Unlike several other games of the zombie genre, Mall of Horror is not about fighting zombies, but simply surviving long enough for the rescue helicopters to arrive. It is about shutting the door behind you to keep the zombies out even if your buddy is outside with them. It is about looking at everyone in the room and deciding who will die and be dragged off by the zombies so that the others can live.
The game supports three to six players. I have played with four and five. With six, I expect the chaos factor to ratchet up slightly and for table position to become a greater factor. With three, I could imagine the game actually slowing slightly as players try harder to analyze and guess what the other two are going to do.
Characters
Each player controls three characters (four in a three-player game) trapped in a mall being overrun by zombies. Each of the characters have a different victory point value and special ability. The game ends once there are only a total of four characters on the board (six in a six-player game) or when all the characters are in the same location (that is not the Parking Lot). Once one of those conditions are met, the player with the highest point value of characters left standing wins. In the case of a tie (which did happen to me in one of my four playings), the player with the most cards wins.
The characters are: Pin Up: 7 Victory Points. The location that has the most pin-ups attracts an additional zombie; in the case of a tie, no zombie is added. Tough Guy: 5 Victory Points. He can hold back an extra zombie. Gunman: 3 Victory Points. His vote counts as two. Little Girl: 1 Victory Point. She is only used in a three-player game, but has no special ability (which I think is a shame).
The characters are nice colored wooden disks or pucks with a full color sticker on them showing the character icon and point value. We show Hidden characters by turning them upside down to avoid confusion. There are only three Little Girl disks, so the colors used in a three-player game are fixed. Each color/player corresponds to a different group: the jocks, the cops, theMIB, the rednecks, etc. with slightly different clothing for each of the character icons.
Locations
The mall is represented not by a gridded map, but by a board showing the six possible locations where characters can hole up. Each location is numbered one through six. The graphics on the board invoke the bloody, muddy genre while still being very clear with minimal text.
The locations are: 1: Restroom. Can hold three people 2: Cache. Can hold four people, but not used with only three or four players. 3: Toy Store. Can hold four people 4: Parking Lot. Can hold any number of people, but any and all zombies can attack and kill someone. This means that unless cards are played, one character will die for every zombie in the Parking Lot. This is also the place there players can "search the truck" to get cards. 5: Security Office. Can hold three people. This is where the role of Chief of Security is voted upon. 6: Supermarket. Can hold six people, but cannot hold back four or more zombies. Thus, even if you have five people in the supermarket, four zombies are enough to drag someone off.
If you try to move to location only to find it full by the time you get there, you end up in the Parking Lot.
Once a location (except the Parking Lot) has accumulated eight or more zombies, it becomes condemned and is ignored for the rest of the game. In practical terms, once a location has two or more zombies on it, people tend to stop going there and it becomesde facto condemned anyway.
Voting
Before getting into the meat of the game flow, I should explain how voting works. Each player has a wheel that can be used to choose a color/player or a number/location. When a vote takes place, players with characters in that location choose a color on the wheel. The votes are revealed simultaneously. Each of your characters in that location count as one vote with your Gunman counting as two. Whichever color gets the most votes "wins." I use quotes because winning the election may mean you are the one thrown to the zombies. If the vote ends in a tie, a second vote it cast. Now, all players get to vote, even if they are not in the location. If this second vote is still tied, a die is rolled to determine the winner. In four games, I do not believe we ever rolled a die for voting. Because the outcome of many votes are obvious (I have two votes, you have one vote, I choose you to die), you can forgo the formality of the wheel and keep the game moving along.
Game Flow
The game moves along very nicely with an easy-to-follow, regimented, step-by-step procedure, broken down into several phases. In the description below, I am renaming the phases from the official rules for the sake of clarity.
A: Search the Truck. This happens in the Parking Lot. The player with the majority of votes gets to take three cards from the deck. That player then keeps one, hands one to another player to keep, and places the third face down at the bottom of the deck.
B: Elect the Chief of Security. The players in the Security Office vote on who will be the Chief of Security and get to hold the cute cardboard badge. If there is no one to vote, then the current Chief of Security keeps the role, but is not allowed to look at the dice in the next phase. This is also the case if there is a tied vote even after the second round of voting; a die roll is never used to determine who is the Chief of Security.
C: Roll the Dice. The Chief of Security rolls four six-sided dice secretly under a box and looks at them (if elected last phase). These four locations indicate where the zombies will be showing up. Players can also use Security Camera cards to look at the dice.
D: Choose Your Destination. The Chief of Security picks a location where one of her characters will go and announces this choice publicly to everyone. The other players now use their wheels to secretly choose a location where they will be moving. You may not choose to stay where you are: one character must move. I have read grumbles about this requirement, but it is essential to keep the game moving and it is in keeping with the theme (in zombie movies, they're always doing this kind of thing for legitimate or stupid reasons).
E: Move to Your Chosen Destination. First, reveal the dice and place zombies in the corresponding locations. Then, starting with the Chief of Security, all the players move one of their characters to the location they chose in Phase D. If that location is full or condemned, go to the Parking Lot instead. If you change your mind on where you want to go and play a Sprint card, you may go wherever you want.
F: Zombies Attack. Place an extra zombie on the location with the most characters; if there is a tie, don't add a zombie. Place an extra zombie on the location with the most Pin-ups; again, don't add any if there is a tie. Sometimes, a location will end up with two extra zombies.
Now check to see if the zombies overrun the characters in each location, in numerical order (though this not so important). If the characters outnumber the zombies (remembering that the Tough Guy counts as two), they are safe. If the zombies outnumber the characters, they break through. Zombies win ties. You can use Hardware and Weapon cards to hold off extra zombies or kill zombies, respectively.
If the zombies overrun the characters, there is a vote to determine who dies. If you have two or more characters in the location and you "won" the election, you can chose which of your characters will die. Once the zombies drag someone off, they all leave that location, making it safe for a short while, at least.
In the Parking Lot, things are little different. First, you cannot hold off any zombies. Secondly, every zombie gets to attack. Meaning, that unless you use cards to kill or hide from zombies, one character will die for every zombie in the Parking Lot. In one of our games, a player with a voting majority in the Parking Lot let another player character's die to the first zombie before using Weapon cards against the remaining zombies.
The attack phase can go by quickly or it could take a while, depending on how many zombie attacks there are and how many rounds of voting take place. But it never drags and is always exciting. Unlike some combat-oriented zombie survival games, Mall of Horror is not a dice fest, and you won't be relying on luck to save your bacon.
G: Check to see if the game ends. If so, determine the winner. If not, go to A.
Cards
Cards are always good to have. When they are applicable and how they work is usually fairly clear. The cards have provocative graphics, but no text to describe what they do beyond the title of the card. The are the size and shape of square cocktail coasters but are made from good laminatedcard stock. Since this is not a card game at heart, I would not expect any wear issues.
The cards are:
- Hardware: Hold off an additional zombie for that turn. You cannot use this in the Parking Lot.
- Hidden: You don't get to vote, but you can't be chosen to be eaten by zombies, either. In only applies to one zombie attack, so you might need multiples of these to hide from all zombies in the Parking Log. There was some ambiguity here, and we we decided that it only applied to one of your characters in a particular location. So that if you wanted to hide both your Tough Guy and Pin-up, you would have to play two cards.
- Threat: Get an additional vote.
- Security Camera: Look at the dice so that you will know where the zombies will turn up.
- Sprint: Change the location you were going to; you may even go back to where you started.
- Weapons: Kill one or two zombies (depending on weapon) in your location. Weapons include axe, shotgun, grenade, etc.
Once used, cards are discarded. So that great shotgun card only works once. And the deck is never replenished (this is a zombie survival game, after all), so there is always an attrition of resources.
In one of our games, I and another player were in the Supermarket. We had equal votes. He played Weapon and Hardware cards, but it wasn't enough--there was still one too many zombies. I played a Hidden and let him die. If I had played my Hidden first, he still would have died, but he would have saved his cards for later. If we both waited for the other to start playing cards first, then it could have been ugly. As far as I know, there are not timing conflict rules like there are in M:TG or Cosmic Encounter.
Synopsis
Like other voting-based games, there can be negotiation. Or rather than relying on diplomatic skills, players can focus on the cold equations of who should die so that the others can live. There is opportunity for tit-for-tat backstabbing ("you voted against me in the Restroom, so I'm voting against you in the Supermarket"), collusion ("you let me search the truck, and I'll give you the other card"), and dealing ("don't vote for me to die and I'll vote for you to be Chief of Security next turn"). But in my group, we never did this vocally, which is just fine for me. If your group is into deal-making, then you can certainly do that, with the understanding that no deals are binding in a zombie movie.
Mitigating the chaos of the game by predicting what the other players will do, or even forcing them into certain situations, is key. The dice do add randomness to the game, but like a good card game, the trick is making the most out of the randomness. Even so, a lucky player may coast through sitting in zombie-free locations while others get screwed by the dice. Both of these factors make the role of Chief of Security seemingly quite powerful, especially those of us who are not so good at puzzling out what everyone else will do or who fear the dice. It reminds me in some ways of the King from Citadels; it is a good role to have, but if you hang onto it too tightly, you can be handicapping yourself. For example, because the Chief of Security moves first, all the locations may be fully occupied, forcing a move to the (potentially deadly) Parking Lot. Plus, the other players will have opportunities to grab the role from you.
The possibility of player elimination may also turn some people away. If all your characters are dead, you only participate through the second-round voting process. As a booby prize, you are allowed to place one an extra zombie on the board, once. While I have seen a player quickly reduced down to one character in a single round, I have never seen a player eliminated early or in one fell swoop. The game is short enough for this not to be a problem and it is still enjoyable as a spectator sport with opportunities to kibitz if you (and your group) are so inclined.
The biggest flaw in Mall of Horrors, as I see it, is the potential for king-making. This is especially true on the second round of voting, where everyone has a vote on who dies. These situations are not guaranteed, but players may find themselves choosing who wins the game (even if they have already been eliminated!). Sometimes, it may come down to a die roll. This never came up in the games we played, but one particular game could have ended that way. Despite this, I'll keep the Substance at a 5.
The components are all top-notch without being over-produced. My only complaint is that the different character disks will probably be hard to distinguish for some color-blind players ("Is that my Tough Guy or yours?"). The costuming/team differences are cute, but too subtle to fulfill this requirement. On the other hand, the graphics are not important to game play at all and you can easily make your own version of the game using homemade cards and few tokens for characters. A summary card detailing the turn orders, character abilities, and cards is necessary, I feel, but you'll have to download or make your own. With these oversights, I feel obligated to knock the Style down a point to 4.
I strongly recommend this game. Its quick pace combined with a well-integrated theme make for an enjoyable hour of playing. I am pretty sure our games took longer than sixty minutes, but it never felt like the game was running long or overstaying its welcome. The game's end may even sneak up on you if you do not watch for the end conditions. While there is the potential for over thinking, double-double-guessing, and analysis paralysis, the group can usually keep everyone in line ("hurry up and vote already!"). The game is light enough that it is possible to be distracted by outside influences and some players had to be reminded that we were voting and waiting for them.
By combining a logic puzzle (if he moves his Tough Guy there, then I need to move my Gunman to maintain majority, but then that leaves my Pin-Up stuck in the Parking Lot, where she'll probably die) and second-guessing of players (but he knows that, so he may move his Gunman instead...) with negotiation, the game should appeal to a variety of gamers. Of the four games we played, I won two and was a contender in the other two (losing one in a tie-break), and I am sure this has clouded my opinion of the game. Have I done well because I like the game or vice-versa? I don't care; I was too busy having fun.
