Players: 3-6
Playing Time: 1 hour
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)

The Components

Mall of Horror comes with:

• 1 gameboard
• 5 closed markers
• 21 character tokens
• 30 zombie figures
• 6 voting wheels
• 4 dice
• 1 dice box
• 21 action cards
• 1 chief of security badge
• 1 rulebook

Gameboard: A four-panel, somewhat abstract gameboard that details the six locations of the game. It's laid out as photos on a blueprint and has some nice character to it. Pushpins in each of the six mall locations clearly mark their character limits.

Closed Markers: Five large, cardboard markers which are placed on top of locations on the map when they're Closed due to zombie infestation. As with all the components in the games, these are nicely thematic with good artwork that conveys a feeling of urban horror.

Character Tokens: Circular wooden tokens in the six player colors (red, blue, yellow, green, brown, black). Stickers are affixed to each to show pictures of the various character types (little girl, gunman, tough guy, and pinup).

Unfortunately, the characters don't have any icons on them to remind you of the different powers of each character. This is the first of several usability issues in Mall of Horror which will affect first-time players, though not players more familiar with the game.

Zombie Figures: Fun zombie figures, molded in gray plastic. The detail isn't quite as sharp as some other recent games I've seen with plastic miniatures, but they're good enough.

Voting Wheels: Voting wheels for each of the six players (in all six player colors). They're constructed from two circles of cardboard with a plastic pin holding them together. The pin keeps the wheel very tight which is exactly what you want for this sort of hidden selection game.

The wheel actually lets you do two things: select a group of people or a location--each of which you do at different points in the game. The wheel is very well designed so you can never select a group and a location at the same time, and thus it's harder to make a mistake on what you're voting for. This is something that I never would have thought of, but is a very intelligent design.

Dice: Small black dice with yellow inked pips.

Dice Box: A small box top that you use to shake the dice and hide them after they're rolled. I found the shallow, wide box a little unwieldy to roll with, but most people did OK.

Action Cards: 21 square cards of medium-heavy weight. Each again features nice and evocative art along with a card title. However, the cards contain no explanatory text and for the most part no icons reminding you of their use. Worse there's no good reference in the rulebook; the info on the cards was scattered throughout the rules. This caused some players quite a bit of problems in our first game, and generally isn't very good usability. On my second play I understood the issues with the cards better and was able to provide everyone with a pretty good explanation of them so that they didn't have to try and hunt through the rules when they drew a card.

Chief of Security Badge: A small cardboard first-player marker.

Rulebook: An 8-page rulebook that does a pretty good job of explaining the rules, but was really hard to use for reference. The lack of a glossary for cards has already been noted. I also had troubles looking up other things during the game.

Box & Tray: A standard sized square box. The tray inside is notable because it's very well-designed. There are not only slots for everything, but some of the slots are recessed beneath others to keep everything in its place better. For example the dice go in slots beneath the slot for the dice box, while the cards go in a slot beneath the slot for the Closed markers.

The only real problem with the components is, as already noted, usability. The cards are hard to use because there's no info on the cards other than the card name and also no card reference. There's no player reference for the six phases of the game, when that would have been a great thing to put on the somewhat underused board. The character pieces have no reminder of what they do and the special buildings on the board (which is half of them) don't have enough info to remind you of everything that they do. I would have shrugged my shoulders at one or two of these issues, but combined they become notable.

However, the components are generally of high quality, and the artwork and theming are entirely beautiful. I've given Mall of Horror a high "4" out of "5" for Style. It would have been a perfect rating if not for those usability issues--and do be aware that they'll primarily affect first-time players.

The Gameplay

The object of Mall of Horror is to keep your people alive as zombie invade a mall--by voting your opponents to be eaten!

Setup: Each player chooses a color and gets three characters in that color--a gunman, a tough guy, and a pinup--as well as a voting wheel. (There's a fourth character, the little girl, for three player games.) The characters roll dice and place their characters among the six locations of a mall: a restroom, a clothing store, a toy store, a parking lot, a security HQ, and a supermarket.

The Characters. Each character has a special power as well as an endgame victory point value: the gunman (3) gets two votes; the tough guy (5) can hold off two zombies; and the pinup (7) attracts zombies.

The Locations. Each of the locations can hold a maximum number of characters. The toy store, clothing store, restroom, and security HQ can hold either 3 or 4. The grocery store can hold 6 and the parking lot can hold an unlimited number.

Several of the locations have additional special characteristics. The parking lot can provide cards, but is also entirely vulnerable to zombies. The security HQ allows someone to be elected Chief of Security. The grocery store is somewhat vulnerable and can never hold off 4 or more zombies.

Voting. There are a number of different opportunities to vote in the game. In all cases only the characters in the location vote, and each gets 1 vote per character they have in the location, 2 for a gunman. If there's a plurality in the vote, the "winning" person is selected.

If there's a tie, then the uninvolved players get to vote too, with one vote each.

If there's a second tie, and the players were voting on something good (truck search, security chief), nothing happens; if there were voting on something bad (zombie snackin') it happens to someone random.

There's one card that affects any vote: Threat. It gives you an extra vote for the current vote.

Order of Play: There are six phases in each turn:

1. Search the Truck
2. Elect the Secuirty Chief
3. Zombies Arrive
4. Choose Destination
5. Move Characters
6. Zombies Attack

Search the Truck: The players in the parking lot vote to see who gets to search the truck. The person selected gets to draw three action cards. He keeps one, gives one to someone else, and buries the last at the bottom of the draw deck.

Most cards affect zombies attacking, but there is also the aforementioned Threat card, as well as the Security Cameras card and Sprint.

Elect the Security Chief: The players in the Security HQ elect a new security chief. He's the first player, which is quite advantageous during movement, and he can also learn about zombie movements.

Zombies Arrive: The security chief rolls four dice, then looks at them as long as he was elected this turn. These dice list the locations that zombies arrive at. (The six locations are numbered 1-6.) Anyone with a Security Cameras card can also play it to look at the dice.

Choose Destination: Each player must now choose a destination. One of his characters will have to move from their current location to the new (different) location. You decide the location but not yet which character will be moving. You do this by dialing the location on your voting wheel.

The security chief chooses first and announces his new location to all the other players. Then they all secretly choose and reveal simultaneously.

Move Characters: Now, the destination of the four new zombies is announced and they're placed in front of the new locations..

Then each player, starting with the security chief, moves one of his characters from their current location to their new, dialed location. If the location they're trying to move into is full, then they end up in the parking lot instead (and that's often not a good thing).

A Sprint card lets a player change his destination on his turn.

At the end of movement two additional zombies may be put down: one in front of the location with the most characters and one in front of the location with the most pinups. In case of a tie the new zombie does not go down.

Zombies Attack: Finally, each of the six locations is checked to see if the zombies attack. They can break into the location if their number matches the number of characters in the location. Each tough guy can hold off one additional zombie. As noted, four zombies can always break into grocery store.

If the zombies can't attack (or the location is empty) they hang around. Empty locations can eventually get closed if there are too many zombies, though in reality people won't go to an empty location once 3 or 4 zombies are haunting it.

Votes will occur to see who gets eaten, but before this players get chances to play cards. Weapons can blow away zombies. Hardware can hold out one additional zombie. A Hidden card takes a character out of the vote, but keeps them from being eaten too.

If the zombies still storm the location after all cards are played, the players inside vote who gets eaten, and that player then loses one of their characters there.

The parking lot is an exception. Every zombie there gets to eat someone, and so there are often multiple votes, held one after another.

Ending the Game: The game ends when there are 4 characters left, or all the remaining characters are in the supermarket. Each player counts up the value of his remaining characters (3, 5, or 7) and the player with the most points wins, ties going to the player with the most cards.

Relationships with Other Games

Mall of Horror is a pretty pure negotiation game. Its closest sibling is "The Lifeboat Game", Rette Sich Wer Kann, where players have to decide who to throw to the sharks when their lifeboats spring leaks. It's also pretty similar to the zero-sum television game show, Survivor, where players have to similarly convince each other to keep themselves around. Mall of Horror has a lot of bells and whistles--enough to keep the game interesting--but otherwise stays true to the basic ideas of this genre.

Another pretty pure negotiation game that I've reviewed is The Traders of Genoa. What differs these games from pure trading games is that you're forced to make deals with other players; it's simply not optional.

Mall of Horror also has a strong blind bidding component, in the selection of locations for character movement, a choice that can be foiled by what other players choose. Caribbean offers a similar style of blind bidding.

Beyond that Mall of Horror is a pretty pure French game design, featuring good mechanics, but also better theming and a lot more chaos than most German Eurodesigns.

The Game Design

The heart of Mall of Horror is the negotiation, and it's well done. There are sufficient extra perks (promises of cards and future votes) to keep things moving pretty smoothly.

Beyond that the game has hard choices mixed in with some real tactics and the aforementioned blind bidding, as you try and figure out where people will go and how this will affect you. However, you can also make split-second tactical decisions after the blind bids are resolved by deciding who to move, as this can cause zombies to overrun a location that you abandon or may change whether players get bounced to the parking lot or not, possibly to your advantage.

There's some brinkmanship too, as you try and figure out how long a location will remain safe, and when you have to flee.

These varying mechanics all work together well and create an enjoyable, intense, and innovative gaming experience.

I think the game has some flaws too. In both games I played it slowed down a bit toward the end, as zombies more frequently showed up at places which no longer had people in them. It's also very chaotic, and can get a little repetitive as you move through the same actions again and again. Fortunately the game is short enough at an hour for these to not be a big deal.

On the whole I give Mall of Horror a "4" out of "5" for Substance: quite good.

Conclusion

Mall of Horror is a brilliantly themed and generally fun game of negotiation, brinkmanship, tactics, and blind bidding. It plays quickly and easily. The game isn't really deep, and can be a bit chaotic, but is a lot of fun if you're looking for a light game that requires a ton of socialization and is about an hour in length.

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