Introduction

Zombies!!! is a board game by Twilight Creations. They have released several expansions for the game (2, 3, 3.5, 4, 5, and 6), but this review will just cover the base game, "Widescreen Edition".

Components

The game comes with 30 town tiles, 50 event cards, 100 plastic Zombies, 6 plastic shotgun guys in different colours, 30 life tokens, 60 bullet tokens, and 2 dice. The event cards are standard game card material, reasonably durable, but easily bent. My impression is that the town board tiles are flimsier than I would want for the board of a game. The zombies and shotgun guys are of good construction. The various tokens are punched from a card sheet, and thick enough to be usable.

Game Play

The players all start at the Town Square in the centre, and the object of the game is to reach the Helipad first, or to collect 25 zombie kills. The turn sequence follows this pattern: expand the map, destroy zombies, refresh your hand, move and destroy zombies, move zombies, and discard. At the start of every player's turn, the player draws and places a map tile. Map tiles must be placed so roads continue. The newly placed map tile may have an indication of the number of zombies, health tokens, and bullet tokens which appear on the map - they appear at this point. After placing the map tile, if there are any zombies in the player's space, they must be destroyed now. As soon as the player is alone, without zombies, they may refresh their hand up to three. Movement follows, with the player rolling a die for the maximum number of squares the player may move. If the player encounters zombies on the way, they must be killed. Following the player movement, the player rolls a die to determine the number of zombies they must move (one square each). Then, play passes.

Combat

Combat in Zombies!!! is easy to resolve. The player rolls a die, and on a 4-6 the player wins, otherwise the zombie wins. If the zombie is winning, the player may spend bullet tokens to add 1 each to the roll, or one life token. If the player runs out of life tokens, they discard half (rounded down) of their zombie collection, lose their weapons, and begin a new life at 3 each of life and bullet tokens and respawn at the centre of the Town Square.

Event Cards

Event cards are the twists in the game - they are things like weapons, "I don't think they're dead" (removing zombies from a collection), and similar zombie-movie like effects. All in all, they have good, flavourful effects and titles.

Conclusion

Style

The game sure is pretty, and flavourful. The zombies and shotgun guys are pretty good sculpts for a board game. The board segments look pretty and reminiscent of generic "zombie movie" towns. The cards are well-named, and have good zombie movie effects. Zombies!!! gets a 5 for style, easily.

Substance

Sure the game is pretty, but how well does it play? In my experience, the game is pretty easily split into two phases - the "explore" phase, and the "run" kind of phase. The "run" phase is the end-game time where the players are all doing as much as possible to clear the helipad first, or to finish their zombie collection. The explore phase of the game is lots of fun, developing the town, and looking around. The run phase, however, I have found a little tedious - it tends to drag on and on as the players do all in their power to stop someone from winning. The game also has a tendency toward "screw the leader" kind of play. All in all, I've found the end-game to last far longer than I end up enjoying. The game is not a bad design, but ends up dragging. As such, I've found it a game that I don't push for, but don't mind playing - and thus, of Average (3) design and Substance.