It’s a great time to love zombies and play board games. More so than video games even, if you ask me. It seems like more and more zombie-related board games are published each year, and 2013 is shaping up to be amazing in that regard.
First up is The Walking Dead Board Game: The Best Defense by Cryptozoic. They’re the people with the license to make board games based on the TV show, having released a previous board game (which was all right, but not great) and the more recent card game (which I haven’t had a chance to play yet). This game seems to be much more interesting the previous board game, since it deals with defending key areas from zombie attacks as a group. Or, alternatively in the “advanced” mode you’ll all have ulterior motives which give you secret missions that might lead you to screw everyone else over for a personal advantage. I’m looking forward to it.
Next we have Carnival Zombie. It’s an Italian game by Italian developers and publishers, but they have said that there will be an English release. It’s got a bit of Cthulhu Mythos influence, as the “story” of the game is that Venice was actually built on top of “The Leviathan,” a giant Cthulhu-type monster. And now it’s waking up and turning the residents of Venice into monsters. As some of the few remaining survivors, you have to fight your way through the hordes and onto terra firma before the monster wakes up completely. It’s got beautiful artwork and promises to be very challenging. Plus I really need to brush up on my Italian, so I’m hoping that the English version still has a copy of the Italian rules.
Here we have the next expansion to the long-running and venerable Zombies!!! franchise. This game is over a decade old and it’s also the game that pretty much started the current trend of zombie games. Most zombie-related games out these days owe a LOT of inspiration to it. The 12th expansion will have a zoo theme with various zombie animal minis. To be honest (and to my shame) I don’t have a lot of experience with this game, but I should be correcting that error soon.
If I may say, I’m really glad they didn’t go with the easy pun of “Zoombies” instead of the generic term “animal zombies.”
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Oh, no… What have I done?
Finally, we have two different World War Z games, which apparently are both based on the film license. The board game seems to be more cooperative, while the card game seems to be competitive. The movie won’t be out for a few weeks, but I believe these games are out right now. They kind of came out of nowhere. I should have reviews up for them sometime hopefully not to far in the future.
