Publisher: Realms Masters Game Forge
Designers: John J. Perry Jr and Josh Pinciaro
Year: 2008
Players: One to six players
Ages: 13+
Playing Time: 30minutes
Genre: Zombi fighting horror card game
MSRP: $14.95 for the core game
Well I was not expecting much but I was pleasantly surprised. Chaos Isle is actually a pretty fun game. Sure there is only a little strategy and a lot of luck, but it was enough for us. Sometimes it’s just fun to sit down, roll some dice, and trash some zombies (in this game they are referred to as zombis).
The cool twist to this game, is that if you end up getting killed, you become a zombi yourself, attacking the other players on subsequent turns. It’s like a domino effect, as one player kills another, then they both attack a third, and so on until the remaining desperately struggling players squeak out a win, or they all become zombis.
The base game comes with 102 cards. The object of the game depends upon the type of game you are playing, as there are several ways to play. You can play the campaign game, which is the longest version, completing mission cards and earning campaign points up to a pre-determined total. The single mission game is played until one player completes a mission and wins. This can be played in 15 or 20 minutes and is the typical way we played. The solo mission game is obviously for playing the game solitaire, and the survivor game is played until there is only one player left alive.
The cards come in several types. The enemy cards are the bulk of the deck and have some nice artwork by Christer Degerman. Haunting, spooky, very thematic. The Zombis are of the demon creature looking type, not your run of the mill rotting corpses, and the artwork covers the whole card, not just the top third as in many games, so it is pretty cool. There are also event cards in the enemy deck, and task cards too. Event happen no matter what and can be good or bad to all of the players. Tasks can be attempted or avoided by the players. Successfully completing a task means you get to draw an extra equipment card, failing means something bad happens, it just depends upon the card.
Additionally, there are character cards. The artwork quality drops considerably on these cards unfortunately, more manga like than anything else. Each player randomly chooses a character at the start of the game. The cards have their stats: strength, life, protection, fate, a description, their attacks, and special abilities.
Equipment cards are the fun part. Yes you can get a shotgun, and an axe, and a Kevlar vest, and many other items
Finally, mission cards give specific assignments to each player. These can range from killing 10 zombis, to collecting certain resources found on the different zombi cards. Some zombis might be carrying around gunpowder, or gas, or various other resources that your mission tells you to collect by wasting some zombis.
The rules are simple and were terrible. We made so many mistakes the first few times we played, so many little questions that were not answered in the one page double-sided rules, that we ended up just making up the things we couldn’t figure out either because they weren’t addressed in the rules or were ambiguous. I will save all of you some time right here and explain the answers I have uncovered to rules I didn’t understand at first.
The game really is simple, and it is fun so don’t let the rules discourage you. After you receive your character, equipment, and mission cards and determine a starting player, the starting player proceeds.
Most of the zonbis only take one hit, so you can wipe them out if you get some good rolls. Scoring a hit involves rolling two dice against the zombies Protection stat. If you roll equal or higher, they take a hit. The same works for the zombies, if they roll higher than your protection, you take a hit and lose 1 life. Once you hit zero life, you are dead and turn into the zombie that killed you. Any zombies you kill get added to your cards and count toward completing your mission. That’s the whole turn, play proceeds to the next player.
We played initially one on one battles against the zombies, not letting them all attack at once, so the game was easy. Once we figured out that this was completely wrong, it got a lot harder and a lot more fun. Evading isn’t spelled out very well either and it took some research to figure out which ones we could evade and how it worked. We also play with the rule that you must always face at least one zombie you drew, the rules are silent on the matter.
Despite the rules problems, we have had a great time each time we’ve played the game. Becoming a zombie is a blast as you try to kill off everyone else before they can complete their mission. Once you are a zombie, you get to attack one character each turn, and they can’t attack you back. If you become a tough zombie this can be really difficult to survive for the other players, as some zombies have multiple attacks, or die roll modifiers. Being the last one standing is fun too as you really feel them closing on on you, as you are hoping just to survive until your next turn so that you might by some miracle pull off a win.
The first three expansions add ten new cards each, as well as several more ways to play. Once we added the expansion cards we never took them back out. They only cost a couple of bucks each, and add missions, zombies, tasks, and equipment. Well worth the cost in my opinion.
The fourth expansion is a larger one. Rise of the creator adds 30 new cards, including the new feat cards that give characters special abilities to help themselves or hurt the other players, and virus cards that add a specific difficulty that all players have to deal with the entire game. There are also mutation cards. If you draw a mutation card when drawing your 3 enemy cards, the zombies get stronger and the tasks get tougher that turn. There are also two new boss zombis that you can dread running across. This expansion is less than $15 and again is well worth it. I love the new difficulties. The harder it gets, the more fun the game is, and the greater sense of accomplishment you feel if you pull off a win. The rules for this expansion are vastly better, and in glossy full color to boot, so the company is working hard to improve it seems, which I am thankful for.
So if you are looking for a compact, fast, fun, and horror filled card game, take a peek. Chaos Isle delivers in spades. Much more serious players will probably not enjoy the luck factor though.
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