitely a must-have for fans of zombie games.
Zombies!!! is a fun and light game.
It is quit repetative though.
Everyone can play this game, ’cause you don’t really need strategy and the rules are simple. Just make sure you have some beers ready 😉
You start the game in the town centre and you need to get to tha choppa! On the way you come across a lot of zombies, wich you can kill with a roll of a die. You get to keep the zombies you killed and that’s another way to win game… Collect 25 zombies.
It’s pretty gard to do this though, ’cause when you die, you lose half of them and you go back to the town centre.
On the way you can collect items as well. The best one is the skate board, wich makes you move faster. always useful, in every situation.
Some downsides of the game are:
When you play the ‘long’ version, you can run out of zombie tokens. making it hard to collect 25 of them. You can fix this by using house rules (f.e. 1 zombie represents 5 on a square).
It’s simple, so it can get boring (again, when you play the long version)
So have a drink in the mean time.
And make a conga line with you conquered zombie tokens 🙂
I want to really like this… I do.. because.. you know… Zombies.
Every time I play it I leave the table with a serious case of the Meh.
It’s slow. It’s cumbersome, and you never really feel like you are making headway. When someone does win you aren’t even mad it wasn’t you. Because you get to leave. This is not so much a game about surviving and evacuating a city full of undead hoards. It’s more a game of surviving and evacuating this game table.
Zombies!!! has so many expansions and so much competition that I find people either love it or hate it. I understand both points of view, but am a completist and will keep buying the sets as they make them! The cards can be funny, the game play is fast and enjoyable, and I love the genre.
That said, Zombies!!! is one of my favorite games that I don’t get to play much. I only play it with the right group – diehard fanatics. I have seen too many newbies to the game who don’t seem to take to it and want more of a Zombicide experience (another game I love).
I blame this on the huge number of cards we have in our deck (ALL of the expansions but not all of the cards are in our deck – some were pulled as we developed house rules to make the play easier). It can be overwhelming, but I have to justify my purchase! 🙂
Needless to say, we always find something everyone can enjoy, but Zombies!!! is usually not it unless they were fans before the game hit the table that night.
If there’s one game that started all this for me would be Zomibes!!! After my friend brought it over one fine day, I decided to grab my own copy of the game and two expansions. Every now and then, I would bring it out again and play with my same friends that started this out for me. While still a fun game, it does lose its value over time.
Zombies is your standard game where you must either get to the helipad to escape the town or kill off a certain amount of zombies to win the game. You are dealt with cards from a deck (mine’s just stacked with the 3.5 expansion for extra cards) and from there, you explore and kill zombies by rolling dice. While even with the expansions, the game does get a bit clustered? As you place more expansions, both your town and deck of cards get larger and larger. By the time the helipad is drawn out, you got a map full of zombies and just one giant maze of things.
But in the long run, Zombies is a game that may lose its value over the years but for every other day, it’s a game that you can enjoy with your friends.
Granted, that also depends if your friends either like the whole zombie genre or they hate it.
I was introduced to this game by some friends at a horror movie night we had and instantly fell in love with it. Over the years I have played it with several groups of friends and strangers and I can honesty say this game is made so much better with a group of good friends who love zombies! Beer helps too 🙂
Rescently I have dicovered I have been playing slightly incorrectly all these years, but no matter. Fun is the name of the game when I play Zombies and fun is what I always have while playing. The rules are a great guideline, but after years of playing I perfer to use some slightly different versions (aka house rules) with my friends, a we have more fun that way. The base rules are fine for anyone begining though.
I highly suggest this game to social gamers or anyone looking for some good old-fashion zombie action. Although not the most strategic game ever made there is alot more then one would think, though the game does tend to be mostly luck based with a dash of skill just to make things interesting.
Whenever you and your friends are looking for some horror themed gaming I suggest throwing in a zombie movie on the TV, sitting down and playing some Zombies or any of its many expansions.
I picked this game up and within 10 to 20 minutes I was already playing. The miniatures that come with the game are not bad however the player character is just the same guy just different paint job which was kinda annoying. The cards and the map tiles are not bad but do feel a bit flimsy. That said the game is very enjoyable, it is easy to learn and gives new players a taste of the gaming world by not overloading them with rules and such. The game is quick and fun, however it is a bit repetitive which does get boring after a while. Which is why in my opinion the expansions are great to have as they keep the game interesting. This games zombie theme is not as strong as those from games like Zpocalypses or Zombicide but do a great job of making you feel surrounded.
For several months we stopped calling our game nights “Game Nights” and started calling them “Zombie Nights”; that’s how much our group enjoyed the game. Not because it was full of depth and difficult choices, but because it was dripping with theme, had it’s own twisted sense of humor, and you get to annihilate zombies.
The part we enjoyed most was always the social aspects, and the opportunity to dog-pile whoever was getting closest to the chopper (in all our games we only ever had a player win by accumulating zombies ONCE). Our games always devolved into screwing the winner, which is just how we liked it.
So if your looking for the Mona Lisa of boardgames, keep looking, but if your wanting the Sunday funnies, this may be right up your alley.