Publisher: Dan Verssen Games
Designer: Dan Verssen
Artist: Gordon Napier
Year: 2013
Genre: Card game of zombie apocalypse survival
Players: One to eight players
Ages: 13+
Playing Time: Forty to ninety-five minutes
MSRP: $39.99
As The Walking Dead continues to burn up TV screens and the comic flies off the shelves, it’s a no brainer zombies are what’s hot right now. While we’re seeing a lot of games focusing on the undead I can’t say all of them are keepers. Of course, my favorite game of 2011 was the Victory Point Games title Dawn of the Zeds (with an all new deluxe edition available from VPG and designer Hermann Luttmann) and back when Elliott was part of the team he really dug Last Night on Earth from Flying Frog Productions. Now a new card game has arrived on the scene from Dan Verssen Games following a successful funding run on Kickstarter.
I tend to think of DVG as a wargame company and personally they’re one of the best out there. In fact, if we had finished up with our planned favorite games of 2012 podcast – which we didn’t – Thunderbolt/Apache Leader was more than likely to not only take the crown for my favorite wargame of the year but also the best game of 2012 as well. I like Dan’s designs and have a lot of fun with his Down in Flames series, although I have the GMT editions and haven’t tried the DVG version.
Happily I can say Rise of the Zombies is loads of fun and makes for a tense and exciting race against time. That’s right! You only have so much time to lead your group of zombie apocalypse survivors from their location of diminishing safety to a waiting rescue helicopter which will whisk them away. Of course having seen plenty of zombie movies in my day, the sad fact is the survivors will no doubt land somewhere just as horrible as where they left and end up as zombie chow in the end. That’s outside the scope of this game – since you normally learn of this during the end credits – but when it comes to the undead it really is a battle simply to see the next dawn. Too bad it’s a Dawn of the Dead…
When I say the game is a race against time I’m not kidding as a digital timer is included with the game and depending on the number of players and the difficulty level you choose at the start you’ll have anywhere from 40 to 95 minutes to lead your band to the helicopter. At no time after you begin the timer can you stop the timer! What if you have to go to the bathroom? Tough luck as the timer keeps running. Say there’s someone ringing your doorbell? Yep, the timer keeps running. Like I said once the timer starts it will only be stopped if you win the game (easier said than done) or those precious minutes expire; as do the characters.
To win the game survivors must be placed on the rescue helicopter location card and no zombies may be on the card. Each game includes having to move through eight locations with the Safe House being the first location and the helicopter the eighth. As players move closer to the helicopter more and more zombies arrive and each step of the way becomes more difficult. If time runs out before you reach the helicopter, everyone loses. If you make it to the helicopter but there are zombies at that location as time expires, everyone loses. If you die before reaching the helicopter you’ll obviously lose. In fact, the only way to win is to have your survivor at the helicopter without any undead in sight when the chopper is ready to depart. This can mean some players will live to fight another day while other get left behind when the timer goes off.
The Safe House is laid out as the first location and the Rescue Helicopter is placed the equivalent of seven cards away. More players (survivors) equal larger hands sizes but lower starting health and more zombies to encounter. This is an interesting mechanic because if (yeah, right, if…) survivors die the hand sizes immediately shrink but you don’t gain any extra health. It’s important to keep in mind your hand limit only comes into play during the draw portion of the player turn. If, through the play of various cards, you’re informed to draw a cards you’ll do so regardless if you’re at your limit or not. Thus someone with a health of three wouldn’t be able to draw cards in the draw phase if they had three or more cards but if by entering a Location or playing an Action card says they get a card they will regardless of how many cards are in hand.
Each turn the players will discard cards from their hand, if they wish, then draw new cards up to their current health and finally play cards. The Action cards can be Weapons, Items, Companions, Locations, Location Attachments, Skills and even Instant effect cards. Many of the cards require you to spend experience in order to bring them into play and you gain that experience by killing zombies. When a location card is played the player who brought the location onto the table moves their character into that location. Only one Location can be played in a turn and as each survivor moves into the Location they may gain extra cards depending on how dangerous the place may be. Next a number of zombie cards are drawn until their combined Experience Points equal or exceed the Infestation Level of the Location; Infestation Level is equal to the place on the table the Location occupies, plus the modifier based on the number of survivors, plus the modifier of the Location itself. As an example let’s say the City Hall location is played as the first location in a five player game. The Infestation Level would be two for the place on the board, plus another four for the modifier on the card, plus three for the number of survivors to bring the total to nine. Yikes! That is not a location you want to hit right out of the Safe House!
Each player is allowed one free attack each turn and can use the default attack shown on their character’s card or a readied weapon they’ve brought into play. Regardless, they get one attack unless they discard other cards which show an Attack symbol; every symbol gives them an additional attack. Each Zombie card shows a number of Health points and you need to reduce the Health to zero to kill that particular horror or pack of undead. The player who provided the killing shot gets to add that Zombie card to their collection and score Experience as shown on the card.
Once all the players have finished playing their cards for the turn the zombies then take their turn. All zombies will move one location toward the nearest Survivor and then those in Locations containing humans attack. If there is more than one Survivor who can be attacked (some items will determine if a Survivor is immune to attacks from specific types of zombies) in a Location simply randomly determine who is being chomped on. Just as the characters and weapons, the Zombie cards have an attack chart so each gets to make their attack as well as any special abilities they may have. If a character is reduced to zero health they die and all of their cards are discarded. Once all zombie attacks are finished, a single Zombie card is drawn and placed in the Location just behind the rearmost Survivor.
You’ll continue the process until all the characters are dead, time runs out, or against all odds the helicopter leaves with some warm blooded heroes are aboard.
Rise of the Zombies is a hell of a good time although some of that fun will be determined by the sort of gamers you play with. This is a co-op but the reality is you’ll want to look out for number one while you play as you do your best to help your fellow players when you can. Once a character is killed, they’re out of the game so there is player elimination although you can have the people who are out of the game roll for zombies and other helpful time saving tasks. The learning curve is probably a bit steeper than most would associate with what they may look as being a card game but there’s a lot more to Rise of the Zombies than may meet the eye.
I like the fact your characters get tougher as they move along the storyline of the quest to reach the chopper and if they survive long enough should be in a position to deal some serious damage to their undead enemies. The clock is always ticking and taking an approach of letting everyone take their turn in order will eat way more time than taking it upon yourself to do your best to take care of as much of the card play during the players turn simultaneously. Eventually the timer is running out and the sense of chaos only increases as everyone scrambles to get as much done as quickly as possible. I’m sure some people out there won’t dig the confusion but once you get a few games under your belt your fellow players will have a much better feel for how to take care of business.
The component quality overall is excellent as the cards are nice stock and the rules are clean and concise. The artwork is nice although I’d have liked to see the individual cards portray color art as opposed to simply line drawings. This isn’t a big deal but I just think color would have made the game “pop” that much more!
If you’re looking for a challenging game which brings something really new to the world of zombie games, you really do owe it to yourself to get your hands on Rise of the Zombies! Gamers who are looking for something which can easily be beat every time out will no doubt be frustrated by the title, because it can feel like the deck is stacked against you at every move, and should steer clear. That said, this is a game of the zombie apocalypse so it should be hard! There’s a reason we don’t see movies where the masses of humanity stomp out a small handful of zombies since A) that wouldn’t make for a very exciting story, and B) it’s called an apocalypse for a reason!
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