Players: 1-8 Playing Time: 5-20 minutes

Summary of Components

As with Cambridge Games Factory's other games, Zombie in My Pocket comes in a clamshell. It contains: a handful of black dice, several black poker chips, and glossy cards which come in three different sizes: large event cards; small item and decision cards; and small, square location cards.

Quality: Cambridge Game Factory has always had components that are quite good for a small, indie publisher. Bits like the chips are very stout. The glossy cards are generally appealing looking, though you can see die cutting artifacts on the edges. 4 out of 5 for an indie publisher.

Beauty: There's cartoonish art on most of the cards and what looks like computer-generated artwork on the location cards. It's all fair. 3 out of 5.

Usability: The components feature good use of a "combat" icon to clearly show what helps in fights. Rules are also repeated on a few different components, to make them easier to remember. Finally, the event cards do a good job of being functional in multiple ways. They not only show events for multiple "hours", but they also show items you can randomly pick up. Overall, some good effort has made made to make the game easier to play. The one thing that I don't like is that a specific number (X), which is based on the number of players, has to be remembered every time you meet zombies—which is awkward. 4 out of 5.

Theming: Overall, the game does a great job of getting across the zombie theme in a humorous way. You have items like chainsaws and ammoless shotguns, a dining room window you break, etc. In addition, the core game mechanics of combined collective and individual decisions work well within the genre. 5 out of 5.

Overall: Zombie in My Pocket has well-produced components that do a good job of creating the feel of zombie horror. A high "4" out of "5" for Style.

Summary of Gameplay

Zombie in My Pocket is a quick zombie-survival game where you have to essentially complete a quest as a party to succeed. You must: find the evil temple; get the totem there; find the dining room; break out the window to get outside; find the graveyard; and bury the totem. Along the way you also have to find one of two rooms that have "evil etchings" in them.

Taking an Action: Though this is a cooperative survival game, each turn there's a single leader, and he makes the decision of what to do. This can be: cowering to get health back; exploring to move to a new room; or taking an action in the room.

Exploring is what gets you from room to room, either returning to old rooms or turning up new rooms. It also causes an event to occur.

The Leader's Tyranny: One of the interesting elements of the game is that the leader is a tyrannical ruler on his turn. Not only does he make decisions about which action to take, but he also decides who gets found items (usually him) and who takes extra damage from combat. It's a very neat contrast with the need to cooperatively survive.

Resolving an Event: Events occur whenever you enter a room. Some events are good, causing healing or gaining you items. Some cost you health. Then there are zombie encounters …

Fighting the Zombies: Before each fight with zombies, each individual player secretly decides between fight or flight. Fighters will damage zombies and take damage themselves; of course the fewer of them there are, the more they're going to get hurt. Flighters actually get healed as if they were cowering, but if everyone flees, they take damage instead and the group must leave the current room.

The result is an interesting social conundrum that balances individual and group benefit; I'll talk more about that in the "Relations" section.

The Looming Timer: There's also a timer looming over all of this. If you can't accomplish the required tasks before you go through the deck three times, everyone loses.

Individual Victory: Finally, there's some individual victory, which makes this a "NONcooperative survival game" (according to the box's sloganeering). Though all surviving players win if they finish the quest, the player with the highest health wins the best.

This makes the whole question of fight or flight even more intriguing, because you want to keep up your health but also must be sure the group as a whole survives.

Relationships to Other Games

Zombie in My Pocket is an interesting game because it turns a few different social interaction theories into gameplay. On the one hand, it acts out the free rider paradox. Players are encouraged to satisfy their own greed (by fleeing fights to heal) even though it can harm the common good (because other characters might get killed, leaving too few to kill future zombies). On the other hand, the fight or flight decision is also reminiscent of The Prisoner's Dilemma: if everyone tries to flee, the group as a whole is punished much more than if none fled; but if some fled those ones are advantaged.

There are few other games that have touched upon these same topics. One is Bruno Faidutti's Terra, which is based on Olson's Paradox—itself a close cousin of the free rider problem.

The game is also reminiscent of Mall of Horror, another social zombie-survival game, though that one is focused on negotiation.

There is also a print and play version of Zombie in My Pocket available online, but it's only a single-player game.

The Game Design

Zombie in My Pocket is a light game whose strength is mainly its theme. It earns some chuckles and it's good zombie fun. Generally, that's sufficient for a very short filler that tends to run 15 minutes or so.

The core mechanic of fight or flight is an interesting one, because of the social dilemma that it opens up. There's not a lot of depth there, but it's sufficient to carry a short game.

Zombie in My Pocket does have a fair amount of randomness. Turning up the important rooms first can make the game, while getting them last can break it. Similarly, there can be big differences in the game depending on whether you get useful items or not.

Overall, Zombie in My Pocket has fair gameplay and I've thus given it a "3" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

Zombie in My Pocket is a light filler that offers up 15 minutes or so of zombie fun. It doesn't have a lot of depth, but it does introduce some interesting social dynamics, which is sufficient for its length.