Zombies on Board Games

Zombies remain one of the big icons of horror, but they don’t have to be limited to movies. There are a number of board games that let players take on the role of survivors trying to survive, escape or bring down the ravenous horde. These include a mix of cooperative and competitive game styles with many featuring a checklist of zombie movie tropes including scavenging for supplies, dice-fuelled combat and desperate, tense situations where you’re backed into a corner with one bullet left and IT’S HOPELESS.

Players control a character with a shotgun and other weapons that can be placed on a modular city board. The main components are the player and zombie figures and the action cards. The figures are well made with good weight distribution and the molds look like they’ll be sturdy over time. However, it would have been nice to have a different figure for each player so that they could tell them apart.

Each turn a player makes a movement roll by rolling a six sided die. Then they move up to three spaces on roads, on named map tiles (such as a police station or hospital) or into buildings on those tiles. When a player moves into a space that contains a zombie they make combat rolls against that zombie and any other zombies on the tile. If they roll a four or higher they defeat the zombies and collect them as part of their supply. If they fail a combat they move back to the Town Square, lose half of their collected zombies and start again.